Says Pope Francis: Toughen up, people!

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

Toughen up, people! That seems to be one theme from Pope Francis in his annual Message for World Communications Day, which will be observed June 1, 2014.

Pope Francis repeats his call that Christians must be out on the streets, even if they get dirty. He wants his leaders to be so in touch with their people that, as he’s said before, they “smell like the sheep.”

Says the pope: “If a choice has to be made between a bruised Church which goes out to the streets and a Church suffering from self-absorption, I certainly prefer the first.” This time the message is in reference to the world of digital communications.

The pope seems to chide those who use the Internet to make statements but refuse to accept comments. “Keeping the doors of our churches open also means keeping them open in the digital environment so that people, whatever their situation in life, can enter, and so that the church is the home to all.”

The Internet world is not for the faint of heart. Church representatives can take a lot of heat when they engage it. Anonymous people use it to vent on whatever piece of church teaching bothers them, for example. They use language and images not learned at mother’s knee. Anonymity lets someone angry about divorce take potshots at people who address religious beliefs. Irate Internet groups can gang up to fill someone’s mailbox with the repeated message: change church teaching. Such actions are off-putting and unfair. However, they also are part of life on the gritty streets, where Pope Francis calls his followers to be.

This seems to mean that before we push the delete button when we see a message from someone we disagree with, such as another political party or someone on the other spectrum of religious thought, we have to ponder what they say. It’s not capitulation, for says Francis: “Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the clam that they alone are valid or absolute.”

For Pope Francis, assaults on the Internet are opportunities to open dialogue, to spread the Gospel. The Internet can be a rugged neighborhood, but it’s where the Gospel needs to be preached and people seen as neighbors not enemies. It’s no place for digital wimps, but it is one more place where Pope Francis calls the church to be.

Tweet the Pope

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

With the push of a button, I sent a tweet with #AskPontifex to the pope at @Pontifex, the new Twitter account the Vatican set up for Pope Benedict XVI. It’s nice to go straight to the top. Kudos to the pope who saw that even at 85 years of age, he has to engage in social media.

Pope Benedict speaks many languages, his native German, of course, and Italian, French, English and other tongues too. But the most important language for him may be Digital, the one that reaches every nation in the world.

On Twitter, Pope Benedict will send messages in eight languages: English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, French, Arabic and Italian. His tweets debut December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who in an apparition startled the peasant Juan Diego by speaking to him instead of higher ups in mid-16th century Mexico.

When Pope Benedict joins Twitter, he endorses a community that exists on the Web, where people can even discuss matters of the soul. Its anonymity can free people to share deep concerns. It is not always pretty, of course. Recently, for example, on the USCCB Facebook page people debated whether or not there’s a religious obligation to help the poor. Arguments over such a mandate can be a healthy, though sometimes raucous religious exercise. Undoubtedly Pope Benedict will encounter cynicism, but he can handle that. He knows it is important to engage, even at personal cost.

The pope’s web leadership might encourage bishops and others to follow suit. This will be no small accomplishment. Resistance comes from more than the fact that social media is time consuming. It comes from the fact that blogging and the like defy what many have been taught. Priests and bishops, for example, learned early on: “it’s about the message, not you.” Now comes a communications vehicle where they are expected to get more personal. It jars them.

Church leaders also revel in finely nuanced theology. Tweets of 140 characters preclude nuancing. Some who think length equals profundity might pause at truths such as “God loves you,”  “Jesus died for you” and “I am with you always.” They’re short on words, deep in meaning and fit Twitter’s length restrictions.

Some fear the pope and other leaders might lose some mystique when they tweet with the hoi polloi. Yet plain speaking is not irreverent and being with the masses is not beneath a religious leader. After all, God did become man. Scripture proves simple speech can be holy. Think “Let there be light” at creation and Mary’s “Let it be done unto me according to thy word” at the Annunciation. Engaging the crowd means being with God’s children, such as the multitude Jesus addressed on the mountainside.

