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One year ago I started this blog, Spes in Domino, in large part because I felt the need for independent voices, even small, insignificant voices like mine, to provide some alternative to the increasingly totalitarian dominance of tech giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. I had previously run two blogs on Blogger, but hadn’t done much with them for several years previously.
The alarming highhandedness and arrogance of the Tech Tyrants in 2020 convinced me that it was time to take up the standard of Catholic Bloggery once again – but not on Blogger, which, like many useful and innovative products available online, had been acquired (or stolen – ask Oracle about that) by the evil empire known as Google. I would start anew on the free platform WordPress.com, and avoid, if at all possible, using any other Google owned entities (such as YouTube).
I intend to publish an update and retrospective on the past year next week. If all goes well, I will have moved this blog from WordPress.com to my own platform by then (WordPress.com is better than feeding the Beast known as Google, but it’s not without its own issues). In the meanwhile, I’m reposting my inaugural post for Spes In Domino, a stirring manifesto entitled, “Forget the Tech Tyrants, Our Hope is in The Lord”:
Welcome to Spes in Domino (Hope in the Lord). This new blog grew out of my efforts to disengage from the giant communications companies that seem increasingly intent on squashing any voices that don’t submit to a certain secular and, increasingly, totalitarian social and political perspective (needless to say, traditional Christian belief and morality lie very much outside of that perspective). I found dropping the likes of Twitter and Facebook to be easy; untangling myself from the many tentacles of the behemoth known as Google is a more complicated task.
In my current job there’s not much I can do about the pervasiveness of Google: Gmail, Google Meet, Google Classroom, and a whole series of (admittedly convenient) other tools are furnished by my employer. Ending my personal entanglement with Google is another matter: it’s achievable, but time-consuming and tedious. I’ve begun the process of shifting my email traffic from Gmail to Protonmail, I’m moving documents from Google Drive to Zoho, and I’m looking for ways to replace other Google products as well.
Among my Google connections are two Blogger blogs, now mostly moribund, except at Christmas time. Blogger was swallowed up by Google some years ago. As I’ve been looking over all my old blog posts while working to rescue them from the maw of Google, I’ve been inspired to resume the regular practice of bloggery. I’ve reflected on how important it is to keep independent voices in the public square – especially Catholic Christian voices. In addition to providing a sane perspective on our life here on Earth, I had always tried with my old blogs to share the immense, beautiful, and inspiring treasury of religious art and music we have inherited, much of which remains unknown to so many of us. I’m convinced that this remains a an essential mission.
Sharing some of those treasures more widely, then, is one of the purposes of this blog (and part of the fun for me is learning about them and experiencing them myself). I also hope to discuss (charitably, if I can) events and ideas from a Catholic perspective. In addition, I will also be taking note of saint’s days, liturgical feasts, and other elements of Catholic life and Catholic culture as they suggest themselves to my distractible mind. Oh, and I promise to try not to get too caught up in the specifics of politics. Politics is like the horse in Psalm 33: “The war horse is vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save” (Psalm 33:17).
The Good News is that there’s someone who can save:
Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
that he may deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine.
Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and shield.
Yea, our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
Let thy steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in thee.
(Psalm 33: 18-22)
Our hope is not in politics, or programs, or policies, or in people . . . our hope is in The Lord: Spes in Domino est.