Where the Rubber Hits the Road

As I've been saying here since I began this blog, the Church needs to learn and apply the lessons of a modern communications strategy. We have an excellent message to promote. Yet the Church continues to struggle to bring its instruments of communication into the 21st century. Sandro Magister, one of the most important commentators on all things Catholic who writes from Rome takes up this very point in this recent column. In Paris the Dispute Was about God, But about Man First

John Paul II Benedict XVI With Britain on the horizon, is the Vatican’s communications office up to the challenge? Sadly, the probability that the answer to this question is 'No'. The Holy Father is an intellectual and holy man; a wise choice of the Holy Spirit. Alas, he does not the possess charismatic presence of his predecessor. Come the end of his Pontificate, it is unlikely that  the crowds will shout out "Magnus" as happened at the Funeral Mass of John Paul the Great. Learned Vatican watchers bemoan the chaotic and seemingly 'reactive' posture of this pontificate when it comes to presenting a hermeneutical key that defines the message of the Holy See. Where John Paul fashioned and planned his messages with Joaquín Navarro-Valls and others so as offer the clarity of fundamental principles as they apply in different cultures. Politics teaches: you can either 'define' yourself, or allow others define you. Through missteps and poorly craf...

Matthew Warner of the National Catholic register writes and excellent column in response to the call from Pope Benedict XVI for Catholic priests to embrace the internet and various other social media, to evangelize and propagate the faith. In it he makes an essential distinction between simply have a presence in these media as compared to using them as tool to further the Kingdom of Christ. May dioceses ( my own included ) have impressive looking websites which offer an abundant array of information, but they serve as little more than a virtual version of the bulletin board and pamphlet tables that do little more than accumulate dust at the entrance to our churches. To truly embrace the Pope's challenge, priests as well as Catholic laity and Chanceries must come to understand that to be effective, these foray's into the virtual fields must be much, much more. Check out your own parish or diocesan websites and see whether, in your opinion they meet the challenge as express...

Written by: Rev. Tim Moyle, p.p. 2009-10-21 NET WORTH: Contribution of the Internet to public discourse and debate. John Gabriel, an internet games theorist/programmer, in 2005 developed and published what has come to known as the “Dickwad Theory of the Internet. Understanding this phenomena is as simple as 1 + 2 = 3. Although it has become popularly expressed graphically as a tee shirt design it can be expressed as follows: One person + anonymity + audience = one “dickwad” opinion The popularization of this theory is often used to discount comments that are posted in the of comments sections that accompany most online news websites. The virulence and brutish tone of such postings has resulted in most authors, analysts and commentators on current events closing their minds, or at least developing a “tin ear” regarding these virtual expressions of opinion. Fr. Raymond de Souza , a columnist who writes in the “National Post” expressed this well when he recently wrote about commen...