Social media reaches billions. Its brevity makes it accessible. It’s via the Internet, a new place people gather and that sometimes needs to be redeemed. It is interactive as it beckons web users to engage another, perhaps the antidote to the isolation many people feel today. As he wades into social media waters, the pope will encounter a sometimes cynical cyber-world, but by using Twitter with sincerity, he can elevate the medium. Some may doubt the wisdom of this papal venture, but fear has never stopped Christians from sharing their message through all available means.

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Editor's Note: Got a question for Pope Benedict XVI on Twitter? Use the hashtag #askpontifex to @Pontifex.

 

Five things Catholics should know- November 16, 2012 edition

1. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development collection is this weekend. CCHD is the bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program. It funds programs in urban, rural, and suburban settings that lift people out of poverty.

2. In the recent election, there was a stronger vote for defense of marriage in Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington State than for the GOP slate. Looks like defense of marriage is a bi-partisan issue.

3. Voters in Massachusetts voted down a physician-assisted suicide initiative. There’s a victory for life and something the Bay State can bay about.

4. Catholics are on the Internet but are missing out on Catholic sites, including http://www.facebook.com/usccb

5. God loves you.

Five things Catholics should know November 16, 2012

1.     The Catholic Campaign for Human Development collection is this weekend. CCHD is the bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program. It funds programs in urban, rural, and suburban settings that lift people out of poverty.

 

2.     In the recent election, there was a stronger vote for defense of marriage in Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington State than for the GOP slate. Looks like defense of marriage is a bi-partisan issue.

 

3.     Voters in Massachusetts voted down a physician-assisted initiative. There’s a victory for life and something the Bay State can bay about.

 

4.     Catholics are on the Internet but are missing out on Catholic sites, including http://www.facebook.com/usccb

 

5.     God loves you.

The Gospel and Social Media

Two caveats for evangelizers, that is, those who spread the Gospel today: 1. Use social media and 2. Follow its rules. It’s a new day in church work: the computer has replaced the pen, 15 minutes seems like eternity, and if you don’t get your message out fast, the audience disappears.

Here are some rules for social media evangelization:

1.  Translate church teaching. If you pour out documents or list a series of them online, you’re not spreading the Gospel, you’re simply creating an electronic file box. A document drop might help someone with his dissertation but it won't help us follow the command to go forth and teach all nations. Teachers have to translate church teaching into popular speech. The evangelizer is a translator.

2.  Avoid church speak. Some phrases create barriers to communications. “Intrinsically evil,” for example, may earn an A on a theology paper but can merit an F in human discourse. Which drives home the message: “Abortion is wrong because it snuffs out innocent life” or “abortion is intrinsically evil”? One tells you what really happened. A second example of church speak is the word “presbyterate,” which emphasizes the distance between priests and people. There's more warmth in speaking about "our priests." “Presbyterate” sounds pejorative, as in “Listen, you presbyterate!"

3.  Use images, as Jesus did. God’s love is a freebie; you can’t earn it, you just have to accept it. Which sentence conveys that? “God’s love is infinite and you have inherent value” or “You're more important than the sparrows who only have to exist for God to feed them”? The image gives you something to hold on to, even if you don’t like worms.

4.  Understand that social media is social. It's like going to a party. You can’t sit in a corner and not converse. If you want to make a statement to which no one can reply, buy a billboard. Social media is electronic conversation. To engage in it you need to be willing to listen to others and converse with them.

5.  Social media sometimes calls for a suit of armor. Its anonymity lets incivility into the living room. Wearing emotional armor, you can handle disagreement, not take it personally, and learn from it. Social media is not for the thin-skinned.

6.  Use the delete button if comments cross the line of decency, but, hopefully, not often. Sometimes for your own sake you just have to say “So long.” You don’t need to be imprisoned on a social media site. But don’t walk away too quickly.

