Public Confessional: The Sins of This Blogger

Pray for us sinners.

Normally, I try to keep personal things to a minimum in my blog posts.

But I’m making an exception here.

What I want to do now is apologise for my often appalling delays in getting back to people.

This is with me now as I write replies to comments made at this site months ago. And I sometimes fail even more with personal correspondence.

Sitting here now, I am feeling my fault here and see that it is a fault that I need to take to confession.

Nevertheless, although they may seem like lame excuses, there are some things I’d like to say.

It won’t make for exciting reading.

Nonetheless, I would particularly appreciate it if regular readers of this site would bear with me and read this short post …

First, any delay from my wife Kim in responding is entirely my fault. Kim suffers an eye problem which gives her great difficulty with computer screens.

That means I upload everything for her and often type it. Every post, every comment. If she hasn’t responded to something you have said, the fault is mine.

So what is wrong with me?

It is partly this. I suffer very minor physical coordination problems. Thus, I could never learn to drive a car. Year after year, at school, swimming instructors gave up on teaching me to swim. And, despite months of typing lessons, five days a week, I could never learn to type.

So everything I type is one fingered.

Obviously this slows me down, along with doing Kim’s stuff.

But, really, there’s no excuse here. To a limited extent, I also engage somewhat on Facebook here as well as Internet forums like this one … sometimes posting there, while forgetting to honour people here.

In this mad world of modern communications, I easily get scattered, lost, disorganised. I can’t – easily – keep up.

Also, I live as a hermit, really, with limited social interaction, and needing much time for stillness, prayer and contemplation. I cannot think or write without that. And how the modern life of Internet communications conspires against that! For me, this was confirmed by a recent serendipity: our internet broke down for days on end … Joy! What joy!

But enough excuses. I have sinned, I will confess to my priest and I will try harder.

I just want you to know: if you haven’t heard from me, it is nothing personal.

Alas, I am an equal opportunity offender with everyone alike.

And if you do comment, you may want to tick the little box underneath which reads: ‘Notify me of follow-up comments by email.’

For, although I firmly resolve to do better, I will still likely be slower than other bloggers. You may wish then to get a little notice if I take a week or so.

Still, we greatly appreciate every sincere comment and despite appalling delays I have always replied to virtually all of them.

End of public confessional.

In closing, let me just say that although the blogs at this site have been quiet lately, we plan to make it much more active soon.

All this has to do with wanting to publicise my upcoming books from Angelico Press as much as possible.

However, I’m also wanting to talk about many new topics at this site, including G.K. Chesterton and the late L. Brent Bozell – one of the greatest American Catholic thinkers ever. (I stress the late – i.e. deceased – Bozell, in contrast to his still living and more famous son of the same name.)

With my books coming out, everything will be speeding up. I pray I can keep up …