New media bring new opportunities for proclaiming the Word Of God
By Tim Puet
Catholic Times
In the nearly 2,000 years since his crucifixion, the teachings of Jesus and his church have been spread by every means available, starting with word of mouth and continuing through the use of illustrated manuscripts, the printing press, radio and television, and the Internet.
Today, anyone sitting at a computer screen connected to the net can have an ongoing conversation with anyone else who shares that connection, eliminating boundaries of time and distance.
Much of that conversation takes place through blogging. “Blog” is short for “web log,” an online diary on which a person with a website can post thoughts on subjects of his or her choosing and invite others to respond. Most blogs usually also contain links to other websites.
Blogging began in the mid-1990s, started slowly, then gained in popularity with the arrival of tools which made it convenient for people to start their own blogs. BlogPulse, a site which tracks blogs and their popularity, said that as of July 20, there were more than 143 million blogs on the Internet, with more than 50,000 added daily. There’s no way of determining how many of those blogs are specifically related to the Catholic Church, but the number undoubtedly is at least several thousand.
The vocations office of the Diocese of Columbus has been using blogs, as well as other new media, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and its website, www.seekholiness.com, to attract the attention of young people.
Father Jeff Coning, who was diocesan vocations director from 2005 until recently becoming pastor at Dover St. Joseph Church, established the website and the new media links. He said Face Forward, a Facebook application which also can be found on the site, officially was established in January, but has been around since early December.
“It’s important to have all these platforms when you’re trying to reach young people because a lot of kids now access the Internet over their phones rather than through computers,” Father Coning said. “Face Forward and seekholiness.com each have important roles, with the Face Forward platform as a whole providing a more regular means of contact than the website and providing a broader range of topics. The Face Forward blog is an intermediate stop between the full Face Forward platform and seekholiness.”
He said Face Forward has about 1,600 Facebook fans and receives an estimated 800 hits per week. Some of its most popular recent topics have been the recent ordination of three diocesan priests and the springtime bicycle tour taken by diocesan seminarians for the second straight year.
“Trying to help young people discern a vocation to religious life is a lot different today that it used to be,” Father Coning said. “Many priests describe how a suggestion from someone or their admiration for priests led to their vocations. Today, young people want to know everything they possibly can about the religious life before making that phone call expressing their interest in it.
“I know at least six young people now in the discernment stage for religious life who say they looked at the seekholiness site on a regular basis before contacting me, so it’s had an impact.”
Even Pope Benedict XVI has his own web presence, titled Pope2You. Though not a blog, it’s a gateway to new media being provided by the Vatican and includes Facebook, YouTube, and iPhone sharing of photos and messages from the Holy Father. Other bloggers in significant positions among Catholic hierarchy include Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York.
Most Catholic bloggers are laypersons who want to share their perspectives on faith and on life in general with others. Among them are frequent Catholic Times contributors Megan Thompson, youth minister at Gahanna St. Matthew Church; Mary van Balen-Holt, author and educator from Lancaster; and Sarah Reinhard of Plain City St. Joseph Church.
The May 4 posting on Thompson’s blog “The Great Surrender” appears in this week’s Catholic Times. Some of her other recent postings begin with thoughts about a church summer camp, World Cup soccer, a vacation to Myrtle Beach, and her tendency to be a “neat freak,” all leading to reflections on faith.
She has been blogging since November 2009 and said she tries to post something new each Tuesday. “My older brother got me started,” she said. “He began a blog about his life and I started reading it. Once I did, I realized that I have all these analogies relating faith to life in general and that this would be a perfect opportunity of expressing them.
“The blog has given me a chance to witness to my family and friends and a way to stay in touch with them I’d never had. It’s also been nice to go to Sunday Mass and find older parishioners who recognize me from my picture on the blog and enjoy it. Most of the comments I get about the blog come from friends and family, but every once in a while I receive one from someone I don’t know. A memorable one came from someone who said he just appreciated the joy about life he’s found through postings from me and other Catholic bloggers.”
Her advice to people unfamiliar with the “blogosphere” is to find one or two blogs they like and just click on links to other sources until they find additional favorites. “With as many blogs as there are now, you’re bound to find people whose blog topics are of interest to you,” she said.
Van Balen-Holt began her blog this past September. Its title is “The Scallop” because, as her blog page explains, the scallop shell is a symbol of pilgrimage which “reminds us that wherever our journeys begin, we arrive at the same place: the embrace of the Holy One.” Her July 9 posting begins by mentioning her interview for this story, then follows by noting that blogging provides a good reason to take a walk in the summer rain because it gives her a chance to take photos of “a showplace of flowers, weeds, and water” for the blog.
She has been contributing to the Catholic Times since the mid-1980s. “In the beginning, I would type columns and drop them off at the Times office, and that would give me a great reason to take a break, come to Columbus and chat with (longtime Times editor, the late) Mike Collins,” she said. “I’ve changed with the technology, going to disks and now to e-mail.
