Historically the Church did, as I understand it, prevent the publication of heretical works and corrupted scripture translations. And to my view it did so rightly and correctly.
Historically, this was more common and but obviously things were published or there wouldn’t have been a need for the Index. But even the Index is no more.
Now as I understand things the Church still doesn’t want good Catholics publishing works on their own without at least some review by the Church, to ensure that people can have a source of known orthodox teaching to read from.
Again, I don’t think this is really true. I just check a couple books of mine by orthodox Catholic authors and some have the imprimatur and nihil obstat but some don’t. I remember reading about Scott Hahn waiting to get a imprimatur or nihil obstat for a particular book and got it just in time for printing, but the book was going to print with or without it.
Because of publisher deadlines and how time consuming getting them seems to be, I think the necessity of an imprimatur or nihil obstat would mean a lot of good Catholic books would take too long to get to the faithful.
I was just curious about personal catholic’s blogs where one expounds how one understands things and believes things. The blogosphere is a great form of witness/evangelism. I just wondered what the Church view was. It sounds like as long as you aren’t attacking the Church or saying grossly unorthodox things they there are no issues.
This is why I’m careful who I read or what I read the blogger for. I always try to use discernment when I read. If I like a Catholic author/apologist I want to read their perspective on wider variety of topics; it’s like sitting around the dinner table with them especially if they have the comments open because others including me can contribute to the conversation. Catholic bloggers who are not published or are anonymous I’m more careful about investing too much time until I know more about them.
I also get information from a variety of sources. The Bible, Catechism, Canon Law etc are at the top and blogs and forums are at the bottom. Blogs and forums should not contradict the former but should unpack them making them more accessible.
Sorry if the question sounds silly. I’d rather ask silly questions and get set straight than have silly ideas forever.
Not a silly question at all. I know there has been discussion about this in the past because of condern regarding the number of books, even magazines and newspapers with dissenting authors. If I find thim I will link to them.
Keep in mind this can work the other way too. I think certain Bishops in the USCCB wanted to take over Mother Angelica’s network for their own purposes. They don’t like everyone Mother and EWTN has said and thought they should have control of the network. EWTN would be a very different network with the USCCB at the helm (it would be non-existant - the USCCB did try to launch their own network but it failed. See?
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