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Pope Urges Priests To Go Forth and Blog
Hugh Pickens writes "Pope Benedict XV, whose own presence on the Web has grown in recent years, is urging priests to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and to engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures. '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,' says the Pope. The message from the Pope, prepared for the World Day of Communications, suggests such possibilities as images, videos, animated features, blogs, and Web sites and adds that young priests should become familiar with new media while still in seminary, though the Pope stresses that the use of new technologies must reflect theological and spiritual principles. Many priests and top prelates already interact with the faithful online, and one of Benedict's advisers has his own Facebook profile. So does the archbishop of Los Angeles. The Pope adds, 'I renew the invitation to make astute use of the unique possibilities offered by modern communications. May the Lord make all of you enthusiastic heralds of the Gospel in the new "agorà" which the current media are opening up.'"
Please, just please make it be one domain, like religiousblogs.com. Nothing worse than all the spam and pushed things and messages on the internet is such religious ones.
I do not think there is any god anyway. It's as likely possibility than that we would be living in a computer simulation. In fact, I suspect the later one is more likely possible.
Religion is something that was used in old times to control people and have them do "moral" actions (moral here being what the government considered good). It also was used to slay millions of people in crusades to other regions. The real reason most likely even wasn't about believing in god, it was the same power game that there is today. This doesn't apply just to Christians, it applies to every religion. Just see what a freaking mess the middle-east and areas around Israel is. All of that just because you believe in an imaginary person while the other person believes in an another imaginary person.
But since we are already talking about the god vs. computer simulation, is there any reason why we couldn't be living in someones simulation? Every year our own computer technology goes leaps forwards. It might seem simulating our whole world would be too much for a computer, but who really knows what the limits are? And if we are living in a simulation, how could we know we aren't? The system would prevent us from doing so.
And I do not mean this as the typical Matrix like system, which would be kind of stupid. I mean it as something where we don't exist at all outside of the simulation, other than maybe as some processes running in a data center (or someones bedroom closet). While I dont spend my days thinking about that, I think its a lot more likely thing than there being some invisible, everything knowing, a man who created everything somewhere in the space who listens to everyones wishes and tricks around with them.
The Internet is a great place to let people know God is real. Before people had to travel to meet people. The Internet is less disturbing than a face to face meeting.
God spoke to me.
Evens the playing field, makes what they preach much more vulnerable if it's not restricted to small community or closed channel of information.
I love it.
That's the silliest thing I've read this week. There are hundreds of millions... if not more... copies of Bibles in the world. There are thousands of churches and parishes. There are televsion and radio networks. You make it sound like they've been trying to hide, to keep what they teach to a small circle. Are you kidding? It's their job to go forth and preach. It's their job to interact with the public. "Closed channel of information"? Do you honestly think some nasty comments at a priest's blog is somehow going to usher in a glorious new era of atheism? Seriously?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If the Pope was serious about using new communication technology, he should make the entire Vatican Secret Archives searchable on the Internet.
"you really haven't ever noticed that the thought of religious communities lives almost exclusivity in controlled (not in "Orwellian" meaning of control, ffs, in which you seem to interpret it) environments?"
Show me someone that's advocating a position... on anything... that isn't "controlling" the message. That's what makes it a message. It's a point of view. Doesn't matter if it's coming from a church or club or political party or business. Everyone from the GNU people to the Pope "control" their message.
"Heck, even such overboard things as infiltrating those communities become bearable and easily done."
Again, you're falsely assuming some kind of conspiritorial security system here. Infiltrate? The whole point is to bring people into the church. Why would you need to infiltrate it? Unlike something like Scientology, Catholics are pretty open about their beliefs, practices, and methods. You're seeing conspiracy activity where there is none. Go to any Catholic church, walk up to the priest and tell him "I'm an atheist, and I want to see how and why you do things here". As long as you're not there to be an ass and disrupt the service, he'll invite you right in. He sees it as both a duty and a spiritual opportunity to bring you to mass, not some kind of invasion. So again, why would you think that flaming a priest's blog is going to make much of a difference?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Of course the society that you subscribe to (and pay taxes towards) never abused a child.
By logical extension of your "Catholic priests should be monitored", you must surely be in favour of monitoring married men (the most likely group of people to abuse children).
You chose a pretty poor example. In the english-speaking world, priests originally used latin versions of the bible. A version of the bible that could be read and understood by the common man was viewed as a threat by the religious institutions and *violently* repressed. I believe, and it's reasonable to argue, that the fall of the bible from a carefully-guarded source to something that the entire internet can pick apart contributed to the rise of atheism.
Currently, the *contents* of sermons and services are not available for that same scrutiny. If religious indoctrination and propaganda starts to move online, that is a huge win for skeptics.
