Answering a meme

Tony, from The Muniment Room, invites me to “meming”. I am not very fond of these things, but it is Tony who asks and I do not feel capable of not yielding to cyber-friends like him, especially when he did such a wonderful translation into English of the “Letter to my daughter”.

1. How did you start blogging?
I did an extensive search of Traditional Catholic pages a few years ago. I found, should I say by serendipity (if there is such a thing in God’s mind)?, A Casa de Sarto. I quite liked the way the founder and director of this blog posted and his train of thought. This led to a fair amount of electronic correspondence. JSarto then kindly invited me to post with him … and it is now three years doing this. I reckon my hard core lusophilia contributed a great deal in creating something I love, which is joint projects in both Portuguese and Spanish.
2. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful?
The aims of a blog like ours are, necessarily, humble. Both JSarto and I took our stand: our basic principle is to stand for Catholic Tradition. We are no fools and we know at the very best a two or three hundred people read us. We are happy that Tradition is more and better known through A Casa de Sarto amongst some friends, some of them convicted bloggers as well. From that point of view, aye, we have been successful, Deo Gratias. But the hell with our own “success”! What is important here is God’s glory. If A Casa de Sarto is a humble, but useful instrument, for this purpose, so be it.
3. Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?
Aye. I remember JSarto invited me initially to post about Carlism, since this is probably the purest Catholic political movement in the last 200 years. Neither JSarto nor I believe in religion as a private matter. Rather the contrary we do think that religion is, by its very nature, public and Our Holy Catholic religion has an inherent tendency to get incarnated and give birth to what we know as Christendom.
It was a great pleasure for me to discover that JSarto and I share a tremendous interest in Padre Leonardo Castellani, an Argentinian Priest who was a genius and anticipated many of the evils we are currently suffering and who is virtually unknown in the English speaking world. From this common interest I reckon, and this may be the times we are going through, my interest has shifted a little bit from political philosophy (from a Catholic perspective) to an exercise of self-realization (to be shared with our readers) of the times we are living in and its relationship to the Apokalypsis.
4. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?
That writing was going to be more painful and more time consuming that one initially thought.
5. Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?
Aye, some of them know. Most of them ignore me as a weirdo who has a tendency to talk too much about things of Heaven and supernatural aspects of existence. To many of my cousins and extended family, with whom I am fortunate enough to have a very close relationship, I am a man who does not mix up well with worldly affairs. But they read me when I write about football or about gun control in Nova Frente.
6. What advice would give to a new blogger?
Think twice before starting. It may be more time draining than you might have thought. But the effort of writing and putting your ideas in order and doing searches and reading about a topic is worth. Blogs are normally short-lived, and there are plenty of aficionados who try to scrabble a few words for a short time. If your intention is another, think twice.

And now, with your permission, Tony, let me copy the prayers I found in your blog asking for the intercession of St Isidore, a Saint very much linked to Portugal and Spain:

Orátio ante colligatiónem in interrete:

Omnípotens aetérne Deus,qui secúndum imáginem Tuam nos plasmástiet ómnia bona, vera, et pulchra, praesértim in divína persóna Unigéniti Fílii Tui Dómini nostri Iesu Christi, quáerere iussísti, praesta, quaésumus, ut, per intercessiónem Sancti Isidóri, Epíscopi et Doctóris, in peregrinatiónibus per interrete, et manus oculósque ad quae Tibi sunt plácita intendámuset omnes quos convenímus cum caritáte ac patiéntia accipiámus. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.

A prayer before logging onto the internet:

Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thine image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Rafael Castela Santos