The Catholic Church needs active
members who blog, but Catholic bloggers also need the church, especially
to remind them of the virtue of charity needed in their writing, said
participants at a Vatican meeting.
The meeting May 2 was sponsored by the pontifical councils for culture and for social communications.
The councils accepted requests to attend, then drew the names of the
150 participants once the requests were divided according to geography,
language and whether the blog was personal or institutional.
Richard Rouse, an official at the culture council, said news of the
Vatican meeting already has encouraged other church officials to begin a
dialogue with local bloggers.
The Vatican meeting, he said, was not designed as a how-to seminar,
and it was not aimed at developing a code of conduct, but rather to
acknowledge the role of blogs in modern communications and to start a
dialogue between the bloggers and the Vatican.
Father Roderick Vonhogen, a Dutch priest and author of "Katholiek
Leven" ("Catholic Life"), told the meeting that blogging "allows me to
be a shepherd for people who need one, not those who already have one"
because they are active in a parish.
"If you write a blog post and no one comments, you feel miserable ...
alone and isolated," he said. The comments let the writer and readers
experience being part of a community.
But, it's only when you have established interest and friendship that you can bring someone to faith, Father Vonhogen said.
Elizabeth Scalia, who writes "The Anchoress," said that while the
mainstream media tend to view blogs as "little more than a means of
self-promotion," the Catholic blogs generally are real sources of
"Catholic clarity."
But bloggers can't claim to be purveyors of clarity unless they do so with charity, she said.
"Charity is one of the biggest challenges we face," she said, because
"freedom is both a gift and a source of temptation for our egos."
Scalia said that the Catholic blogosphere is host to too much "us and
them" on both the conservative and liberal sides of the church.
As Catholics, she said, "we have no business fostering enemies."
"The church needs us," Scalia said. "It needs us for evangelization.
It needs us to disseminate information and often to correct
information."
"The church needs us to be where the sheep are grazing," but at the
same time, bloggers need the church and its pastors to remind them that
God's mercy reaches out to all people and that Jesus wants his followers
to be united, she said.
Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of Pontifical Council for Social
Communications, welcomed the bloggers to the Vatican and told them the
Vatican wanted to begin "a dialogue between faith and the emerging
culture" that is the blogosphere.
Rocco Palmo, author of "Whispers in the Loggia," told the gathering
that the 150 invitees represented "many of the finest professional
communicators" working for the Catholic Church, although it is rare that
any of them is paid for blogging.
The meeting, he said, is recognition of "our contribution to the life of the church."
One of the discussion topics at the meeting was the fact that
blogging already is changing because, in many countries, Twitter's
140-character messages are becoming a more popular form of
communication.
Another theme involved the use on blogs of copyrighted stories and photographs taken from news sites.
Mattia Marasco, author of "WikiCulture," told the group that while it
was right to acknowledge the source of material, copyrights are "an old
model for a new media."
Father Vonhogen said professional journalists will have to get used
to their material being taken, knowing that it amounts to free publicity
and that if they are good journalists they will survive.
"If they steal some of your content, as long as you put out quality, you will make it," he said.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told the bloggers
that while Pope Benedict XVI "is a person who does not Tweet or have a
personal blog, he is very attentive and knows well what is happening in
the world" and supports Catholic media efforts, as seen by his Good
Friday television interview and by his book-length interview with the
German writer Peter Seewald.
"Bloggers are important" for forming and informing church members,
Father Lombardi said, but anyone who influences what Catholics think
must recognize the responsibility that brings with it.
Father Lombardi said he had to thank bloggers for the times they
acted to explain and spread church teaching and the thought of Pope
Benedict.
But he also said that the whole question of bloggers'
self-centeredness and "ego" is "one of the problems which is worth
reflecting on," because while it is a danger for all communicators, a
communicator who calls him- or herself Catholic must focus first on
serving others.
Thomas Peters, who writes "American Papist," earned a strong round of
applause when he asked Father Lombardi to include bloggers on the list
of communicators who get advanced copies of Vatican documents; he said
large secular media outlets get early copies and often use the time to
prepare stories that are not correct.
Father Lombardi said the Vatican press office releases information
and documents to all accredited journalists at the same time, not making
a distinction between major newspapers and Catholic outlets.
One effort
that may help, he said, is his work to improve collaboration with the
communications offices of bishops' conferences and dioceses to ensure
news gets out quickly and accurately.