It is interesting how the culture seems to view Catholics.  People are amused by nuns roller skating, running in a marathon in a habit, or monks refilling laser cartridges.  The view that Catholics don’t use technology or that they can’t have other interests seems to be the normal assumption.

Maybe this view can be seen also among even Catholics. The coverage of the Pope’s personal Twitter account and his seven tweets today has gotten a lot of attention even among tech blogs. Somehow they expect Catholics to have an Amish aversion to technology and that the Pope would be more likely to place Twitter on the “Index of Forbidden Social Media Applications” than to use it.

https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278808536404852736
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278819486377840640
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278820239943274497
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278861784008499201
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278862015253061633
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278907093065535488
https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/278907314810023938

I certainly liked that he did a series of tweets after today’s General Audience. But I think the papal iPad should have been the white one. I also really want that papal iPad which could be a 2nd class relic in the future if he is ever canonized. Plus if his cause is ever introduced it means the Congregation for the Causes of Saints will have to read through his tweets. I tweeted before that maybe one day there will be a Denzinger’s list of official tweets published.

Getting back to the attitude regarding Catholics and technology. Part of this is from the false narrative of the Church vs. science which is constantly drilled in.  The fact that it was usually Catholics who were on the bleeding edge of some science is almost totally unknown and like clockwork every year we get some story on the Vatican Observatory because the novelty never wears off.

When it comes to the internet and some other media Catholics have certainly lagged behind.  I really don’t expect for example the Vatican to jump on every new social media initiative and it makes some sense to observe the scene and then enter it when there is a certain critical mass.  For example a Vatican presence on Friendster would have been rather silly or even worse myspace. Although it would be nice if they had someone in the Vatican that monitored this and did things like reserve nicknames in new platforms for future use. It would have been nice if the Pope at least have had an option to use @pope.  There was not much planning ahead before when the Vatican did not get other top level domains other than .va andI believe at one time vatican.va went to a very undesirable site.

The other day I was looking through the top “Religion & Spirituality” podcasts on iTunes and Catholics are hardly represented at all.   In a list of top podcasts in this category you don’t come to a Catholic one until #47 Catholics Answers Live.  There are more Mormon podcasts in the top 100 than Catholic ones.  There are more atheist podcasts in the top 100 than Catholic ones.  Protestants though pretty much dominate.  I listen to a good amount of Catholic podcasts and there are some high quality ones and you can find a couple of them in the iTunes “What’s hot section”. Fr. Roderick’s SQPN (Star Quest Podcast Network) was an early innovator and has expanded and continues to deliver entertaining and informative content.  Still with over a billion Catholics there should be multiple such podcast networks. I like to listen to the EWTN homilies via podcast. Though it is quite annoying that many times they don’t post them in a timely manner and never on weekends.

Catholic radio is another area that severely lagged.  While the Vatican had a radio station early on, Protestants have also dominated the air waves.  The good news is that Catholic radio is rapidly growing.  When I first came to Jacksonville, Fl 15  years ago the Catholic station here was only one of three in the country. Now there are over 200 Catholic radio stations here in the United States.

If you want to go into a technology time warp than pretty much visit any parish website.  In my diocese I have not seen on parish site that does not make me cringe either with 1990 design or bulletins last updated in a previous year.  Internet.org has a wayback machine so that you can see what an archived website looked like in the past. Unfortunately parish websites look like they had been archived sometime in the past.  In fact if you look at the 1997 version of Vatican.va there is very little difference in design compared to now.  If you do web programming like I do I am sure you would cringe at the fact that documents on the Vatican site are formatted using tables – yikes. At least news.va is not an embarrassment to look at.

From the Weekly Standard:

President Obama declares Hanukkah “an opportunity for people of all faiths to recognize the common aspirations we share.”

“He made this comment in his statement on the Jewish holiday emailed to the press:

Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Hanukkah around the world.

This Hanukkah season we remember the powerful story of the Maccabees who rose up to liberate their people from oppression. Upon discovering the desecration of their Temple, the believers found only enough oil to light the lamp for one night. And yet it lasted for eight.

Hanukkah is a time to celebrate the faith and customs of the Jewish people, but it is also an opportunity for people of all faiths to recognize the common aspirations we share. This holiday season, let us give thanks for the blessings we enjoy, and remain mindful of those who are suffering. And let us reaffirm our commitment to building a better, more complete world for all.

From our family to the Jewish Community around the world, Chag Sameach.

In which Simcha Fisher responds:

Big words from a guy who doesn’t seem to realize that, in the Hanukkah story, HE IS ANTIOCHUS.

Exactly.  This is not the first ironic statement about religious freedom from the President and won’t be the last.

I remember reading through Maccabees  in the lead up to Advent since it is part of the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours.  I was thinking about these parallels in consideration of the HHS mandate.  One of the connections I considered was that it was not as if Antiochus IV Epiphanes immediately went about outlawing Jewish rites and practices and enforcing the worship of Zeus. The introduction of  gymnasia, Olympic-style games, mystery rites and such was welcomed by many Jews to some extent. So often we see in the Old Testament Israel being tempted by something from the outside and wanting to incorporate it into their own culture.  For example demanding to have a King instead of the Judges so they can be like other nations. We have the same tensions within the Church.  People wanting to adopt the wider culture into religious practice to such an extent that there is hardly any difference between the culture and the religious practice of these adherents.

