The other day on Twitter I was hearing positive things about tweets from the USCCB Twitter account @USCCB. Had I fallen into an alternate universe where the bureaucratic USCCB were able to engage in Twitter? What happened? Mostly I wondered who was the person and team behind it.
So I was certainly interest when CNA published this story Who’s responsible for the USCCB’s Twitter?.
Baltimore, Md., Jun 13, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- Over the course of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring general assembly, questions arose online: what was going on with the suddenly-chatty USCCB Twitter account? Did they give an intern, or perhaps a particularly hip young priest or enthusiastic new convert the password? Had the account been hacked?
As it turns out, none of those were true. The account is run by Connie Poulos, a 31-year-old content and marketing coordinator at the USCCB. She’s not an intern – and has worked for the conference since 2017, originally as a digital media specialist – and she’s not a convert, and she’s definitely not a priest. She’s married, and she and her husband are in the process of adopting a son from China.
Poulos sat down with CNA during this week’s general assembly to discuss what prompted the USCCB’s new online persona. Apparently, this strategy was part of a larger plan to attempt to present a more humanizing look at the bishops of the conference, and better to engage with the account’s 156,000 Twitter followers.
“When I first started in 2017, we didn’t engage on this level, but we did engage,” she explained. “Then, McCarrick happened.”
The article showcases some of the tweets and the amount of engagement when the account asked “If you are a young Catholic who is still Catholic, what has made you stay?”
Many of the replies encapsulate a way forward. They were certainly not a cry for watering down the faith.
Still I was annoyed by one thing. The @USCCB account replied to many of the tweets answering this question. Yet if someone mentioned, the TLM – no reply. I saw a lot of such tweets and mostly they were not from people just trolling the USCCB, but young people impacted by the Latin Mass. They should not have been ignored as if they were lepers.
Update: On my Facebook page, Connie Ann Poulos replied to this specific paragraph:
You know, it’s interesting. It was
pure human error on my part and now it’s become a thing. I tried to click “like” on each one, but that doesn’t show up. I think if I were to go in and seek them out now it might be obvious. I know there were some that I was like “awesome!” or “amen” or “thanks for sharing” but we literally had a complete tidal wave of TLM responses so it was hard to keep up.
I do see how they would have felt ignored, though, and I am sorry about that. Maybe I can find a way to do something.
Now just waiting for them to ask us older Catholics, “what has made you stay?” Although I sure the answers would have some of the same range as answered here.
