Amy Welborn is shutting down her blog today (which is why I don’t provide a link to it), saying she’s got too many irons in the fire to keep up with it. Those of us who make our living by writing can certainly understand, but it’s still a shame to see her go. She really made a difference. Amy is not only a fine writer, but a faithful Catholic. Her blog, which appeared (or at least first came to national notice) about a year ago, quickly became a must-read Internet site for news and commentary on the Church sex-abuse scandal. Many of her regular readers (who numbered in the thousands) would argue incessantly in the blog’s comments section over this or that aspect of the scandal, sometimes generating more heat than light, but always doing what rank-and-file American Catholics have not been able to do prior to the Internet: honestly discuss the good, the bad and the ugly in our Church.

Amy’s site was one of the top blogspots for orthodox Catholics seeking real news and commentary on the scandal. There is no question that her site, and the host of others she’s spawned, kept the story alive for many concerned and curious Catholics around the country, whose local media weren’t covering the story comprehensively, and whose diocesan publications were, predictably, as useful and newsy as Pravda and Izvestia. These blogs have become a 21st-century Catholic samizdat for thousands of us. There’s been a lot written about blogging as a new form of journalism; in the case of the Catholic blogs and the Scandal story, they aren’t only a new form of journalism, they are a highly significant new form of journalism. When the history of this agonizing era of Church history is written, faithful Amy Welborn will have a place of honor for the pioneering media work she did in service of the Church she loves. I salute her, and I’ll miss her.