Facebook, Wikipedia Coach Vatican About The Internet

VATICAN CITY — Executives from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google are attending a Vatican meeting to brief officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.

The symposium, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday, also will address Internet copyright issues and hacking – including testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official.

The meeting is being hosted by the European bishop's media commission and is designed to delve into questions about what Internet culture means for the church's mission and how the church communicates that mission to others.

Pope Benedict XVI has tried to bring the Vatican into the Internet age by launching a YouTube channel earlier this year. Officials say he also e-mails and surfs the Web.

But the Vatican's online shortcomings have been woefully apparent.

Earlier this year, Benedict made clear he was disappointed that Vatican officials hadn't done a simple Internet search to discover the Holocaust-denying comments of an ultraconservative bishop whose excommunication he had lifted.

The outrage over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson, of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, prompted Benedict to write a letter to his bishops admitting mistakes and saying that he had "learned the lesson" and that the Vatican would in the future pay greater attention to the Internet as a source of news.

The symposium, which is drawing about 100 participants from around Europe, could be seen as part of that effort.

Panels will discuss social networks, the Web generation, the church's communication strategies, and whether the Internet is changing religious practices.

The Vatican's top communications official, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, has said a key priority of the Catholic Church is to be able to use new technologies to spread its message, particularly to the young.

"Our dream in this global village created by new technologies is that the church and Jesus' disciples can have their tent – Jesus' tent – so that the attention of men and women who walk the streets of the world is turned toward it," he said recently on Vatican Radio.

In that way, the Internet is just the latest means that the Vatican has used to spread its message, starting with parchment, printing press, radio and television.

Pope John Paul II used mass media and information technology to get out his message, overseeing the 1995 launch of the Vatican's Web site, which today includes virtual tours of the Vatican Museums and audio feeds from Vatican Radio. http://www.vatican.va

Comments

[PlayTOE]

The Church is so corrupt and despicable *(hint, look up how they dealt with pedophile priests) that it will tame more than new media to make things right.

As for them being moral teacher? They have a bigoted stand against homosexuals, an edict against using condoms to protect yourself or your partner from HIV, ten commandments that endorse slavery twice but fail to prohibit rape, and a god who was somehow deeply and directly involved in the death and torture of his son.

But .. most telling on the moral issue, they teach that all who don't agree with them will be tortured, in Hell, as an eternal afterlife.

[Bible Study Space]

Thanks to the Christian Churchs not preaching the real gospel. Christian social networking is growing. We will have millions using them in the years to come. VATICAN CITY understand the what the power opf the Gospel can do in the world. That why the officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.


I own http://biblestudyspace.com just a few thousand members. But we are only one year old. But more christians are leaving the church, because of the water down gospel and the TV Preachers making money off the Word of God.

http://www.biblestudyspace.com/

[smilodon1]

High tech won't help. He still only offers smoke, mirrors and no substance.

[GayGrandpa]

He will need more than his ipod to fix the damage of his anti-gay views. Jesus' life and words were very clear, he ate with sinners and he taught us not to judge...but no such Jesus is seen from the Catholics.

[TMac3Life]

This is great news. The Catholic Church should embrace new technology to get their message of love and Christ out to everyone.

[Neal Jansons]

Yeah, that'll happen. Or they'll attempt to spread their message of bigotry, misogyny, and authoritarianism on the web, the internet will make fun of them, and then the pope will declare in a papal bull the internet is bad and that good Catholics should avoid it.

Again, the internet will make fun of them. Confused over the complete lack of the world giving a crap, the old men in dresses who think they have authority will double-down, releasing another papal bull and making a press appearance, which will be auto-tuned and turned into a hip-hip video. Interactive mashups will be made on Google maps with lines showing where each pedophile priest was moved to another parish after the cover-up by the Church.

Timelines and flowcharts will flood the web showing the real history of the Church and the popes, not the made up one learned in CCD. The few serious Catholics who are actually faithful and not just meeting social norms will have problems reconciling the apparent infallibility of popes when speaking ex cathedra with the fact that many, many papal edicts actually contradict each other completely.

[Jeff Buschow]

You are a disturbed individual. If people like you would put the same effort into doing things that were good and helpful to others, instead of bashing other peoples beliefs, we might be able to do some good in this world. The Catholic church is not without it's faults but what church is. The belief system set forth by different religions is never intended to be hurtful or wrong. You can put down the guidance but people are going to make right and wrong decisions. Like the old saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." If you have had a bad experience with the catholic church that is very unfortunate. If you are not or have never been catholic, then you are no better than any media source that just looks for bad in whatever you can find and try to make that the norm for the "whole" bunch.

[Neal Jansons]

In a final attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, the Vatican, like Rupert Murdoch, takes itself offline and removes its indexing by Google. In less than a year, roughly 40% of the humans on earth forget they exist completely, distracted by the latest season of Heroes. The process continues at an exponential rate until, finally, over 1700 years later, the fall of what Voltaire called "the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" will be complete. Roughly 5 years after that, roving packs of Scandinavian black metallers calling themselves the Vargr descend upon Vatican City to finish the job that modernism began, burning the churches and reclaiming the stolen wealth hidden in the Vatican halls in memory of their fallen ancestors.

And the world moves on.