Strange Notions, a site designed to be a central place of dialogue online between Catholics and atheists, will go live TODAY at 8 a.m. CST. The site include intelligent articles, compelling video and rich discussion through its comment box. Brandon Vogt, a Catholic speaker, blogger and writer, is behind project and has a group of over 30 main contributors who will provide the site’s content.
I was fortunate to be able to ask Brandon some questions about the inspiration and creation of Strange Notions. This is truly an exciting project and another effort among the New Evangelization. Brandon has some great insights why such a project is important and what we can do to help the efforts to evanglize through the use of the Internet and social media.
Brandon Vogt
A sociologist should do a study on why such a high percentage of people who blog about Catholicism or explicitly from a Catholic standpoint are coverts to the faith.
Hmm…sounds like a plan! Dan, do you know any good sociologists that are up for the job?
No, but in all seriousness it would make a good topic for somebody writing a Master’s thesis or similar. The high percentage of converts is striking. A Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate survey found 7% of US adult Catholics entered the church after age 18 http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/FRStats/entrysacraments.pdf The number of active “Catholic” bloggers who converted as adults is surely much higher.
Converts to the faith become Catholic because they choose to be Catholic. They have recognized it to be true, good, and beautiful, and so want to see it succeed. Many cradle Catholics have risen up in the faith, but have never made a choice to cooperate with the grace God has given them. You don’t blog about something you don’t care about.
This is very wonderful. I am a former atheist and was raised that way. I stayed that way so long because of Christians being horrid and disrespectful to me. So this is good. So glad he is doing this and it is so brave! We should pray and make sacrifices for this effort! <3