So now I can look forward to being aggressively proselytized on the web as well as by obnoxious yokels in the real world. Wonderful.
What sznupi said in the original post is completely correct, this is a very bad idea for the church. It's not because of any conspiracy, or nasty comments on a priest's blog, but this is going to give them huge exposure.
Every slip-up from a member of clergy that's posted online will be number one on digg immediately. Even if they take it down, a simple screencap will emerge to resurrect the story into immortality. The possibility for PR disaster is huge. Right now the main audience of anything a clergyman says is of course the faithful. The internet will not be so forgiving!
Some priest is going to discover spam (which fits completely with the quote from His Holyness.) Some priest is going to get caught talking dirty to a 4chan prankster posing as a young boy. Someone's going to try using jesus as a password on a priest's blog to write something blasphemous or immoral... You don't need faith to know that one or all of the above are coming!
Well, the phone was invented over 100 years before the Almighty Iphone came and revolutionised the world, so I presume they've already had time to think things through.
> Do you honestly think some nasty comments at a priest's blog is somehow going to usher in a glorious new era of atheism? Seriously?
All the religious people whining about the so-called "new atheist movement" seem to think so. A few prominent atheists publish books at the same time, and suddenly we're on the warpath. What has actually changed is the internet, which isn't controlled by television producers and newspaper editors. Religion has no leverage where people aren't afraid of offending customers or voters.
Its time to properly address the issues and errors of our philosophies..... Imagine open source religion.
It's far too late for that; all the world's religions have been "open source" for centuries. It's true that as recently as 7 or 8 centuries back, the religious leaders did team up with the political leaders to introduce this new "copyright" concept, whose purpose was to limit the copying (by scribes mostly) of religious texts to a small number of carefully-controlled publishing houses. But then some interfering tech geeks developed printing presses, and pretty soon it was out of control.
Some of the first printed texts (and the topic of the first copyright trials and executions) were the major religious texts of the day. This eventually led to near-universal literacy in several parts of the world, and the leaders found it impossible to keep cheap copies of their religious texts out of the hands of people who could read the scriptures themselves. Life has been tough for the religious leaders ever since then, as the local monopolies over religious thought were lost.
Fact is, printed copies of all the world's religious texts have been widely available for going on half a millennium now. As with open-source software, it has led to both widespread forking of the religions and widespread understanding of how religions work. Or, more often, how they fail to work. (Just ask a few Catholics about their ban on priestly sex.) Nowadays, you can rapidly download most of the holy texts for free from somewhere on the Internet. And it's not hard to find online discussions of many of them. If not, you can easily start your own discussion (or religion).
Of course, most religious organizations probably haven't profited from this open publication. The story with software isn't quite as clear yet.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It wasn't the act of translating that was the problem, much of the bible had already been translated into old English as well as other contemporary languages in full in the past, it was unapproved translations that were the trouble. They had been restricted in the past, not to keep secrets as you are trying to imply, but because people had started putting what they wanted to into them and starting heresy movements instead of faithfully translating from the originals. It was only after this had occured multiple times starting various heresies that translations were restricted in 1199. It is no coicidence that Wyclif and Tyndale had both opposed the Vatican's stance on other matters prior to translating the bible and in fact Tyndale set about making his translation confirm his stances against Catholic teachings, for example translating what was traditionally translated into priest as elder.
There are already countless Vatican documents on the web to scrutinize, and thousands upon thousands of Catholic churches with open doors around the world. This isn't giving any new ammunition to critics.
I know you're joking, but that raises some interesting questions. As long as it's direct communication between the priest and person, could that kind of stuff... like confession be done over an iPhone (or IRC, instant messaging, etc)? I wonder if something like that has ever been done over, say, videoconferencing?
The short answer is "no", it seems; this document prepared by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications indicates a very firm negative on that -- though it states it as an assumption, rather than a policy ("Virtual reality is no substitute for the ... sacraments, and shared worship in a flesh-and-blood human community. There are no sacraments on the Internet ...").
Suppose someone is dying, and is requesting last rites, and you just can't get a priest there physically in time?
My understanding is that in in extremo situations, very few rules apply. The Eucharist can be administered under the weirdest of circumstances, people of any religion (or no religion) can perform baptisms. It'd be up to the local bishop to decide, of course, but I'd guess when someone is dying just about anything goes.
I'm an athiest who reads a Catholic priests blog, listens to their podcast and their nationally syndicated talk show. He's been doing these for years. He even played around in Second Life for a while. Amazingly, he hasn't imploded yet due to spinning out of control.
Sure, the Vatican has an internal library they don't let just anyone into, and they respect the privacy of their parishoners who come to confession. Well good for them. You are imagining a vast conspiracy of secrecy where there is none.
I love that. Our most sacred rules apply always, except when it's inconvenient or bad PR to enforce them.