Catholic

In the Acts of the Apostles it became clear that the growth and movement of the church would be propelled by men and women of diverse means, social backgrounds, gifts, perspectives, and opinions. Catholics have been rolling their eyes at each other, and sometimes deliberately choosing the farthest pews from each other for 2,000 years, yet the union in Christ, the Oneness of heart remains. Saint Paul, visiting and speaking to churches no longer extant, could never have imagined a time when personal engagement -- the shared information, prayers, insights, and bellyaching of the believers -- would be such an instantaneous, at once real-and-remote, yet daily occurrence. Perhaps on Patmos, Saint John's visions included three-screened, finger tapping, multi-wired, headset-wearing "someone on the internet is wrong" bellowing creatures, but all he could report a was a furious mixture of light and sound formed in binary, like 10001010100010 swirling locusts. Here in the Catholic portal, we reflect a kind of Continuum of Oneness with the earliest church -- we are each passionately in love with Jesus Christ and devoted to her Body, the Church -- but we are diverse in thought, background, political outlook and interests; here you may go from reading an art-loving single mother on a rant, to a priest on a satirical roll; from a techno-geek-gamer with a taste for archeology, to a grandmother with a bible in braille; from a teenage activist of prodigious gifts, to a gentle bookworm obsessed with zombies; from a cinemaphile who finds light in the dark, to a catechist described as "the sanest woman in the internet"; from a newshound deacon with the softest of hearts, to a well-read skeptic, squinting at you through his monitor, and that's just for starters. Our hope is that a visit to our portal will leave you stirred, if not shaken, and intrigued enough to keep checking in on our raised voices, rolled eyes and fervent prayers. You are very welcome. -- Elizabeth Scalia, (The Anchoress Blog), Managing Editor