Facebook is surely one of the most popular and modern technological symbols of the technocratic culture we are living. Launched in February 2004, Facebook has, up to now, offered it services to more than 500 million users. This means that out of every 14 people worldwide one of them uses Facebook.
This magnificent technological invention is an excellent vehicle through which we can meet our friends and be updated on what they are doing in their lives. When you add a friend to your Facebook friend list, you will always know when they are adding information to their blog or updating their profile. By joining Facebook groups you will have a good chance of meeting new people with the same tastes as yourself or browsing other profiles to find new friends with whom you can share your life views. For instance, how many people managed to find past classmates or co-workers after using Facebook? Keeping track of friends, photo album, block merge and sterling search and browse are all advantages waiting to be reaped by intelligent Internet users.
Why not including the Catholic Church with them!
This was the message delivered by Fr Richard Leonard SJ, an Australian Jesuit who was in Malta in the first week of November to deliver talks concerning this topical subject. Fr Leonard, a visiting professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, as well as the director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting, has also lately authored an interesting book entitled Where The Hell Is God?
“Seven Steps to Finding God in Pain and Suffering”. According to Fr Leonard, it is high time the Church uses modern technology to spread the Good News. “I encourage the whole Catholic community to use modern technology. If we do not create a good presence, we are saying God cannot be found on the Internet because it is used for terrible things.”
Fr Leonard insisted that “the media should not be dismissed but can be used for the good”. The principle of discernment is paramount in this delicate yet fruitful exercise of information technology. The priest added: “To do that, however, you need good critical faculties to be able to filter the good from the dangerous.” Fr Leonard’s appeal has surely not fallen on deaf ears. Numerous parishes, Catholic associations, religious institutes, consecrated people, and priests hold a Facebook on the net. Concerning the latter, in his message for the 44th World Communications Day, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged priests to be familiar and employ effectively the new technologies to execute their ministry to and for God’s Word. “Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites), which, together with traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelisation and catechesis… Priests stand at the threshold of a new era as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances; they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word”.
Fr Richard Leonard SJ has thrown the ball in our court. It is up to us, both as the institutional Church and particularly as the People of God, to take up his challenging invitation and start evangelising through Facebook.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap