Fr Owl has drawn attention to this in his post Pope to Priests: "Get blogging!"I doubt that the Pope means we should all watch TV - I don't watch any.
Zenit reports that the communique from the Pontifical Council of Social Communications says:
The Holy Father urges priests to "consider the new media as a powerful resource for their ministry in the service of the Word and wishes to express a word of encouragement in order to address the challenges stemming from the new digital culture," the communiqué explained. "If the new media is adequately known and appreciated, it can offer priests and all pastoral agents a wealth of data and content that previously was difficult to access, and it facilitates ways of collaboration and growth of communion that were unthinkable in the past."
Now, I hope the said Pontifical Council will learn the lesson itself. After all, the Holy Father himself was the victim of ignorance of the effectiveness of the internet in the aftermath of the lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Williamson. Pope Benedict had to admit in a letter to bishops:
I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news.
Well, I'm glad he finally woke up. I think there have been somem elements in the powers that be at the Vatican that have been giving him less than full information to make him look bad.
ReplyDeletePersonally, in the US I find quite a few attitudes where some of the "60s wine and brie can't we all get along with everyone so as not to offend if we teach the fullness of the faith crowd" can't wait for him to slip the surly bonds.
Now if he can just clean out the L'Osservatore Romano people who've been positively glowing about Obama and similar political ilk who are no friends of the pro-life movement - perhaps they can really start to clean house.
I think some of the entrenched powers at the Vatican took advantage of JPII's illness and metasticized[sp!] like a horrific cancer. JPII was terribly late coming to deal with the priest scandals. The upshot was it was made much worse by their inaction.