The face of authority: "Get that post out NOW!"
As you can see from our hit counter top right, we have had in excess of 255,000 hits, and received over 5000 comments. Our busiest days of late were March 31st (9803 hits) and March 25th (8752 hits). We’d love to reach July 4th, our first anniversary, with at least 365,000 hits. We’ll do our best to be interesting, but the result is up to you.
We’d really like to see more comments though. As the blog tech guy, I’ve tweaked a setting that allows anyone to comment, even if they are not a fully signed up WordPress member: all they have to do is supply a name and email address (which will remain hidden). Their comment will still be subject to moderation though–we believe in ‘moderation in all things’ here! If you want to see an unmoderated Catholic blog, try Damian Thompson’s blog at the Daily Telegraph. Nasty comments abound there.
So please leave a comment, even if it just says “Hi!”. We will find it terribly consoling and even uplifting if you do. Thank you.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
I’ve been with your blog since the very beginning, but have never commented. You’re the first on my list of evening stops.
Keep up the good work. That goes for the whole team! Hope you make your goal.
All the best,
Michael
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Thanks Michael!
I’m ‘uplifted’ already!
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The bad news is at least a thousand comments were from the odious Toad.
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Hi
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You are not odious to this RC, Toad
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I’m very pleased to have found this site and have already commented on the article about Archbishop Dolan. This is definitely on my list of daily visits now and thanks for mentioning Aid to the Church in Need.
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Hello to all you new commenters, and God bless you!
By piping up here, you are giving witness to all our readers, and help to build solidarity amongst us all, thank you.
I’ve just had a thought: If you are a new commenter, please feel free to tell us a little bit about yourself. Conversing online is a very stilted medium, and we all benefit from knowing something about our correspondent’s circumstances. It also helps us all to realise just how international our Catholic Church is, and how varied its members.
To start the ball rolling, I live in Wales, a once very Catholic part of the UK, as witnessed by the large number of place-names beginning with ‘Llanfair-‘ which is the Welsh for ‘Church of Mary’.
I am a ‘plastic paddy’, which is Irish slang for somebody of Irish descent raised outside of Blarney.
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Like Burro, Toad is a ‘Plastic Paddy’ (never heard that one before!)
Yet another thing we have in common!
Along with the belief that, “Laughter is the best medicine.”
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Burrito, what a beautiful statue of the Holy Virgin and Child! Is it bronze?
And to join in the self descriptions: I am half a ‘Plastic Paddy’ (on my father’s side) and half an ‘English Rose Anglican, turned Catholic’ (on my mother’s side)……… a mixture that it seems I share with a good part of the convent school I attended yonks ago, and quite a few of our parish.
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The picture portrays the statue of Our Lady of the Taper, which was blessed by the Pope during his visit to England and Scotland last year-he was unable to visit Wales at that time.
The statue is carved from wood. I hope to produce an article about it soon.
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I, too, am a Plastic Paddy–an aging one alas. Brother Burrito I love Wales. I’ve only been there once but I was enchanted by the stark beauty of it–freshets running down green stony mountainsides, blue water, stone houses, sheep grazing. I did not know Llanfair meant “Church of Mary”–how lovely.
Toad, what am I to make of you? The humorous skeptic or cynic or just having fun here?
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Toad is all things to all toads, Ann, more or less. But, he finds the certainty demonstrated daily on CP&S, equally baffling, irrational, amusing and stimulating.
None of us Plastic Paddys are getting any younger, any more than anyone else.
So do not exercise yourself on that account.
And, surely, it would be sinful not to have fun here, would it not?
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Dear Toad–I must say some healthy skepticism is necessary, for many have been undone by blind acceptance. No one tells Catholics to check their intellect at the door and proceed like automatons into the sanctuary, and I for one think that having a friend(or a husband as in my case) who honestly questions and disagrees but all in a spirit of friendly discourse is a good thing. If nothing else it keeps on our toes to “explain the hope that is in us” to quote St. Peter. Thanks for answering my question.
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Sorry Kathleen,
I have misled you. The picture above is of a bronze version of the statue cast in 1986. The one I saw and photographed at the shrine is different:
I had assumed it was (painted) wood.
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Yes, I thought it looked bronze.
Thanks for the information Burrito, and I look forward to your article on this lovely statue.
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The bronze one is far superior. The coloured one is rather Disney.
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