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Showing posts with the label internet

PICTURE - researching priests' use of the internet

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PICTURE stands for "Priests’ ICT Use in their Religious Experience" and studies the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and of the internet in particular, by the priests of Christian Catholic Church. The project has been endorsed by the Congregation for the Clergy. It is run by NewMinE (New Media in Education) at the the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI, Lugano, Switzerland - pictured) in collaboration with the School of Institutional Social Communications of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. There is an online questionnaire - it doesn't take too long to fill in, so I recommend it to brother priests. This is a sensible project aiming to find out useful information, not an attempt to generate silly headlines about confession on the internet and suchlike..
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"There is a reason why Cardinals sport the colour of red..."

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"... and it is not on account of their own dignity." - from the editorial of the March-April issue of Faith Magazine, all the content of which is now available (free) online . For a paper copy, here is the subscription page (there is a special offer on for new subscribers from the USA.) The quotation above is from the editorial article Assault Upon the Sexes: Fostering the Papal Defence which looks at the Holy Father's comments on the question of gender, the Church's teaching on marriage and the male priesthood. There is also a meditation on Mary, Creation and the Church, and an appreciation of Fr Richard John Neuhaus RIP, as well as other articles of interest. Here is the context of the quotation from the editorial: Indeed, there has been little attempt even in Catholic circles to give a public and sustained support of Pope Benedict throughout these difficulties. The fact that even Bishops and Cardinals have not just criticised the Pope but have also kept silence, ...
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"full of the interplay of danger and promise"

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Fr Selvester has a post today, " To blog or not to blog " in which he refers to a quotation given by Paul Zalonski at Communio in his post Presence in the blogosphere . The quotation was from the address of Pope John Paul II to the participants in the plenary meeting of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in March 2002. A little further on in this address, Pope John Paul referred to the internet and the text has a link to his message for the 36th World Communications Day, issued in January of 2002. the theme of that was "Internet: A New Forum for proclaiming the Gospel." I remember reading this back in 2002 and it is fascinating to revisit it. The Internet is certainly a new “forum” understood in the ancient Roman sense of that public space where politics and business were transacted, where religious duties were fulfilled where much of the social life of the city took place, and where the best and the worst of human nature was on display. It was a crow...
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Vatican website model makeover

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Thanks to Jeff of the Curt Jester for posting a link to this model makeover of the Vatican website designed by one of his readers, based on the design of the whitehouse.gov website of Barack Obama. Now that the Holy Father has said that the Holy See should pay greater attention to the internet, I wonder if there is hope that the Vatican website will indeed get a redesign. I am sure that there would be plenty of expert designers more than willing to give their time free of charge for such a project.
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"A resource of the utmost importance"

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From the Angelus yesterday: "Today I also wish to mention this years Message for World Communications Day which was released on the eve of the Feast of Saint Francis de Sales, Patron Saint of Journalists. The Message concerns the new technologies which have made the internet a resource of utmost importance, especially for the so-called digital generation. Undoubtedly, wise use of communications technology enables communities to be formed in ways that promote the search for the true, the good and the beautiful, transcending geographical boundaries and ethnic divisions. To this end, the Vatican has launched a new initiative which will make information and news from the Holy See more readily accessible on the world wide web. It is my hope that this initiative will enrich a wide range of people including those who have yet to find a response to their spiritual yearning through the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ whose message of Good News the Church bears to the ends of the earth (...
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Proposed Vatican YouTube channel

Reuters have reported that the Vatican has been in negotiation with google to arrange for the Vatican Television Centre and YouTube to co-operate in running a Vatican channel on YouTube. (See: Vatican to get own YouTube channel ) H/T Fr Ray Blake The report mentions that the Vatican website was set up in 1995. I remember it well - at that time I was writing a column for Faith Magazine called Faith Online and was glad to share the news in the column - it helped to convince some skeptical colleagues that there might be something to this World Wide Web malarkey. Expect some silly headlines (eg. CBS : "will the Pope's partnership with Google be a match made in heaven?"; Scotsman : "Did you Holy See that?"; etc. ad nauseam ) There is actually no reason to be surprised that the Church should adopt new media to spread the gospel. Long before the web was invented, it was Christians who pioneered the adoption of the codex in place of the scroll, and we were in there wit...
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Inside Catholic

I am very impressed by the Inside Catholic website which carries a wealth of good articles - our own Auntie Joanna is featured there among the many US writers with an article reflecting on Britain and the 1950s . Another excellent article is Contraception and Conversion by David Mills. He begins by observing that progressive Catholics sometimes ask him why he converted - after all, the Episcopalian Church had everything: "married priests, women priests, homosexual priests, no doctrinal restrictions, evolving moral standards, and an official reason to be rude to the pope. What more could one want?" I found this section amusing: I will often say, in as cheery, boosterish, and cheerleading a voice as I can manage, "My wife and I discovered the truth of the Church's teaching on contraception, and after a while we just had to join the one body in the world that was telling the truth about it." That usually shuts down the conversation.
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Indonesian Catholic site

