Diary of a Wimpy Catholic was once my daily go-to. I commonly referred to Max Lindenman as “everybody’s favourite blogger, or mine anyway.”

But I tuned out in recent times, and hadn’t given his blog another thought, until I received this news from a friend:

Max Lindenman has folded his tent – and thank God for that. His kind of clever teetering-on-the-edge of Catholicism is very very dangerous and it looks as though someone – perhaps his own conscience, has enlightened him.

When we look back, Max rarely wrote about Catholicism, but presented the weary scribe’s version, after the style of Graham Greene, but worse. At least you could pick up the glaring errors of Greene, but Max… in this day of relativism… harder.

Together with the addictive confession of one’s weaknesses and errors there has to be some words about God and the hope of achieving heaven, but Max didn’t do this.

Lest you think my friend is too harsh, here’s Max himself, largely agreeing with that assessment:

I’m not enough of a Catholic to blog about being a Catholic. At best, my faith is an on-again, off-again thing — nothing I can evangelize for with a straight face. This has been true, more or less, since I first started blogging here. Initially I tried to put my marginality to good use, by documenting it, along with its discontents. But, looking back, I see I rarely did them justice. Without consciously meaning to, I ended up playing coy, producing writing that now feels, in many spots, profoundly dishonest.

He speaks admiringly of a fellow blogger at the Patheos Catholic portal, whom he deems more honest in her struggles:

Calah already knows where she wants to go — the Catholic heaven – and she’s struggling against everything blocking her path. My version of honesty would sound very different. It would give more space to questions like “Do I really believe these thing?” and “Do I wish everyone believed them?” More importantly, my brand of honesty would leave room for a “No” to both of these questions.

Max’s last post reminds me of why I read his blog so voraciously. He is a masterful writer, and almost always thought-provoking. But his final confession also confirms why I tuned out eventually. He wasn’t completely candid. These days, I want simpler fare, and more critically, more honest fare.

Why? I think it’s part of “the Francis effect.”

Fr Ray Blake  expressed my thoughts exactly in his recent post, Where have all the bloggers gone?

The reign of Benedict produced a real flourish of ‘citizen journalists’, the net was alive with discussion on what the Pope was saying or doing and how it affected the life of our own local Church . . . Benedict stimulated thought, reflection and dialogue, an open and free intellectual environment. There was a solidity and certainty in Benedict’s teaching which made discussion possible and stimulated intellectual honesty, one knew where the Church and the Pope stood. Today we are in less certain times, the intellectual life of the Church is thwart with uncertainty.

The Catholic blogosphere “establishment” abounds with talented and faithful writers. They excel at analysing modern complexities and controversies with compelling hermeneutics which are rich in Catholic culture and supernatural outlook.

In the Benedictine age, I loved it. In the Franciscan age, not so much. The acrobatics sometimes performed by them when Pope Francis is “misquoted,” neither satisfies nor edifies. I remember one occasion — I can’t recall details now — in which many Catholic bloggers defended the indefensible, twisting the meaning of a quote attributed to Pope Francis which was fundamentally irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine. The next news cycle revealed the quote was bogus, leaving many Catholic bloggers with ultra-montane egg on their faces.

That was the moment my enthusiasm for blogs — both reading them and writing them — subsided. Again, Fr Blake has expressed my thoughts for me:

Most Catholics but especially clergy want to be loyal to the Pope in order to maintain the unity of the Church, today that loyalty is perhaps best expressed through silence.

The number of blogs I read these days is much smaller, and very different to my original favourites. Where once I valued beautiful prose and clarity of expression, now I look for unvarnished honesty and clarity of thought. Fr Ray Blake and Katrina Fernandez top the list.

I think Max is a bit hard on himself. He is more honest than many others, sometimes me included. I wish him well and continue to pray for him, and I applaud the integrity of his last post.