7.  Spread Catholicism’s fun parts. Talk about saints, like St. Nicholas, who came up with bags of gold for a woman's dowry, or St. Teresa of Avila who, when exasperated by life’s trials, advised God, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!” Talk about good sermons you’ve heard, favorite hymns. Catholicism is warm, filled with stories, meaningful devotions, and other down-to-earth ways to convey the faith. It is not heady. Reaching into the heavens for language can make it hell for listeners.

8.  Remember rules are changing. I felt strange the first time I sent a condolence message via the Internet. Then I realized that my friend had announced her father’s death in an e-mail message. I could either wait until I had time to find the proper stationery and mail the note, or I could respond in her time of need. The Internet makes simple human gestures easier.

9.  Remember web messages live forever. The warning to not write anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front of the newspaper is more pertinent now. A picture of you hoisting a beer seems like a good idea until you find someone’s researching you online for a responsible position.

10.  Keep it short. The days of the 75-word sentence ended with Cardinal Newman. Phrases such as “Jesus wept,” and “Mary was silent” speak volumes, and usually less is more.

Church Social Media Rule: Let’s Talk

The social media phenomenon offers both challenge and opportunity for the church. Social media reaches people – millions are on Facebook and Twitter every day. The church cannot ignore them. They are interactive, however, and don’t work when conversations are one-way. They involve dialogue, something not always welcome by clergy, teachers and other leaders.

“Because I said so” doesn’t cut it in social media, a fact regretted by parents and leaders who for ages have resorted to the phrase when exasperated with the petulant “But …” and plaintive “Why?”

For oldsters, such dialogue takes getting used to. A few years ago I took a course in church social teaching. It was to be an intellectual treat – until I got into the classroom with students who sought to debate the prof. The lecturer loved the interactivity, but I groaned inwardly at each sidestep. A former teacher, I appreciated the back-and-forth that helps minds expand, but I wanted the teaching clear-cut and wanted to soak up all the renowned prof had to offer. It may have been my inner dinosaur peeking out.

The church has a solid history of such top-down didacticism. It has libraries of tomes that explore theological truths. But that is only one part of the church.

Another side of the church – the pastoral side – is open to dialogue. It has validated such conversations as far back as the Gospels (see woman conversing with Jesus at the well). On the one-on-one level, the dialogue that ensues after a “Can we talk?” encounter has been an integral part of the church for years, a comfort to worried parents, frustrated spouses, abused workers and confused children.

Perhaps social media can help the church engage more in such dialogue. It is not easy. It takes energy, especially emotional energy. Talk – or dialogue – is work.

Many business leaders boast they have a web presence, but don’t take questions and avoid interactivity, though they might send an auto-reply: “Thanks for your message.” Better they post comments on a billboard, with the honest implication that they don’t want feedback. To be genuine on social media you have to answer questions. You have to discuss. You have to accept and even embrace being challenged.

At the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, we have Facebook and Twitter accounts. They offer opportunities to share, but also give rise to points of contention inherent in all dialogues. Some people agree with you, some don’t. Some want to fight. All of them, however, belong to our virtual community and so deserve respect. Some people who post ask the community to share in their sorrow, perhaps over the death of a spouse. Others muse on the feast or Scripture reading of the day, giving others a new twist on a moment in the church. Some are ready for a fight and evoke the urge to push “delete.” We try not to do that since the whole point of the virtual community is dialogue. If a virtual scrimmage breaks out, we hope all, including virtual bystanders, come away more enlightened. It is a risk worth taking. Virtual conversations grow in importance as church attendance decreases and fewer have relationships with a parish to which to tether themselves in life’s storms.

The Internet, of course, cannot replace the community at Mass, where you know strangers by the pew they choose and as their children grow. There’s nurturing warmth even in the nodding acquaintance with those with whom you pray every week.

Social media has a place in the 21^st century church, though some oldsters may have to be drawn into it, collars, veils, rosaries and lapel crosses askew. Facebook, Twitter and other social media can be worthy instruments of the Gospel to nurture our faith life, though some are just warming up.