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Looking through the referrals to the blog always seems to throw up something interesting. Today I found the site katolisitas.org . The subtitle "Knowing and Loving our Catholic Faith" and the picture of St Peter's and various devotional pictures illustrating the article links gave me a clue that this was probably a sound Catholic site, but I was stumped by the language. There is the occasional Shaolom and Salaam, Jesus is "Yesus", Mary, Mother of God is "Maria Bundi Allah". A bit of spadework on google led me to the guess that this was from Indonesia. In my ignorance, I looked up "indonesia language" and found that it was, in fact Indonesian. And to my surprise, I found that google translate does in fact do Indonesian. The site is very active with testimonies, catechetical articles and apologetics. It is wonderful to find such Catholic activity in a language that I have no knowledge of whatsoever, in a country I have never visited, yet sharin...
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Irish Bishops' Conference website

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The website of the Irish Bishops' Conference has recently had a major makeover and is worth looking at. It is interesting to see that this coming Sunday is "Priesthood Sunday".
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Google Chrome

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Woo! Just downloaded Google Chrome I guess tomorrow is today in America or something. Odd having the tabs at the top but I'm sure that will be easy to get used to. Looks very clean and works fast. The "new tab" feature is excellent, showing thumbnails of most visited pages, a list of recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. I think this could be very good.
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New google browser out tomorrow

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Google has developed a new open-source browser called "Chrome" which takes elements from Mozilla and other open-source projects but is a new browser built from the ground up to address the issues that have arisen with the web since the other browsers were developed. There is a comic book introduction to the Chrome browser. But be warned - although it is in comic-book format, it is not "Chrome for Dummies" - it goes into quite a bit of detail about the make-up and technical features of the browser. They also make clear their committment to open source and the reasons for this: I think I'll be trying this out soon.
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Popular posts from this blog

Saint Gabriel

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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
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Plenary indulgences not impossible

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions: The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence Pope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina . Norm 7 states: To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.” It is worth reading the other norms bec...
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Portiuncula indulgence tomorrow (and indulgences generally)

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Tomorrow, 2 August, you can gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions ( see below ) by visiting a parish Church and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . This is called the Portiuncula indulgence and goes back to St Francis of Assisi. Fr Z has the details . Don't forget that you can also gain a plenary indulgence by visiting a Church on the day of the titular feast, and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . I made a list of other indulgences: please see the post Plenary indulgences for particular days which has a link to the list. The post has some background information which you may find helpful since indulgences are not well understood today - which is not surprising since indulgences are not included in most Catholic education curricula, and most priests never preach about them. Therefore many Catholics are left with whatever silly, half-baked, ill-informed nonsense about indulgences happens to be current. If you want to understand the theology...
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Our Easter Faith: Not a Pious Crème Fraiche

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In public life, some basically well-meaning figures have the graciousness to wish us well at Easter and to recognise the importance of the Christian feast day. Perhaps they might assure us that their thoughts are with us at this time. That is kind of them and in Christian charity we should thank them for their kindness, but Easter should be a great deal more than that for us. We must believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, in the flesh, and lives for eternity. We cannot treat Easter as a jolly holiday that heralds spring, or the remembrance of a significant event from the past. It must change us today and every day, change who we are and what we do. The Christian faith cannot be a mild custard or blancmange of religiosity. (I am showing my age. Nowadays, I should say that it cannot be reduced to a pious crème fraiche .) We bow down and adore the King of Kings, risen from the tomb, who, “[…] continues for ever,...
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Blessing of the New Painting of St Bede at Clapham Park

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This morning, the parish priest at Clapham Park, Fr Marcus Holden, blessed a new picture of the parish's patron, Saint Bede, painted by James Tildsley. It is sited over a recently installed side altar near the rear of the Church. The altar itself was acquired from Antique Church Furnishings . The website gives the information that the altar was built and carved by a nun in a convent near Liverpool. It is a beautiful piece of work and it is always a joy when such works of art find a suitable and dignified home. The inscription on the gradine is AMANS AMATUS AMOR. The sellers translate this as “Loving is the object of love” which is a reasonable stab at “dynamic equivalence”. Today the parish's relic of St Bede was exposed for veneration in its distinctive brightly-coloured reliquary. After the blessing, there was High Mass with Fr Holden as celebrant, Fr Littleton deacon, and myself subdeacon. That gave me the enjoyable task of chant...
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