Fathers and Daughters
Category: Catholicism
Friday Frivolity: 1-800-THIS-IS-LEGAL
Most Popular Posts of All Time
I’ve recently been writing to different Catholic sites offering to write some guest posts. As I’ll be taking my book manuscript to publishers shortly I thought it’d be good to get my name appearing on more websites 🙂
As I wrote my first email to an editor, describing the kind of topics I typically discuss, I wondered which of my articles have been the most popular. I knew which of my posts I most enjoyed, but what were the posts which were most popular among the readers?
Fortunately, WordPress has a variety of admin tools which allow you to gauge this. I found some of the entries rather surprising, so I decided to write a post identifying my top eleven most popular posts…
#1 OSAS and three cups of tea (11,000 views)
I was initially surprised this post came out on top. It was the first part in a three-part response of a rebuttal to my post on Eternal Security. I think it received so many views because it was reproduced in its entirety over at Shameless Popery.
#2 He-Man, Christian Allegory and Transubstantiation (9,000 views)
This is one of my favourites! This was a post I wrote for April Fool’s Day. Earlier in the year I had been visiting Washington DC and gone out for a drink with Joe Heschmeyer where I shared my tongue-in-cheek theory about He-Man. At his urging this insanity finally made it down on paper.
#3 IC XC (8,000 views)
This was one of my early posts about the the letters found all over the interior of most Byzantine Churches. Apparently a lot of people want to know what they mean and Google sends them to me!
#4 Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Catholic (5,000 views)
I think this one got all this traffic purely because of the title.
#5 What is the significance of “IHS”? (3,000 views)
This was another post about Church decoration. Posts like this unfortunately attract the conspiracy theory loving, Jack Chick reading, surfers of the Internet (see the comments), but still, these posts seem to be very popular and I think I’ll write some more articles on symbolism in the next few months.
#6 Discernment with Fr. Matt Spahr (3,000 views)
On my blog I host the recordings from the local Theology On Tap sessions and this has, by far, received the greatest number of downloads, even beating a talk on relationships by Jackie Francois-Angel! Fr. Matt is the pastor of the Immaculata in San Diego and is, in my humble opinion, one of the best homilists in San Diego.
#7 The end is nigh (3,000 views)
Remember when Harold Camping said that the world was going to end?
#8 What Planned Parenthood does and does not do (3,000 views)
This was a very recent post but got shared a bunch on Facebook. I feel a bit bad since it was originally Abby Johnson’s material, but still, it was good to get the information out there.
#9 Jesus, the New Moses (3,000 views)
This was a real surprise! I’m not sure why, but apparently a lot of people want to read about the parallels between Jesus and Moses.
#10 Catholic Dating: Not wanting to be “that guy” (2,000 views)
I had guessed that at least one entry from my “Catholic Dating” series would make the top-ten list. It turns out the most popular is the post where I talk about Catholic guys not wanting to be creepers…
#11 Vatican Wealth (2,000 views)
This last entry also gained most of its popularity through Facebook shares. In this article I address the common assertion that the Pope lives like a king and that the Vatican should just sell everything they have…
Men Without Chests
C.S. Lewis Doodle has just released a video covering the first chapter of the last Lewis book I read, “The Abolition of Man”:
Lighthouse Offer
Today I wanted to publicize the deal currently being offered by Lighthouse Catholic Media. If you sign up to their mailing list, you will get to download an MP3 which has probably brought more people into the Catholic Church than any other. It’s the talk by Dr. Scott Hahn explaining why he stepped down from being a Presbyterian Pastor and became a Catholic:
Whom shall we send?
This last week, we had Kenn and Laura Cramer visiting Seattle. Laura and I first became friends about eight years ago in Washington DC when I first arrived in the States. Laura moved to Colorado and met Kenn and the two have been married for about three years now.
While they were in Seattle they gave a talk at “Drinks with Dominicans”, describing how they’ve decided to leave their lives in Colorado and become missionaries on the Indian Reservation in Montana. I wanted to share something of their story here, so here’s the article written about them on Denver Catholic:
The 3%
I once read a quotation about statistics which said that “a politician uses statistics in the same way a drunk uses a street lamp, for support rather than for illumination”… I thought that this was an appropriate quotation to begin the subject of today’s post. You see, it’s quite impossible to speak out against Planned Parenthood for long before hearing the following response:
“But abortion is only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does!”
This objection has been raised by many of my friends and you hear this statistic rattled off by politicians and Planned Parenthood advocates. 3% seems so small and insignificant! The argument is that if you defund Planned Parenthood then women would lose access to all the other services they provide as well. This assumes that abortion and healthcare can only come together as a package, treating pregnancy as though it’s just another disease.
How is it that Planned Parenthood is known for being the nation’s premiere abortion provider if it’s only 3% of what it does? Isn’t that incredible?! In fact, if it’s such a small percentage of their work, you can’t help but wonder why Planned Parenthood doesn’t just get out of the abortion industry altogether and save themselves the constant annoyance of having all those pesky pro-lifers outside of their clinics all the time!
There is a problem with the 3% statistic. While there is a certain veracity to the statistic, it’s incredibly misleading, so much so as to be positively meaningless!