A new blog has popped up in the ‘sphere — and it’s safe to say there’s nothing quite like it out there right now.

It’s a blog about science, written by a Catholic priest, Fr. Michael K. Holleran. And he introduces himself in his first posting:

Why am I daring to undertake this blog? The short answer is that the publisher and CEO of Discover personally asked me to try it. I was his parish priest in Greenwich Village, in Manhattan, and we had many fruitful exchanges about religion in the modern world. The deeper answer is that we both consider the current interplay of science and religion to be too much cast as clash and not enough sensed as symphony. My first entry on the blog develops this theme.

[snip]

I do not consider my stance to be either conservative or liberal but contemplative. By this I mean an attitude that shuns ideology and rests in the grateful and often scary appreciation of the real as it reveals itself in all its splendor. For this reason, too, I have an immense respect for other religions and their traditions, and look forward to having blog participants enlarge the discourse with insights from their own spiritual backgrounds. I myself have training in yoga and more especially in Zen Buddhism, and hope to be able to offer for your consideration some contributions from these venerable worldviews.

Perhaps a better way of saying this is that I have an enormous respect for the often tortuous and frequently exciting personal journey of each individual in sincerity and freedom. This brings me to yet a third caution, which is perhaps the most important of all, and which I touch on in the inaugural blog post. However contrary it may be to the rules of discourse (or lack thereof) in the contemporary blogosphere, I hope we can engage in a gracious and courteous conversation. I deem that the only mode worthy of the truth. We should by all means challenge and question one another, but I should hope our interchange would never descend to the level of mere unvetted venting, or, much less, to ad hominem argumentation. Caveat scriptor (let the writer beware)!

May we be embraced by the light, however we imagine it; for I suspect that is somehow already the condition for an authentic search for the light.

And may that be truly what we seek.

This could be interesting, and make for provocative reading. Check it out. I know I will. Meantime: Welcome to the blogosphere, Fr. Holleran!