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When did you last go to confession?
Dear Friends,
Phew! We've made it through to the end of our second full year — and I have to say I really am exhausted. From today I'm taking about a month off from preparing the daily commentaries. It will be time for relaxation as well as a time for preparing new ideas to take Catholica to the next stage. If we can maintain the growth rate of the last two years by this time next year we should be very close to where we need to be as a really viable publication and community. That process of reflection on new initiatives has already begun. It's easy enough producing a quality publication — the difficult, and expensive, part is bringing it to the attention of a sufficiently large audience that the small amount of financial support individuals can give by way of donations, buying merchandise or supporting our advertisers can make it financially viable. The economics of these things are such that one does have to attract a regular readership in the hundreds of thousands to make it work if we are to keep it a subscription-free service and accessible to anyone who has an internet connection. With a readership of, say, 100,000 and each person buying just one book or cd a year from what was advertised on our site this endeavour could be really kicking and able to reimburse all its commentators for the energy and skill they expend to write stuff that meets the needs of that readership. That's our dream — and our aim. In our favour we believe there is a potentially huge audience "out there" which has become disillusioned with the program offered officially and is hungry for a more intelligent discussion of these "things of the Spirit" and the spiritual dimension of our being. The challenge we face is making them aware of our existence. That is a huge challenge — and expensive — but, with the continued grace of God keeping us "on track", and your support, we can only follow where the Spirit leads us and trust to Providence that we will get there.
 And talking about intelligent discussions... Tom McMahon's commentary today takes off the rose-coloured glasses to take a very frank look at the Sacrament of Penance. This guy doesn't want to drop it entirely. He wants to see us get back to better reflecting "the sacred sign of Jesus' mercy". How do we do that? Over the history of the Church there have been massive changes in how the institution itself officially approached this Sacrament. With the knowledge God is streaming into Creation, and human consciousness today through the sciences and our understandings of the human psyche obtained through psychology and the social sciences, how can the world be invited to again take the self-reflection inherent to the Sacrament of Reconciliation seriously again? This is not the end of Tom's series on Penance. We will conclude it when we start publishing again at the end of January. Tom himself in an email to me this morning says he's taking off today for a holiday in the Sierra's where the snow is seven feet deep. <Link to Tom's commentary>
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