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Religious: Get Blogging
I am pleased to see that the Church is encouraging religious sisters and brothers to blog. Of course, many of us have been blogging for a while (see my list of Blogs by Catholic Nuns and Catholic Blogs’ list of Blogs by Religious).
Cardinal Urges Religious to Get Blogging
Says Internet Youth Forums Need Real Christian Message
ROME, OCT. 28, 2007 (Zenit.org) – Benedict XVI’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome expressed his hopes that religious men and women increase their use of information technology, and thus take advantage of what he called a new form of apostolate.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini spoke to the religious at the Pontifical Urbanian University during the diocesan gathering of the Union of Major Superiors of Italy, which represents 1,287 communities and 22,000 religious in Rome.
According to the Roman diocesan weekly RomaSette, Cardinal Ruini said: “A priest from Novara told me that the theme of ‘Jesus’ is very much discussed by youth in blogs. The focus, though, comes from destructive books that are widespread today, and not from Benedict XVI’s book ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’
“What will the idea of Christ be in 10 years if these ideas triumph?”
The true Jesus
The 76-year-old prelate admitted, “I don’t understand the Internet, but especially young religious ought to enter blogs and correct the opinions of the youth, showing them the true Jesus.”
“The teaching emergency is central in Benedict XVI’s concerns,” the cardinal said. “For him, education in the faith coincides with service to society, because to form someone in the faith means to form the human person.
“Simply giving motivations for living defeats nihilism and gives value to the human person, a value that is based on Christ himself, the fact that God became a man.”
The cardinal asserted that an educator’s testimony and content can matter more than pedagogical techniques.
He called for catechists to be creative in finding occasions for promoting Benedict XVI’s book, saying it shows the solidity of faith in the historical Jesus of the Gospels, and bases the identity of the Christian in a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Ruini said that in Catholic schools, “the religious can witness to Christ in all their lessons, in the sciences, in history and even in Italian literature, in an inseparable union of faith and culture. Your creativity ought to find new techniques for the vocational challenge, which ought to develop in step with society.”
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{ 3 comments }
Was wondering what you thought of that article.
I think it’s great that there are so many religious these days blogging. I remember hearing one Trappist talk about how the web allows them to extend hospitality and show others their way of life without having to break enclosure.
Hey Jen! .. I love the idea of “extending hospitality” … a beautiful image.
I was glad for the fact that the Church recognizes the value of the “new” Internet technologies for communication and relationship — even though, as Cardinal Ruini noted, they may not understand how to use them.
I find it interesting that he notes the pope’s book Jesus of Nazareth as what young people should be reading. It’s a good read, but heady/academic in many places — nothing wrong with that, but it may not be readily accessible to the general Catholic population. I think it needs a guide or something, especially for how to integrate what the pope is saying with one’s experience of who Jesus is personally and within the Catholic faith community.
I saw a program a while back featuring an American sister who works in Rome and is responsible for the Vatican website. One of the interesting points she made is that the internet has done a tremendous job in evangelizing and disseminating information in places where Christianity is either downright illegal or highly monitored by hostile governments.
deerose