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Benedict XVI to Priests: Use New Technologies to Evangelize! [UPDATED]

Submitted by oscatholic on Sat, 01/23/2010 - 12:13pm
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From Reuters:

VATICAN CITY - For God's sake, blog! Pope Benedict told priests on Saturday, saying they must learn to use new forms of communication to spread the gospel message.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, the pope, who is 82 and known not to love computers or the Internet, acknowledged priests must make the most of the "rich menu of options" offered by new technology

"Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources — images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites — which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis."

Hat tip: The Forum

More sources for the story:

"Pope Benedict XVI urged priests over the weekend to use as many tools as possible to communicate with people, which includes the Internet and—yes—blogging. The Pope, who has been a bit of an Internet cudmudgeon, acknowledged that "the larger digital world represents a great resource for humanity" and said priests should take advantage of the tool before they become outdated."

Ars Technica: Pope: priests should blog, tweet the gospel too

CNET News: Pope asks priests to become more web savvy

The Next Web: Pope tells Priests: Start blogging

Mashable: Pope's Message to Priests: We Must Blog

ABC News: Pope to Priests: Go Forth and Blog

Read the Pope's entire speech for the World Day of Communications.

Liturgical Library

Submitted by lutra on Fri, 01/08/2010 - 10:21pm
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I've been thinking of writing an opensource library that calculates the liturgical calendar.  For those of you who are unaware, there is already something out there that calculates one liturgical calendar, Romcal.  However, there are many regional variations in the liturgical calendar along with varying solemnities, the Orthodox using the Julian calendar, etc.  I was thinking of writing something that could calculate many different calendars and that could be easily customized by the end user for any specific nuances a given region might have.

What are peoples' opinions on language choice?  I was thinking of keeping it strict ANSI C, which should make creating bindings in various languages fairly easily.  I would guess that a library like this would be most beneficial to web developers, but I'd like not to exclude other types of uses such as application programming.

My questions are:

  • Does anybody know of anything like this out there already (I like reinventing the wheel as much as the next guy, but there are times when you can go too far...)
  • With an eye toward aiding web developers, does an ANSI C library seem like a good idea?  I say ANSI C because I'm not exactly sure of the nature of SWIG's support of objects (is there something better than SWIG out there?)
  • Is this even a good idea?


Thanks.

-DJ

"Why Churches Should Not Market" (by Matt Farina)

Submitted by oscatholic on Fri, 01/08/2010 - 4:11pm
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An interesting read about the trend of 'marketing' by many Churches (especially those with a bit of fundage, me thinks): Why Churches Should Not Market.

Churches put a lot of time and thought into marketing themselves. The church marketing community has grown so large and vast the are even sites that parody what churches do. Some churches have marketing people on staff. And, every year millions and millions of dollars are invested in church marketing.

Yet, I submit that churches should do no marketing. Am I crazy?

My take? We shouldn't be marketing, but rather evangelizing. Spreading the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Mercy, sin, pain, anger, death, new life - these are all topics that we can broach when we speak individually with others.

The unchurched (those who have never had a faith to call their own, and those who have become too 'smart,' 'trendy,' or 'enlightened' for organized religion) are becoming a greater and greater population. Evangelizing to your own flock, and to other Christians, can only do so much.

Through all your actions, you should be considering the lost sheep, as Christ did, first. Leave the 99 be.

Office of Youth Ministry - St. Louis

Submitted by oscatholic on Thu, 01/07/2010 - 1:05pm
stlyouth.org Screen shot
Link: 
Office of Youth Ministry

The Office of Youth Ministry is a division of the Catholic Youth Apostolate in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, whose goal is stregthening youth ministry.

The website was running Drupal 4.7.11 (originally created on 4.7.6, I think), and I updated it from that to 5.1, then to 6.1, then to 6.15. The upgrade process took about two weeks, because there was a lot of custom development (some of which remains to be implemented on the new site) for registration, newsletters, etc.

The theme is a Zen subtheme, and I was going for a bit more 'organic' and trendy look... thus the plants in the background, and the tree in the St. Louis skyline.

I'm going to be working on a few issues in the coming weeks, but the site is running great, and I'm pretty pleased with the result!

Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (2 votes)

Social Media: What to do if your Identity/Brand is Stolen

Submitted by oscatholic on Wed, 01/06/2010 - 12:47pm
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There is no way to absolutely prevent people from using your organizational names, logos, branding, identity, and other copyrighted materials on social network sites (besides creating groups on every social network under every conceivable organization name, which is impractical).

The best way to combat infringements is to:

  1. First, kindly ask the person who made the group to take it down.
  2. Second, ask the social network (most of the big ones have this) to take down the group/account, or at least restrict access, by filing a copyright/infringement claim.
    Facebook: Copyright Infringement Policies
    Twitter: File a copyright or DMCA take-down notice
  3. (If it comes to this) File a lawsuit against the social media site, or the individual who created the group/account. This is obviously expensive, and unless you've gone through the DMCA claim as stated above, don't expect to get far with this method.

It's a pain, but it's something we will all need to deal with more often these days...

Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Submitted by catholicservant on Fri, 01/01/2010 - 5:33pm
Homepage screenshot of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Mpls.
Link: 
http://www.archspm.org

A new website was launched by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis today. Looks like they're using a custom-rolled PHP-Based CMS.

Very clean and easy on the eyes design from a local outfit called Bicycle Theory

Your rating: None Average: 5 (5 votes)

FireFox Starts Taking Larger Marketshare

Submitted by oscatholic on Wed, 12/02/2009 - 10:27am
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Despite Microsoft including Internet Explorer in all its operating systems, people are installing FireFox as their default browser at an astonishing rate. I take pride in the fact that all but two of the sites I help maintain have already seen FireFox (and sometimes even Safari) overtake Explorer (all versions combined) as the most used browser.

FireFox overtakes IE Marketshare - Analytics

FireFox far surpasses IE on any even remotely tech-oriented website.

The sites that still get more Explorer traffic are parish and Archdiocesan websites (which are typically visited by an older demographic, and/or people who are using office computers).

Germany, apparently, is the first country in which Explorer's long-standing crown as the most-used browser has been taken away by FireFox.

Of course, having 99% of the web use FireFox would be just as bad as 99% using Internet Explorer. I'm hoping Safari, Chrome, FireFox, and Internet Explorer all stay around awhile and help spark more innovation and speed in the browser arena.

Are you still using Internet Explorer? Why? The only thing I've used it for in the past two years is to test sites and make sure they work for the underprivileged part of the population who is forced (willingly or no) into using the sadness that is IE 6, 7 or even 8. Hopefully 9 will be an improvement... but it might be too little too late.

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