Manifold Updates

          There are several things that I'd like to make you all aware of. Firstly, I've moved my blog from Xanga to Blogger. This is primarily to accommodate the fact that I've started up a website as well as Google+ and Facebook pages, all of which I can link to very, very easily and visibly from Blogger while it would be far less visible and far more complicated to setup on Xanga. Also, Blogger has a lot of options for free that Xanga only allows to paying bloggers (in fact, I don't even think Blogger has a paying option), so that's a huge bonus. And finally, I rather like the way the new blog looks over and above the way the Xanga one did (both on the actual blog-site and in the background where I manage it), so I'm definitely liking the move. As such, this will be both the last post on Xanga and the first post on Blogger. Sorry for the inconvenience; I hope you'll follow me over there...

          Now, as for the website, I thought it might be helpful to collect all the stuff I'm writing in a more organized fashion. As my wife informs me, it's entirely possible to gather all the posts that relate to, say, the doctrine of Mary as Mother of God by finding and selecting that tag on the blog, but that still means reading each blog entry separately and then re-running that search when you're ready for the next one. That may be simple and natural for some of you, but it's not for me. I find it much more practicable to have it all collated in one easily-navigated place, so that's part of why the website exists. The other reason I've gathered all my Mary-blogs there is so that I can go through and re-work them a little. As I've practiced at this endeavor of writing about Catholic teaching, I've been trying to hone my style, and I've come to the realization that what I (and also my parents, teachers, and professors) liked about my writing style in high school and college was that I was very good at making the abstract personal by "putting myself into my writing," as they say. So, although I haven't finished doing that yet, I'm working on adding more of those personal touches to what I've already written about Mary. As I said in my introduction to the whole Marian series, these doctrines are the ones with which I wrestled the most before I became Catholic, but I don't feel like I've been adequately expressing that in writing about them thus far. So I'm going back and doing that, one section at a time. So far, I've only gotten through the intro, but I'll try to let you all know when I finish putting myself more clearly into subsequent sections.

          The other new additions are, as I said, Google+ and Facebook fan pages, both of which are linked to from both the new blog and the website. The main reason for those is to better allow for the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. It also, of course, adds another medium through which you can write comments or ask questions to help me continue to hone my writing style at the same time that I help you understand where I and the Catholic Church are coming from in what we believe. So, please, keep reading and commenting. I'll take all the constructive criticism I can get.

 

In the Cross of Christ and His glorious resurrection,

Jackford R. Macarius B. Kolk

Tenui Ecclesiam Catholicam nec dimittam.