While with the HHS mandate we see some revolt such as the groups and institutions that sued in response, mostly we see very little resistance to the state.  The modern Maccabees are those fighting against this usurpation of religious liberty. For the large part instead of people imitating Judas Maccabees, they are imitating Judas Iscariot instead.  Name one Jesuit institution involved in the lawsuit? An easy question: a big fat zero.  Too many are willing to worship the bureaucratic version of Zeus in big government.  Big government is a jealous god that does not like rivals and would restrict the cult of worship to itself. Caesar soon leads to seizure of both your money and religious freedom.

Thankfully the modern Maccabean revolt is happening in the courtrooms and not the battlefield, but it is still a battle that must be won. This battle also needs to play our via prayer and fasting.

There has been a little coverage of Pope Benedict XVI latest Motu Proprio “On the Service of Charity.” Catholic blog coverage has run down the lines of it being a smack down of, for example, Catholic Charities.

Reading through it, it certainly is much more than that. No doubt the Pope has recognized the problems where Catholic charitable institutions have strayed a bit from their responsibilities to the faith. This has led him to notice that the Code of Canon Law does “not expressly mention charity as a specific sector of episcopal activity.” This document is intended to provide a legislative framework that addresses this and sets forth the various responsibilities for the bishops, charitable institutions, and the faithful.

The introduction starts with:

“The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia) and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable.” (Deus Caritas Est, 25).

It also precisely states what the problem is in that there has been a schism in charitable efforts regarding proclaiming the word and celebrating the sacraments. The “Socialworkering” of charitable efforts have flattened such institutions as secular organizations that do some good things.

These articles in the document are especially of interest (at least for pundit bloggers.)

Art. 7. – § 1. The agencies referred to in Article 1 § 1 are required to select their personnel from among persons who share, or at least respect, the Catholic identity of these works.

§ 2. To ensure an evangelical witness in the service of charity, the diocesan Bishop is to take care that those who work in the Church’s charitable apostolate, along with due professional competence, give an example of Christian life and witness to a formation of heart which testifies to a faith working through charity. To this end, he is also to provide for their theological and pastoral formation, through specific curricula agreed upon by the officers of various agencies and through suitable aids to the spiritual life.

Art. 8. – Wherever necessary, due to the number and variety of initiatives, the diocesan Bishop is to establish in the Church entrusted to his care an Office to direct and coordinate the service of charity in his name.

Art. 9. – § 1. The Bishop is to encourage in every parish of his territory the creation of a local Caritas service or a similar body, which will also promote in the whole community educational activities aimed at fostering a spirit of sharing and authentic charity. When appropriate, this service is to be established jointly by various parishes in the same territory.

§ 2. It is the responsibility of the Bishop and the respective parish priest to ensure that together with Caritas, other charitable initiatives can coexist and develop within the parish under the general coordination of the parish priest, taking into account, however, the prescriptions of Article 2 § 4 above.

§ 3. It is the duty of the diocesan Bishop and the respective parish priests to see that in this area the faithful are not led into error or misunderstanding; hence they are to prevent publicity being given through parish or diocesan structures to initiatives which, while presenting themselves as charitable, propose choices or methods at odds with the Church’s teaching.

Art. 10. – § 1. It is the responsibility of the Bishop to supervise the ecclesiastical goods of the charitable agencies subject to his authority.

Can we get an Amen?

The goals of this document do not reflect the situation today in the main. So often we find heads and personnel of Catholic charitable agencies at odds with Church teaching. Especially prominent is the fact that so many of these agencies link up with other agencies that are decidedly opposed to Church teaching. The narrowing of social justice into a term charged more with political than Catholic meaning is quite rampant.

So I am very happy to see this document from the Pope. How well the implementation will go is another matter. Remember when Catholic schools cleaned up their act after the promulgation of “Ex Corde Ecclesiae”? Well maybe that didn’t happen. Although this is a slightly different situation where the bishops should have more control and have been given very specific authority regarding it.

Now the pessimist in me would point out that it is hard to expect the bishops to clean house when the USCCB’s “Catholic Campaign for Human Development” is an example of the problem this document addresses. There just has not been really any shakeup with CCHD and while some problems have been addressed I get the feeling that changes have been reluctant. The type of entities that CCHD donates to is rife with interconnecting links to seriously anti-Catholic organizations. Considering that the USCCB is currently using Cokie Roberts to raise money for retired religious or that they had Chris Matthews front and center at the Alfred E. Smith dinner there are certainly some mixed messages. It is alright to advocate the murder of innocents as long as you give your voice to some charitable cause.

Getting to the more optimistic side of me. Good bishops have just been given a legislative framework that is going to help them in coordinating with charitable institutions and correcting problems as they exist. It also means that they have just been given an even larger workload that needs to be managed. The coordination and creation of applicable training along with implementing this document is going to be no easy task. Well just another reason to pray for our bishops.