Why Catholic blogs are necessary...

Because some of the "institutional" news sources are filled with lies and dissent. We usually are quite restrained in our views (believe us, we are restrained!), and we must admit we would prefer if blogs by Catholics on Catholic matters, even if advisable or meritorious, were not exactly necessary. But they become necessary because of things like this - when presenting a Greenpeace-style call to "Save the Altar Girls", America, a self-described "Jesuit Magazine" and a "National Catholic Weekly" (only two of which words are true), says:

Inevitably the issue of women’s roles in the church raises the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood. Recently a cardinal in Lisbon and some bishops in Brazil, among others, also raised the question; but since Pope Benedict XVI, despite continued agitation, has reaffirmed the policy of John Paul II to allow no discussion of the topic, the matter of altar servers must be considered a separate and independent issue.

It is the typical lying-reinforcement technique: if you call it a "policy" often enough and long enough, it will be seen as a "policy", and not as the perennial, constant, and absolutely irreformable doctrine that it is, that "requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium," and that "is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith." (Interestingly enough - and perhaps unwittingly? - they reveal the whole problem of altar girls: yes, it does raise "the question of women's ordination to the priesthood"; is it appropriate that a mere liturgical allowance for one form of one of the rites of the Church will daily undermine the reasoning of the Magisterium, or is that just par for the course for the New Liturgy?)

[Image source.]