Fourteen Years and an Appeal

Every year on the Feast of St. Peter and Paul it has become custom for me to write an anniversary post commemorating the founding of this blog, which (in its current form) was launched on June 29, 2007. Today I am celebrating fourteen years of Unam Sanctam Catholicam.

But beyond celebrating this enduring blog, I also wanted to give you some news and make an appeal.

First, I want to let you all know I am going to be taking an extended break for awhile. Nothing is wrong in my life or anything, I am just fairly busy and I want to disconnect for a time. I have a lot of books and projects I am involved with, and I also just want to step away from online Traddie-dom for a bit. 

One project I am going to be working on this year is switching over the sister site to a new format. I have been operating www.unamsanctamcatholicam.com since 2012 on a Joomla template that has become woefully clunky and outdated.  I am migrating that site and all its content over to a much sleeker Wordpress-based template that will make it a lot more aesthetically pleasing and easier to navigate. I don't expect this will be done before the end of 2021, but I am going to be spending a lot of time on it.

As I break and revamp the sister site, I'd like to ask you to consider making a financial donation to support the work of Unam Sanctam Catholicam. 

What is this "work" you ask?

Unam Sanctam Catholicam is consistently one of the top-ranked Catholic blogs in the English speaking world. It has been in the top 100 for the past decade and has occasionally been in the top 10. It's content has been 4.3 million times; an average of 38,500 people read our articles every single month. That's 38,500 readers every month being exposed to our articles about the goodness, truth, and beauty of the Catholic faith—articles devoid of clickbait, not beholden to any organization or authority, written in a spirit of patient reflection without pretension. Granted, that means you sometimes have to deal with my own stupidity, but at least there's no commercial angle or institutional gags on my content. I am a fool, but you get to enjoy my foolery without any hook.

My free RCIA notes and outlines have been downloaded 80,000 times and show up first for the Google search "RCIA notes." That's 80,000 people who chose to go with my outlines—full of quotes from the Catechism, Aquinas, the Councils, and the Fathers—instead of any number of the garbage RCIA resources floating around out there.

Countless people have messaged me over the years saying the Bayside article I did back in 2013 had helped them come out of the Bayside hoax. Ditto for my articles over the years on Medjugorje.

I am not a social media influencer. I have never tried to monetize this site by turning into a subscription service, nor have I ever hocked "premium content." I don't make a living from this blog; if I feel like posting I do, and if I don't I don't. 

That being said, a little bit goes a long way. If you've ever been entertained, edified, or educated by Unam Sanctam Catholicam, please consider helping. There’s many ways your contributions can benefit Unam Sanctam Catholicam: 

• I would like to get my RCIA notes and outlines translated into Spanish and then Arabic. I'd like to be able to pay people for this translating work.
  
  
• As I mentioned above, I am revamping the USC sister site. I would like funds to help pay for the redevelopment and obtain improved design elements of the new site.
  
  
• While I work as a professional writer, I also self-publish works on matters of interest to traditional Catholics. For example, the USC Ebook, Laudato Si: The 40 Concerns of an Exhausted Layman, The Book of Non-Contradiction on harmonizing apparently divergent biblical accounts, and most recently, Power from On High on the history of theocratic monarchy in the Christian west. Your donations allow me to (a) spend more time working on these passion projects instead of grinding away at the corporate stuff, and  (b) help me pay professional copywriters and artists to improve the quality of these self-published works. 

In the meantime, I have a lot on the docket for the rest of 2021. Here are just a few of the articles I have in the works for the next sixth months (hopefully):

• The legend of St. Maternus
• Use of ostrich eggs in the traditional liturgy 
• Various book reviews
• The Church and autopsies
• St. Gregory of Narek
• Cuss words in the Middle Ages
• Medieval clerical opinions on beards
• English bishops and the pallium journey to Rome
• Gemstones in the writings of St. Hildegard
• Part 3 in my series on the Nephilim (hopefully)

If there is something else you would like to see me write about, please do not hesitate to shoot me an email at uscatholicam[at]gmail.com. Thank you for your patronage over the years. Please use the Paypal button below to make a donation; if you'd like to send a check in the snail mail, message me at uscatholicam[at]gmail.com and I'll let you know how. And as always, follow us on Facebook. May the Lord richly bless you.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION TO UNAM SANCTAM VIA PAYPAL