About St. Blog's Parish Directory

This post, as you can hopefully tell from the title, is going to be about a website called St. Blog's Parish Directory.


St. Blog's Parish Directory is a website directory that lists many different Catholic blogs - including this one.  I was going to attempt to describe it myself, but here is the official description:

"ABOUT SAINT BLOG’S PARISH

What is St. Blog’s Parish?

St. Blog’s is not an actual Roman Catholic Parish and there is no Saint Blog – most of you will know this instinctively but the question is asked so we’ll take care of that right up front.

So if it isn’t a real Parish then what is it? Well, we’re a loosely knit group of Catholics who maintain personal “blogs” (short for “web logs”)(Thus we are called “bloggers”). Most of us chronicle our daily lives mixing in commentary on the world around us as it affects us and is affected by our Catholic Faith. Some are professional Catholics – Clergy, religious, apologists, writers, journalists, teachers etc., but mostly we’re just ordinary Catholics in the ordinary world.

St. Blog’s Parish Directory was created and is maintained by a volunteer from among the Catholic community of bloggers. We pay for the web hosting, equipment, software, and time involved in keeping it going. You may find a “Donate” button on some pages — please feel free to contribute & help defray the costs if you are able.

Where is St. Blog’s Parish?

If you’re following along you already know! We’re not anywhere physically in the usual sense that a Parish has a location but we’re everywhere the Internet reaches!

How was St. Blog’s Parish established?

5/14/02: Added a new page listing some of the Catholic “Blogs”. Enjoy! I keep updating Scandal and Hope Page and will do the same with the Blog Page (and won’t always mention this in “What’s New…”)

With this entry Gerard Serafin (“A Catholic Blog for Lovers“) began his “Catholic Blogs Page” in mid-May 2002. Around the same time Kathy Shaidle ( relapsed catholic) penned the name “St. Blog’s Parish” and in June Kathryn Lively started a web ring and named it “St. Blog’s Parish” (the webring has been closed for some time now).

And so it began.

Saint Blog’s Parish has grown to include hundreds of Catholic bloggers. The parish includes apologists, speakers, writers, priests, nuns, monks, brothers, poets, jesters, theologians, military (active & veterans), seminarians, novices, deacons, artists, mothers, fathers, high school students, college undergrads, families, friends, and so much more!

The Parish has received some press attention and a large number of parishioners participate in the annual awards event – the Catholic New Media Awards [formerly theCatholic Blog Awards] (thanks to Joshua Le Blanc (cyberCatholics.com). While the parishioners are largely from the USA there are a few who are not and we hope to gather in more bloggers from around the globe to make St. Blog’s Parish an even larger Catholic presence on the internet.

With Gerard’s death in November, 2004 several “parishioners” expressed interest in maintaining the list and keeping Gerard’s effort going.

Gen X Revert (Gen X Revert) started the “Catholic Blog Directory” and Mary Herboth went a step further – putting up a discussion forum that she dubbed “St. Blog’s Parish Hall”.

Gen X’s list is still active and the directory that Mary continued has since passed to John Bowden (Adjutorium Nostrum + In Nomine Domini) and is called ” Saint Blog’s Parish”.

Along with these lists another interested parishioner, Eric Williams (Ales Rarus ), started what he called the “St. Blog’s Parish Aggregator” – a collection of parishioner’s RSS/Atom feeds – a means of reading the posts of many blogs in a single location. The aggregator is no longer maintained.

Our first task was to consolidate the web ring application form and the directory/aggregator form – one form in one place to join all three parts of the parish.

The next effort consisted in moving blogs listed on the web ring onto the directory – and once this was accomplished the web ring was closed. (about 2007)

Our goal is to provide an umbrella under which St. Blog’s Parish and its members can be found easily, and to provide a vehicle to present the Catholic blogging community worldwide.

What is the St. Blog’s Parish Directory?

The St. Blog’s Parish Directory of Catholic Blogs and Resources (a.k.a. “The Catholic Blogs and Resources Page”) is a website that provides a public listing of links to Catholic blogs. The Directory gives no information about a blog other than the link to it. The Directory’s blog list is separated into categories – Clergy, Men, Women, Women Religious (Sisters/Nuns), Groups, News, and Resources. The blog links are listed at the request of the blog’s author and the author specifies the category they want their blog to be listed in. No links are listed unless the blog author has requested it be listed.

Can anyone’s blog be listed on the Directory?

For the most part, yes, however, St. Blog’s Parish is a community of CATHOLIC bloggersthus we ask that you be Catholic and have a blog! We try not to be secretive about this by plastering the word Catholic all over the place but some folks either just don’t see it or really like us so much they want to be a part of the Parish no matter what!"