You want the cyberspace equivalent of doing a James Bond-like brake stop at 75 mph, turning 180 degrees in the course of seconds?

Consider using the blogosphere — the edgy, the modern, the forward-looking — to read about history. There’s something cyber-sacrilegious about it, but it can be done.

That wasn’t always the case.

The Internet has long had good Catholic history sources, like the history pages at the Catholic Educator’s Resource website (catholiceducation.org) and the Catholic History page (catholichistory.net). You could also find secular history blogs (for a great list, go to George Mason University’s History News Network, hnn.us, and click on “blogs”), as well as religious historical references on sundry Catholic blogs.

But Catholic blogs dedicated almost exclusively to history? Those were rare, if not non-existent.

Fortunately, a few have recently started up, and they’re pretty good. You might, for instance, want to try Kevin Edgecomb’s Biblicalia (bombaxo.com/blog), though it’s rather cerebral and written more from an Eastern Orthodox perspective than a Catholic one.

Or you might want to concentrate on what might be called the “big three” Catholic history blogs, each emphasizing a different era:

— Singing in the Reign (singinginthereign.blogspot.com) — biblical.

— The Way of the Fathers (fathersofthechurch.com) — patristic.

— The Grail Code (grailcode.com) — medieval.

Singing in the Reign is Michael Barber’s blog. Barber is working on his doctorate in theology, has written two books, hosts a weekly radio program and is a research fellow at Scott Hahn’s Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology (another site worth visiting: salvationhistory.com).

Singing is not devoted exclusively to biblical history, but you’ll find a lot of it there, complete with scholarly footnotes. His academician’s approach makes Barber a rarity in the blogosphere. Most bloggers provide links to online resources, but you typically have no way to confirm that the on-line resources themselves can be trusted. Barber cuts straight to the scholarly references. If you want to check his cites, you can trek to your local public or university library, but I’m told he’s an honest scholar that can be trusted.

The Way of the Fathers is written by Michael Aquilina. I suspect many readers know of Aquilina’s work already. He’s a talk show host on EWTN and has written or edited more than a dozen books. Starting in April, he brought his considerable knowledge of the patristic era — approximately 100 to 500 A.D. — to the blogosphere.

The results have been remarkable. Aquilina has deep knowledge but simple prose. Visitors can read about the late Roman Empire, early Christian art, the bogus history of The Da Vinci Code and, of course, the Church fathers — Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Leo the Great and so on. Whenever possible, Aquilina does a great job of integrating current events with historical ones, giving the latter pointed relevancy.

As the author of five books on the patristic era, he has a lot of great script on hand. Not only does he have miscellaneous notes and general knowledge, but over the years he has also saved e-mails from readers, along with his responses. Today he has a treasure of patristic material that is ideally suited for blog surfers.

When I asked Aquilina why he was providing all this great material free, he said it is primarily a service to the Church. Citing Cardinal Newman’s observation that “to be deep in history is to cease being a Protestant,” Aquilina says: “To go deep in history is to begin to be Catholic.”

In this way, he’s trying to help regular Catholics with their faith. He and fellow blogger Chris Bailey (see below) are “targeting dabblers, the curious, the passionate amateurs, and ordinary folks who want to improve themselves.” You don’t, in other words, need to be a scholar to enjoy his blog.

The last of the “big three” history blogs is Chris Bailey’s The Grail Code. Just as Aquilina picks up where Barber leaves off, Bailey picks up where Aquilina leaves off and covers the medieval era, that expanse of time from roughly 500 to 1500.

I refer to The Grail Code as “Bailey’s blog,” since he’s the primary contributor, but Aquilina writes for this one, too. As you may have guessed, the blog (along with The Way of the Fathers) is a response to The Da Vinci Code. In Aquilina’s words, “Bailey and I both believe that good, accessible history is the best antidote to this Da Vinci and ‘Judas Gospel’ nonsense. So we divvied it up, with Chris taking medieval while I took patristic.”

The Grail Code isn’t nearly as active as The Way of the Fathers, but readers will find lots of great stuff over there, including posts about the real Holy Grail, an artifact that has captivated interest from King Arthur to Indiana Jones. Bailey and Aquilina co-authored The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence, and their immense knowledge of this area is evident from the blog’s content.

Monthly Blog Pick

Who’s the hardest-working blogger in Catholic blogdom? That’s hard to say. His occasional hiatuses notwithstanding, Register columnist Mark Shea (markshea.blogspot.com) would be a candidate. When he’s on, he’s on. So would the razor-sharp Curt Jester (splendoroftruth.com/curtjester) and the amazingly prolific Amy Welborn (amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook).

But those folks labor away with high readership levels and popular acclaim. I’m more interested in finding the hardest-working blogger who doesn’t have all the traffic. What little guy is out there, plugging away every day, patiently increasing his readership base through steady and solid posting?

My pick is Video Meliora, Proboque; Deteriora Sequor (poncer.blogspot.com). Written by Tom Smith (under the pen name Daniel Connaughton), this blog offers a hodgepodge of good stuff: religion, politics, humor, quotes, books and personal vignettes. Smith is a computer programmer by trade, but his humor and insight are considerably better than such an occupation implies.

Perhaps his best regular feature is a daily review of the web. In one quotidian post, readers get an array of different bites. Smith distills the Internet’s daily word saturation into a few enjoyable morsels, most ranging from 25 to 200 words each. I stop there every day and almost always find something that makes me laugh. If you get a chance, give Tom Smith a visit. You’ll be happy you did.

Eric Scheske blogs at

The Daily Eudemon

(ericscheske.com/blog).