Learn the "digital culture"
It’s pretty clear that the Pope and Vatican want the Church to do all that it can to use the internet to promote the Gospel. The Vatican announced yesterday that Pope Benedict XVI spoke to the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, which is meeting to study the question of language and technology in the new media.
The Church needs to express the Gospel in modern language, the Pope said. With images and hyperlinks, the internet’s mode of communication is “more intuitive and emotional than analytical,” he said.
Have courage
Pope Benedict talked about the “digital culture,” and said, “it is not just a question of expressing the Gospel message in modern language, but also of having the courage to give more profound consideration, as happened in other ages, to the relationship between the faith, the life of the Church and the transformations mankind is experiencing.”
There is also the need for “helping people in positions of responsibility in the Church to understand, interpret and speak the ‘new language’ of the mass media in their pastoral functions….”
It seems that in the last few weeks, the Vatican has been going out of its way to emphasize the Church’s use of the internet. On Feb. 7, the Vatican announced that it was working on a document that would explain what seminaries should teach future priests about using the internet. The Pope said that the internet can be a valuable tool for education and evangelization, and its use should be encouraged in seminaries as well as other church institutions.
And on Jan. 24, the Pope encouraged the use of the internet during his 45th World Day of Communications. (Vatican article)
Both Pope Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II have over the years talked about the shortcomings and dangers of the internet, but have overall encouraged its use.
