Deacon’s Blog

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.6. Lots of new features - most of which I had been hoping for for some time. Here’s a video tour.

This is my 2,001st posting. It took 2 years and 10 months to get here.

All-in-all I feel pretty good about this accomplishment and the fact that I have been strengthened in my knowledge and love of the Church through this effort. Of course there are things I’ve said that could have been said better - and at times not at all. It’s definitely been a lesson in charity and focus. I pray that our Lord will act mercifully toward me, will wash away my sins, and recognize the love I bear for Him even though my efforts in witnessing to Him are poor.

I would like to thank you, my readers, and all who have written to me personally expressing support, entering into discussion, or who have asked questions about the PNCC. I pray that vocations have been and will be fostered through these efforts and that many will come to know and love the Polish National Catholic Church as a bulwark of Christian faith, both in these uncertain times and into the future.

Anyone checked these out? If you want, you can get one here AND support this blog. Thanks.

My hosting service had some major problems with the servers I was hosted on. I received an E-mail from Dreamhost today stating:

Because things were so bad, we’ve actually decided to go ahead and give you a three (3) month credit instead of just one.

I must say that I appreciate that, and consider their doing this to be in-line with the kind of customer service I would expect from a hosting service. It is the responsible thing to do and they are showing accountability to and respect for those who pay for the service. Well done.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 this afternoon. I used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin (and have used it for the last 4 updates). That went very smoothly.

On accessing the blog, it appears that my host, Dreamhost, has been having a multitude of problem on the particular server cluster upon which I am hosted. At times, over the past two weeks, the blog has been inaccessible. Hopefully they will have everything moved to a new server soon….

Continuing in the tradition of my daily posts, I expect to post a short excerpt from the Church Fathers every day in 2008.

In the document Apostolic Succession in the PNCC we read:

The Polish National Catholic Church has the same type of government that Christ gave to the apostles, has the same faith that He deposited with them, believes in the doctrine, government, and worship of the primitive Apostolic Church.

The doctrine of the Polish National Catholic Church is founded on the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Traditions, and the dogmatic decisions of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils.

The Holy Scriptures are interpreted strictly in accordance with the teachings of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Fathers of the Catholic Church.

Therefore, I pray that these brief excerpts will be enlightening to you and in keeping with the Holy Faith of our Church.

About a week or so ago I decided to finally drop Yahoo! as my hosting company.

There were a few instances where I had to patch WordPress to make it work on Yahoo!. In addition I was getting more and more displeased with the responsiveness of their servers.

It was taking forever to load my site. Because of the slow load times I was loosing readers like crazy. My average visitors per day was cut in half.

As of December 19 I’ve been hosted on DreamHost.

After the normal cutover issues, like switching my DNS, things have been going well. Dreamhost did make the switch easy. They had easy one-click installs for things like WordPress, they use phpMyAdmin, and they have all sorts of other one-click installs for other wonderful options.

Best of all, their price is better and their server settings do not disable native WordPress stuff.

The Dreamhost servers have been running fast and my stats are picking back up (thank you to my dedicated readers).

That was until today. Dreamhost experienced a prolonged blackout on a set of servers, mine included.

I apologize if you were unable to get to my website earlier today. All seems to be resolved now.

Yet He came to us anyway
To Provide for us


What it means for us

The iconographic portrayal of Christ’s birth is not without radical social implications. Christ’s birth occurred where it did, we are told, by Matthew, “because there was no room in the inn.” He who welcomes all is himself unwelcome. From the first moment, he is something like a refugee, as indeed he soon will be in the very strict sense of the word, in Egypt with Mary and Joseph, at a safe distance from the murderous Herod. Later in life he will say to his followers, revealing the criteria of salvation, “I was homeless and you took me in.” We are saved not by our achievements but by our participation in the mercy of God -God’s hospitality. If we turn our backs on others we will end up with nothing more than ideas and slogans and be lost in the icon’s starless cave.¹

My Wish for you

I pray that Christ’s coming will renew you, break down every obstacle, bring light to every aspect of your life, and reconnect all that is separate. He is our hope, therefore we rejoice with one voice.

Christ has come! Alleluia!

In my ethic tradition, we shared our gifts after the Wigilia (Vigil) supper and before attending the Pasterka (Shepherd’s) Holy Mass at midnight.

If would like to offer you, my readers, several gifts this Christmas.

I will provide eight (8) annual subscriptions to God’s Field, the official newspaper of the Polish National Catholic Church and ten (10) copies of the Polish National Catholic Church’s wall calendar for 2008.

The first eighteen people that make a request will get one or the other.

Please send me an E-mail using my contact form and provide your name, mailing address, and the gift you would prefer.

Of course I wish all of you every blessing on this Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord. The Christ is our true gift. Amen.

As some may have noticed, I’ve switched WordPress themes a few times lately.

I’m trying to work out the right mix. Thanks to the Young Fogey who noted the particularly slow load times with the current theme. The articles column and sidebars should be a white background with black text. Links are in green and blockquotes are in a pinkish color.

I do like this theme. I worked on it a little. I also removed some of the JavaScript stuff from the sidebar which improves load times (it wasn’t necessary stuff anyway).

I will continue to tinker a bit to see if I can improve it further. I appreciate your patience with my tinkering…

I tested my load times in various browsers (unscientifically). I received the best results in IE and Safari. Opera was a close second. Firefox and Flock were the slowest . Also note that I am using the latest version of each.