I'm shuttering Journey to Vatican III today. It was a bit of a tough decision for me, because the blog has been a way to research Catholic issues and I've "met" Catholics from around the world who e-mailed me after reading blog items.

But I'm closing it down for two reasons:

1) We've had layoffs and staffers leave this month as part of a downsizing effort. So we all have more on our work plates. I just have so much blog time each day and decided to focus it all on our collaborative editorial page blog, A Matter of Opinion. So check that one out now and again. And when issues of religion meet issues of public policy, I'll comment there.

2) The blog world is relatively new in journalism. It's reached critical mass just in the past two to three years. Part of the reality of this medium, as our blog industry expert Frank Sennett has pointed out in Blogspotter, is that blogs come and go. People get tired of writing them, and reading them, and move on.
Unlike traditional print media, such as newspapers and magazines, there aren't huge start-up and stopping costs to blogs.

So good-bye to this blog. Thanks for all the readership over the years. Catch you on the Opinion virtual world.