Welcome to our new subscribers and readers…

Dear friends,

Again we are welcoming a substantial number of new subscribers and readers to Catholica. Welcome all. Perhaps for the benefit of new readers I should reiterate what Catholica Australia is trying to achieve. Our broad objective is to be creating a place in cyberspace that provides some appeal to at least the educated sections of the 85% of the adult Catholic population who have become disenchanted with the Church. We are presently still in the building phase, and based on the models we are using from both secular and other religious sites, we expect it will take us about another three years until we reach our ultimate objective. We are not like most internet sites in trying to be a source of news — although we do break news from time to time when we come across it. We are endeavouring to create a community and conversation here addressing the sort of issues we believe will appeal to those sectors of the population who have become disenchanted with the alternatives that are offered by the institution itself. This is a wholely lay-initiated and funded endeavour although we are now attracting an increassing number of ordained and professed commentators as well and they are most welcome. We are endeavouring to encourage a wide range of opinion on this site across the political, age and gender spectrums but we discourage those who believe they have all the answers, or they believe the Church has all the answers and they want to ram those answers down everybody else's necks. We are not some kind of radicals or anarchists though intent on tearing the Church down but we are genuinely endevouring to provide an alternative that might redress the serious decline in relevance Catholicism seems to have for many people in affluent, educated, socially sophisticated countries like we have here in Australia. We do already have a significant audience reach internationally.

We endeavour to publish a lead commentary each day. These are designed to be catalysts for further discussion in our forum which is the real heart we're endeavouring to build for this initiative. Ultimately we expect to reach the audience we are seeking to serve via search engine technologies. Each day literally millions of queries are typed into search engines by people looking for answers. We are researching and acquiring various software tools that we believe will give us significant access to the audience we seek to serve who might not normally be intersecting any longer with programs offered by the institutional Church.

We welcome the support of new contributors to our discussions, we are constantly in need of financial donations to help us expand the initiative, but we also do warmly welcome casual readers who are interested in following the discussions but who do not necessarily want to contribute. Support of this passive kind is actually important to us, particularly in these early stages while we are building the facility. When we have achieved our end objective we are confident that Catholica will be able to stand on its own feet financially via the advertising revenue it is able to generate. In the meantime and until the search engine technologies really start to kick in we do appreciate the support we are receiving from passive subscribers who help build our readership. We do appreciate our articles being passed on to friends and acquaintances whom our readers think might be interested in the content.

Our regular commentator on Saturday's is biblical scholar, Ian Elmer, whose "day job" is as a lecturer at ACU National. Ian is always guaranteed to be provocative but the constant feedback I receive is one of great appreciation for the ways in which he manages to turn on our neurons and think about stuff we've often heard a thousand times before in completely fresh ways. What he writes today is particularly provocative and I expect it will lead to considerable discussion in the coming weeks. As he indicates himself in the commentary he's actually tackling issues we've been discussing on and off here for months and that's very much the pattern of what you'll find at Catholica. Today he's examining a topic very pertinent to today given all the divisions in the institutional Church. He's examining how Jesus approached the different factions and sects within his community.

By the way, Catholica has certainly attracted critics on various blogs and other discussion boards around the world. That does not concern us to any significant degree. They are usually people who believe they have all the answers and they view us as liberals, heretics and worse. If you stick around you might find some of the banter that we engage in with critics in some of these other places entertaining. For now though you might be content to be entertained, and informed, about the fights that went on in the time of Jesus and in the early years of the Church. <Read Ian's commentary>

Two final notes of introduction: The Saturday edition of our daily email is called the e-Digest and it contains a summary of the past week's commentaries. If you have subscribed to both the daily e-Bulletin and weekly e-Digest you'll find you get two copies on Saturdays. You can adjust your subscription using the link you'll find at the bottom of your email. I'm also pleased to say that while we do have a few critics we also have a much larger and growing audience who seem to really love what we're doing here!

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher