Hah. I’ll admit it, I did have some fun with the title.
The Pope and the Catholic Church have called all priests to go “cyber” or become cyberpriests; in essence, utilize new emerging technologies to expand and share the message of the Church:
Priests should use cutting-edge technologies to express themselves and lead their communities, Benedict said in a message released by the Vatican.
Wow. That’s pretty neat if you ask me. Pope Benedict continues in his official message titled: “The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word“:
“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web,” but priests are “challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources,” he said.
“Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ,” he said.
I seriously applaud this move and Benedict has easily become my most favorite Pope of all time.
If you’d like to read more, check out Pope2You.net or see the official statement here.
dannyjbixby says
Neat indeed.
@adamrshields says
When I first started listening to podcasts regularly (around 2004 or 2005?). It was a Catholic Priest (Father Roderick?) in the netherlands that I primarily listened to. He was a priest for 3 different parishes, worked part time for the dioasies and when I was regularly listening to him was doing 10 or so podcasts a week. I was struck at the time how explicitly (and consciously) evangelical he was. Most of the time he was trying to find Christian elements in popular culture (Harry Potter, movies, etc.) but occationally he would post a talk. He had one talk to other catholic priests that was one of the best defenses of using technology to interact with non-christians and do evangelism that I have ever heard by anyone.
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bondChristian says
Wow, if you could dig it up, I'd be interested in listening to it. Still, I like the idea. We'll see how it actually turns out.
-Marshall Jones Jr.
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Kyle Reed says
Very interesting, I don't know how I react to this.
Specifically because one of my good friends who is now catholic (converted Protestant) is very opposed to blogging, especially Christian blogs. He has had several conversations with me about how surface level they can be. I wonder if this will change his mind.
Graham Brenna says
Interesting. Yes… they can be very surface level at times. I know that I can be super surface level a lot of the time. But reading Christian blogs and blogging about Christianity myself has helped me to become a more critical thinker. Some of the surface level topics on our blogs do help to fuel a curiosity inside of me that makes me want to dig deeper. If the blogs I read didn't make me think more deeply about the subject, I wouldn't read them.
Graham Brenna says
I think this is a major deal! I too applaud the Pope for doing this. So much so that I too blogged about it here: Web Savvy Pope = Web Savvy Church http://gbrenna.com/Eiq2
The important part for me is that last quote you used. That no matter how web-savvy priests become… that they should always be judged based on their priestly heart and not how good they are at blogging. We need to remember that as church workers our number one priority, no matter what our job title, is to bring people closer to Christ.
kkcoolj says
PopeCrunch.com available? 🙂
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Mikes says
amazing! everything is now web-based.
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