"We have discovered with online streaming, live streaming of Masses, that we get enormous congregations sometimes," says Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool, the vice-president of the national bishops' conference.

McMahon says that as a result of digital effort during the long COVID lockdown, the bishops plan to increase their digital footprint on the Internet and branch out to other more diverse media platforms.

The 71-year-old Dominican archbishop said participants at the Holy Week services were higher this year than at Liverpool's cathedral due to the live streaming.

Thanking all those who give time to keep churches open and as havens of peace and prayer, the challenge is to bring faith to a "still greater expression and strength", the bishops' say in a statement "The Day of the Lord".

The bishops' say that ‘vibrant' is a word that seems to have characterised so many of the parishes throughout the pandemic and they are keen to build on it.

They are full of praise for families, parish communities and those who have worked to face challenges of "ill-health, grief and isolation".

However, the bishops say the pace of emerging from the pandemic "remains unclear" but they remain focussed on the challenge to bring faith communities and the practice of the faith to a still greater expression and strength.

In terms of moving forward post-Covid, the bishops have identified three groups requiring different mission responses.

• The fearful and weary who are anxious about coming into enclosed spaces and who have lost the habit of coming to church and for whom personal contact and sensitive reassurance is needed.
• Those who have reassessed their life pattern and priorities, and who now have widened the gap between the spiritual quest and a communal expression of that journey. The bishops say this group represents a particular focus for outreach.
• The Covid curious; those who have come into contact with the Church through its presence on the Internet and it is the hope that Church will be able to have a continued presence among them through a range of diverse media platforms.

The last two groups represent different and particular challenges and they say they are looking forward to outreachinh using the strengths of the "veritable treasures" of the Church.

They conclude their statement reflecting on the "rightful" place of the Eucharist as being central to the Christian community calling Sunday 'a weekly gift from God to his people' and the 'soul of the week', and the Eucharist as the food for the unique mission with which all Catholics have been endowed.

Sources

• La-Croix International
• Bishops of England and Wales (PDF)

It gained positive attention this month through a video ad about Internet pornography, using their motif of every parent's worst Internet nightmare knocking on their front door.

"What is interesting about the New Zealand ad is that its offbeat, waggish attitude makes the problem of pornography approachable and less distressing.," write Sean Fitzpatrick in a post on Catholic Exchange.

"Without detracting from the seriousness of the issue, the ad dodges being condemnatory, preachy, or alarmist.

It is a true piece of satire, rendering the problem of pornography in a humorous light and therefore in a palatable light while levelling a practical and persuasive challenge to parents."

A new study published last month by The Broadcasting Standard Authority and NZ On Air found that while the rates of young people accessing harmful content were high, supervision from parents and caregivers had improved dramatically.

The Children's Media Use Study found:

• 87 per cent of children aged 10-14 had viewed television content that they found upsetting in the previous 12 months
• 72 per cent had seen it on the Internet and 54 per cent had heard it on the radio
• 20 per cent of parents reported this exposure resulted in nightmares or disrupted sleep
• 19 per cent said their children copied aggressive behaviour
• 15 per cent said they engaged in behaviour inappropriate for their age
• 30 per cent of parents reported their children had learned inappropriate words from the content
• 48 per cent of children said they knew how to change channels or click out of a website if they were disturbed by what they saw

BSA chief executive Belinda Moffat said they had seen "quite a big increase" in ways parents would limit and supervise the viewing their children had.

Source

• catholicexchange.com
• BSA NZA Study
• stuff.co.nz
• tvnz.co.nz
• Image: Screenshot bsa.govt.nz

In an update about the current Youth Synod meeting in Rome, Dr Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications, says a constant theme is focusing on digital communications.

Ruffini says the issue of the pastoral care of young people in the digital world was also discussed, with the Synod considering how the Church can be active in the world of social media where young people are.

He says the Church wants to dwell in the digital world in an official, serious, structured way.

"How should the Church form missionaries for the digital world and have people in the digital world who are protagonists of freedom and responsibility?" he asks.

While the answers to the questions have not yet emerged, David Bartimej Tencer, who is the bishop of Reykjavík, Iceland, says the Church is positive about the digital world.

Using Iceland as an example, Tencer says they would be lost without the digital world: he says catechism is organised through Skype.

In this way, he can sit in front of a computer and contact and talk to young people.

He says he also encourages young people to download the Bible onto their phones.

Tencer sees these as positive developments.

Source

• Vatican News
• Independent Catholic News
• Image: National Catholic Register

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said the app was designed to help agnostics find out more about faith and the church. Continue reading

Pope Francis announced the new secretariat with a motu proprio, promulgated on June 27.

The new dicastery will oversee the all of the Vatican's communications offices, including Vatican Radio, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican Television Centre, the Holy See Press Office, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Vatican Internet Service, the Vatican Typography, the Photograph Service, and the Vatican publishing house.

Pope Francis added these offices "must continue their own activities, in accordance, however, with the indications given by the Secretariat for Communications".

The secretariat will also assume responsibility for the Vatican's website, vatican.va, and the Pope's Twitter account, @pontifex.

Pope Francis acknowledged the rapidly changing digital media environment necessitated a rethinking of the Holy See's information system.

Continue reading

Lord Patten, head of a Vatican Media Committee formed to recommend reforms, said the Holy See needs better capability to respond to a constant news cycle and in different languages.

"What is needed now is more visual, multi-media content, especially if one wishes to reach younger people," he said.

About 85 per cent of the net cost of the Vatican's media outlay goes on newspapers and radio, Lord Patten noted.

Television and social media resources are professionally run, but under-resourced.

But Lord Patten warned that reforming Vatican media could see individuals who had long enjoyed effective autonomy very likely finding it hard to adapt to being accountable to others.

Continue reading

Strange things have been happening at the Vatican this year. Beginning in January, documents written by high-level figures in the Catholic Church began finding their way into the Italian press, many of the letters to the pope denouncing instances of corruption and complaining about the direction and management of the Church.

When a book full of leaked documents, Sua Santità (His Holiness), was published in late May, the Vatican took the extraordinary step of arresting the pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, a humble but trusted member of the papal household, and announced that officials had found numerous papal documents at Gabriele's apartment within the Vatican. At the same time, the Vatican Bank, under investigation for money laundering (charges the Vatican denies), fired its president, a respected Catholic banker, listing among the reasons for his dismissal allegations that sounded a lot like leaking: "Failure to provide any formal explanation for the dissemination of documents last known to be in the President's possession." Immediately after his firing, the former bank president hired his own bodyguard service and wrote a private memorandum to the pope, which he wished to disseminate "in case something should happen to him."

Power struggles and scandal are nothing new in the Vatican. Pope Alexander VI, for one, was accused of poisoning his enemies and sleeping with his daughter, the infamous Lucrezia Borgia. But until now the pope had been able to count on the loyalty and discretion of his inner circle and a hermetically sealed culture of silence, discretion, and secrecy that has often been compared with that of the Kremlin at the height of Soviet power. Now the last and most ancient of the world's absolute monarchies is suddenly in the fishbowl culture of the 21st century, where the most-trivial and the most-important details alike become transparent. Read more

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: WSI