Saturday, 23 May 2009

Showing off again...

Dear Friends,

First off, I'd like to do a bit of showing off again. I obtained these comparative stats from the web stats company, Alexa (www.alexa.com) overnight. They show the comparative traffic ranking (a measure of how many people visit a website and how long they stay looking at different pages) of a selection of leading Catholic websites, both local and international. You might like to know that you're in good company with the growing readership that is being attracted to what we are able to offer on Catholica. Thank you for all the support you've been providing to help make this happen. Without an audience — or a congregation — we ain't going nowhere!

Growth Trend Increasing or Decreasing	Publisher	ALEXA Int'l Traffic Rank
	The Holy See vatican.va	11,255
	Catholic Answers catholic.com	21,772
	Zenit News Agency zenit.org	39,594
	First Things firstthings.com	112,999
	National Catholic Reporter ncronline.org	150,552
	CathNews Australia www.cathnews.com	245,333
	ACBC* catholic.org.au	261,321
	America Magazine (Jesuits US) americamagazine.org	307,979
	Catholica catholica.com.au	426,367
	Commonweal Magazine commonwealmagazine.org	468,565
	XT3.COM (WYD social interactive site) xt3.com	503,012
	Eureka Street (Jesuits AU) eurekastreet.com.au	562,915
	Independent Catholic News (UK) indcatholicnews.com	743,866
	The Tablet thetablet.co.uk	810,438
	AD2000 ad2000.com.au	1,104,460
	Catholic Weekly (Sydney) catholicweekly.com.au	1,409,986
	Archdiocese of Perth* perthcatholic.org.au	1,774,807
	CathNews USA cathnewsusa.com	3,240,797
	Flame Ministries Int'l flameministries.org	3,689,637
	Catholic Leader (Brisbane) catholicleader.com.au	4,242,753
	The Record (Perth) therecord.com.au	4,679,910
	L'Osservatore Romano osservatoreromano.va	4,799,796
	Australian Catholics (Jesuits) australiancatholics.com.au	8,534,348
Note: *The ACBC website - www.catholic.org.au - is a portal for most dioceses and many Catholic agencies around Australia. The Archdiocese of Perth website (positioned further down the list) is one of the one's not included in the catholic.org.au combined statistics. It would be interesting to have comparative stats for the other individual dioceses.

And Pewter today could be writing about parishes that are trying to push their congregations out the door. It's the second of his reflections "From the Pewside". A few people have been complaining in his parish that some people make too much noise before Mass begins. The parish priest has told everybody to sush. There are a couple of issues here: Is attending Mass about reverence or about building community and communion? How should these sort of complaints best be dealt with when they arise?
<Read Pewter's reflection>
www.catholica.com.au/gc3/pewter/002_pewter_160509.php

Check out our New Catholica Forum... Today we preview the new Catholica Forum and invite you in to comment and provide feedback that might help improve it even more technically — and as a vehicle for social communications and "building communion and community". The email today is a brief reflection on some of the more important reasons why we are undertaking this technical upgrade. <more>

The Politics behind Paul's Final Journey... One lesson we might take from Dr Ian Elmer's commentary today is that politics played a huge part in the governance of institutional Catholicism right from the earliest days. What Ian examines today are effectively the political ramifications that were at play influencing St Paul in his third and final visit to Jerusalem. When bishops make their regular pilgrimages or visits to Rome today have the considerations at play changed much in 2000 years. <more>

Letters to My Children #4 Tom McMahon is now safely home in San Jose after his Aussie Odyssey — and he'll no doubt have a report on that in due course. In the meantime here's the fourth in his occasional series of Letters to his children. <more>

The Witness (cf Psalm 108:1-6): In a discussion with Dr Kania this morning, he informed me this series of essays began for him literally while participating in the Byzantine Liturgies at Easter time. He ends today's conclusion with a discussion on the worth of this sort of theological speculation when the actual historical or scriptural evidence of what actually happened is light on. <more>

16.1: Great disputes Tom Lee's exploration of the origins of Christianity never fails to fascinate and today's excerpt is no exception. It intersects with the growing discussion going on today amongst scholars regarding the literalness with which we can read Scripture and even the key events in the life of Jesus. We're still about mid-way through the third century in this 16th chapter of Tom's exploration. It's a discussion of one of the great controversies at that time on the divinity of Jesus and the equally fascinating question of how Jesus' birthday came to be celebrated on December the 25th. <more>

Dealing with pain spiritually... The editor is crook with the pain of a bad back today. That pain led him to hi-jacking this long discussion started by Stephen (Oh Yet We Trust) on the forum which, in a very real way, might be described as a reflection on different ways of dealing with pain spiritually. Thanks for the discussion starter, Stephen. There is much worth spending time with in what you write. <more>

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher