Friday, October 15, 2021

Hurray! It's my Blog Birthday!

 Well, today it is ten years to the day since I launched Irish Papist! I'm very glad I did.


I hadn't been a practicing my faith long when I started writing it. In fact, the blog I had before it (for a short while) was called Practicing to be Catholic!

I'm very grateful to God for preserving my faith for that decade. I came to faith late in life, and with considerable difficulty, so the fact that it has endured is something to be appreciated.

And, of course, I'm grateful to my wonderful readers-- YOU!-- for giving the blog a purpose for existence. Thanks for reading, for the comments, for the emails, for the prayers, and for all the ways you've interacted with me and encouraged me.

Today is also, by a remarkable coincidence, my twentieth anniversary in UCD Library. I've been here so long it feels like home. I love working in a place that is a little world of its own. One day I hope to be known as the Swan of Belfield. If nobody else calls me this, I'll just use it myself. (Belfield is the name of UCD's main campus, where I'm located.) It would be quite appropriate as the lake in Belfield actually does have swans.

Special mention goes to the colleague and friend, who also reads my blog, who brought me in an anniversary balloon, chocolate, and card. How awesome is that? Very awesome. Benedictine, I'd say, in the Dirk sense.

Also to my wife Michelle who made these delicious cupcakes for me to bring in.




Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir!

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations!!!

    Rather than embarking on a personal comment, I have decided to let someone else do the writing - on writing! - but with my own gratitude for this wonderful blog mentioned in this simple intro.

    Irish Papist having been kept alive in well paced well versed idiosyncracy, for ten bright years, is worth more like ten thousand stanzas of praise.

    Here´s to more blog posts! Lycka till!

    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/10/10/an-open-letter-to-fellow-writers-and-artists/?fbclid=IwAR3AcFuxnyFu1XZLSTZkjYu5VYtO_-NFkcYrOeeXd6mQEBdYk6Z8wkFfylc

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    1. Thank you Tomas! Those are very inspiring words from Michael O'Brien!

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    2. He is a good man. I loved the long "Croatian novel" The Island of the World.

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  2. Hearty congratulations to you on both anniversaries! Wonderful to see that people have been so kind.

    Thank you for all that you have written here. This blog — with its gentleness, its courage, and its fireside mood — has been an Internet sanctuary for me for most of its ten years. I've said this before, but it remains true that although there are not many bloggers whose writings I could recommend unequivocally to others, you are one of them. Long may the Irish Papist prosper!

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    1. Thanks so much, Dominic! I've appreciated your comments more than I can say. I'm honoured to be a blogger you can recommend!

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  3. Congratulations. You should probably put a copyright on the balloon photo- communications companies could want that one as an anniversary template

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    1. Thank you!

      I swipe so many photos on this blog that being proprietal about my own would be the grossest hypocrisy!

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