Well, those funny fellows (and lassy) from Cooees in the Cloister have been leaving comments for moderation on my post below (“What the hell is up with Cooees?“). However, they have – not surprisingly – refused to comply with the requirements for commentator status on this blog (ie. they won’t reveal their true identities to me!). So, apart from a “boo!” from Br Momus, I will pass on this simple, but somewhat insufficient, explanation from The Warden:
Dear David,
it may interest you to know that reports of our passing are somewhat premature… We are simply observing Lent!
As for our friends at aCatholica… they couldn’t manage satire if they employed the entire Monty Python ensemble!
Happy Lent!
Yes… and pigs might fly too. If you believe that one, you’ll believe anything. Still, it would be nice if we could indeed celebrate more than one resurrection this Easter…
I have been thinking of the secret identities of the Coo-ees crowd. I’m betting they wear superhero face masks.
I told you it was probably just Lent. (It’s hard being right all the time).
Having been a loyal reader of Coo-ees since it first appeared, I will not be returning to it in the future if the site reappears, which I doubt it will. They might have noted on the web-page that there will be no more posting for Lent. Instead that odd message about the site being available only to invited guests, and with no possibility given to apply for an invitation. If they dared to confess to me during Lent my penance would be for each one of them ‘write out 100 times I must be respectful of, courteous to my readers’. As far as I am concerned the site is closed permanently.
Instead that odd message about the site being available only to invited guests, and with no possibility given to apply for an invitation.
I agree that they ought to have informed us of their break, but Blogger automatically places that response about “invited readers” regardless of the intention in shutting the blog down for a while. Not sure if that makes a difference to you, Father.
No, no, no. Cooees could easily have “observed lent” by simply putting up no new postings (except an Ash Wednesday one announcing the Lenten observance) and admitting no new comments to any of the existing posts. The site would have been available to read, but with no new content, and everyone would have known what was going on. And, when normal service resumed at Easter, the blog would not have lost a slew of readers who, as matters stand, are under the impression that they are permanently excluded without explanation, and have no reason ever to check back.
Blogger can easily accommodate this kind of “suspension of activity” , and I have known other blogs to do precisely this.
To Fr Kilgannon’s charge of discourtesy, I very much fear that we may need to add the charge of deception. David’s suspicion is justified. The Warden’s account of the reasons for the blockade does not have the ring of truth; the stated motive does not account for the unneccessarily drastic action taken.
It may be true that they are obverving Lent, but I doubt that that is the whole truth of the matter. I suspect that in making his statement The Warden is exercising a mental reservation!
Ah! The hermeneutic of Suspicion!
Speaking from my own experience, one generally takes a blog offline altogether (rather than leaving it up as read-only) either because you don’t want anyone to read it (because you need to reflect on its content for example, particularly in the face of substantive criticism) or because blogging is so compulsive that if it is there you will write despite best intentions (at least one excellent priest-blogger deleted his on his spiritual directors instructions).
In either case, I don’t think this should be interpreted as discourtesy – it would be nice in these circumstances to be able to put up an explanatory message but as pointed out, blogger simply doesn’t allow this. And blogs after all are a freebie, a free gift of the writer he is not obligated to give.
It is dissapointing to learn that Sentire’s restrictive commenting policy is preventing the Cooees from telling us their side of the story. In view of this, perhaps we should give Br M the benefit of the doubt on whether Cooees will eventually return – after all, perhaps its content is in the process of being somewhat purified, and maybe it will return minus one or two of its priestly authors….
I have seen this kind of thing far too often to make any kind of big deal about it in all honesty. I just think it’s a total non-story.
Hardman Window has (not suprisingly) declined to provide his real identity to me (a requirement of all who join our commentary table and share the port bottle), but I am happy to pass on his comments. Here is his latest:
So, there it is. We now know one thing about HW – he is a golfer. Not that that narrows it down much, especially among the priestly confraternity, but at least it tells us where he learns all his gossip!
Sounds like a wise decision on Hardman’s part; it breaks a vicious cycle. While he may have been getting angrier and angrier at what appears on other sites, others will have been getting angrier and angrier at what appeared on his.
There is, though, an alternative for Hardman. Rather than continuing to read Catholica and venting the resulting frustration through golf rather than blogging, couldn’t he just give up reading Catholica and continue to blog as a happier, healthier and more wholesome man?
After all, I gave up a Cooees habit some time ago, and it improved my soul no end. And what’s sauce for the goose . . .
Most of Catholica is indeed infuriating, but there is occasionally something worth reading. Ian Elmer is knowledgeable, informative and sensible – does that make him their tame fascist?
Hardman Window has a blog here:
http://hardmanwindow.blogspot.com/
Whose head does he think the ball is? Maybe you could run a poll, David.