“One of the great things about having a blog is it allows me to quickly respond to current events such as the Gulf oil spill or elections. But most of my postings are reflections on nature or on the Scriptures which don’t have that immediate element of timeliness. The ones that usually get the most response are the ones that deal with faith and the struggles and challenges involved with loving and trusting God.”
She said that having a website and a blog has allowed her to reach a new audience and that the responses she has received online have made her a better writer. “They’ve also encouraged me to write more,” said van Balen-Holt, who writes under the name Mary van Balen. “This year, I decided that I’d do a blog for each day of Lent, starting with Ash Wednesday. It was a challenge, something I’ve never done before and probably wouldn’t try again. But it was gratifying to receive response from people who enjoyed having something to reflect on each day.”
She said that if he were to return in human form today, Jesus probably would be a blogger. “With his passion for proclaiming the kingdom of God, he walked miles so he could reach people with his message, because that’s the only way he could do it,” she said. “So it’s reasonable to assume that he would use whatever would be available to him at this time. His blog postings would probably be much like his parables, relating eternal truths to everyday activities.”
Reinhard started her blog, “The Snoring Scholar,” (“a tribute to my husband,” she explains) in 2006 as a writing exercise. “I had never written anything on a regular basis before, but writing had been on my mind, and doing it in an interactive way appealed to me,” she said.
The blog, also known as “just another day of Catholic pondering,” includes thoughts on “marriage and motherhood, book talk and rambling remarks, observations and distractions, in the midst of life in an old house on a farm, with kids, critters, and Catholic flair.”
“I’ve made many virtual friends online and on the phone” in the last for years through her writings, Reinhard said. “I’m humbled when people say they’re inspired by what I’ve written. One thing I’ve found through this blog is that the new media can be a tremendous source of catechesis and of supplementing some of the standard means such as Scripture reading and adult education classes.
“For a lot of people, adult education is impossible, as I found when I was administrator at St. Joseph’s. People have so many conflicting demands for their time that it’s hard to get many to a course on a weeknight or a Saturday, but they can go online to blogs like mine and others and respond at their convenience.”
She said being a blogger played a big role in helping her respond to the sudden death of a brother-in-law at the beginning of this year. “It was a family tragedy I blogged my way through,” she said. “There was a tremendous increase in traffic to the blog as people responded to my sharing the difficulties I was going through. The support I felt through that response and through people’s prayers was really a great blessing. Knowing so many people were praying for my family really made me feel like part of the body of Christ.”
Reinhard said she has between 800 and 1,000 visitors to her blog each week. That’s a significant number, but a small one compared with one of the best-known Catholic blogs, “Whispers in the Loggia,” by Rocco Palmo, which usually has 15,000 to 20,000 visitors a day, with more than 15 million visits since it began in December 2004.
Palmo’s postings are written more in the breezy style of an entertainment or sports reporter than a writer on ecclesiastical matters. For instance, his posting on the recent appointment of Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec as prefect of the Congregation for Bishops was titled, “The Kingmaker,” and began this way: “Above all on this busy morning, there’s a new sheriff in town – the world's 5,000-plus high-hats have a new overseer. In a move without precedent, a Canadian prelate has been named to lead one of the nine Congregations of the Roman Curia.”
Palmo lives in his hometown of Philadelphia, (“I’m 27, still live with my parents and still am paying off my college loans,” he said) but writes with an insider’s knowledge of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in America. He has developed a network of sources that have enabled him to “scoop” the mainstream media on many church-related stories, including the appointments of bishops and Vatican officials.
“Blogs like mine are still on the learning curve, but I think there’s much more of a willingness to accept them now then there was when I started,” he said. “I think more and more, we’re seen as something that can be useful and helpful to the church and that our efforts are as valid as those of the mainstream media.
“I think the success of the blog shows what a hunger there is for people to learn about the church and how it works. The new media can provide a great witness for the church to speak to God’s people and to engage the new digital culture if church leaders are willing to become more involved with it.”
Columbus St. Patrick parishioner Patrick Madrid is known across the nation for his explanations of the Catholic faith in personal appearances, books, and Envoy magazine, which he publishes, and on audio and videotapes and the EWTN radio and television networks. He also is a blogger and has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, so it’s not surprising that he’s a proponent of the new media.
“They’re all good tools which work quite well as new ways of reaching out to people, so I definitely see a great deal of value in the new media,” he said. “People have more ways to communicate than ever before, and it’s important that the church take advantage of every one of them.”
Although he’s a blogger himself, he doesn’t think Jesus would have a blog if he were present today in the same way he was 2,000 years ago. “I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with me on this,” he said. “But we know that in Jesus’ time, there were two ways of communicating: through writing and face-to-face.
“Except for his writing in the sand in the Gospel account of the time he faced a group of men who were going to stone a woman to death for adultery, there’s no indication he ever wrote anything. I tend to think he preferred face-to-face communication. But that’s something we won’t know in this life.”
|