Once the December issue of The Priest was sent to the printers, I had hoped to have more time blogging.

That was probably a bit naïve. For starters, the silly season of pseudo-Christmas — the unhappy successor of Advent — intervened. But in the less demanding days since Christmas, a lot of my “computer time” has been occupied with www.clergy.asn.au, which after The Priest is my biggest responsibility as editor of the ACCC.

My favourite WordPress developer, Elegant Themes, has finally — after two long years of development — released its flagship magazine theme, and I have spent a lot of time adapting it for the Confraternity’s purposes.

clergy-website

It’s far from finished, but if you follow the links to get a feel for the new look. The pages of the website, which relate information about the ACCC are complete. For example, visitors can register for the upcoming conference in Armidale.

Now I’m working on a much larger task: uploading every article ever published in The Priest. There are hundreds of these, and it’s a worthwhile project, I think, posting these online. They would have been a great help to my seminary studies, if only I’d had access to the archive when I was a student. Even now, I try to read one or two of the theological articles each month, as part of my systematic reading. The ‘prototype’ article is complete: Consecrated religious in Australian parish life. One formatted; 499 or so to go.

I’m treading old ground here. I wrote a very similar blog post back in November 2012. Back then I seemed to think I’d have the entire project finished in 12 months. Hmmm… I’ll do my best to blog regularly for the rest of these peaceful school holidays. But no promises!