Restless Pilgrim

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…