Started as a site to poke fun at the Christian subculture Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee's account on March 22, Read more

A lot of what they say is meant to inflame and enrage rather than enlighten and console. How should we react to that? Read more

A Twitter account was initially created as a parody of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But it has taken on a new meaning with two invitations for Catholics.

In one tweet, it asked people to share the time they felt most at home in the Catholic Church; in another, it asked people to share the time they felt least at home in the Catholic Church.

The invitation to share moments of exclusion and hurt at the hands of the church generated a significant response.

Some of the responders shared experiences that caused them to leave the Catholic Church.

Many others expressed embarrassment that they had witnessed or personally experienced hurt in a church to which they still belong, a church they still love and want to trust.

The responders had many different stories to tell of grappling with the Catholic Church, and with elements of their own identities. But they shared a common desire for the church to take a clear look at its shortcomings and strive to do better.

Richard "Rickard" Morin is autistic and dyslexic. He remembered "being told by well-meaning parishioners that...I didn't have enough faith because I said prayer won't make me not be autistic and dyslexic."

He went on to share the discomfort he feels "anytime a Catholic says vaccines ‘cause autism.'

Flora Tang who identifies as queer, tweeted about a homily she heard during her days as a master's student. "... the priest went on a 5-min long rant during the homily about how ‘[people] are inventing what marriage means these days' and other homophobic stuff. I pretty much just sobbed out loud in my pew for the rest of Mass."

"Hearing the homophobic remarks wasn't surprising, but nonetheless hurtful as I was a queer Catholic who was just trying to worship that day," she said.

Dr Marcus Mescher's tweet in response to the parody account hit on experiences at Mass that so many Catholics can recognize. "Anytime a priest uses his homily to shame a person or group makes parishioners think 'Do I matter? Do I count? Do I belong?'"

Mescher noted that there are 30 million former Catholics in the United States today.

It's a group that has more members than any religious denomination in the country besides Catholics.

As far as he's concerned, that number reflects a church in crisis. He hopes that anyone who considers that an urgent matter will take stories like the ones shared on Twitter seriously.

"If we ignore this, not only is nothing going to change, but we're going to keep wounding people," he said.

Mescher suggests that we take a constructive turn and ask another telling question: "What would it be like to build the kind of church we want?"

Sources

America Magazine

Twitter said the tweet was removed for "violating our rules against promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm."

In his 31 January 2021 tweet, Bishop Kevin Doran expressed opposition to efforts to legalize assisted suicide in Ireland.

"There is dignity in dying," the Catholic bishop's tweet said.

"As a priest, I am privileged to witness it often. Assisted suicide, where it is practiced, is not an expression of freedom or dignity, but of the failure of a society to accompany people on their ‘way of the cross.'"

Dolan included a link to a message on the Diocese of Elphin's Facebook page. Doran has led the page since 2014.

The message invited healthcare professionals to add their names to a petition expressing concern about a bill to legalise physician-assisted suicide.

The Iona Institute, which is an advocacy group promoting the place of marriage and religion in society, reported on Monday that Twitter had censored Dolan's post.

"Our support team has determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision," the Institute reported Twitter as saying in justification.

The Institute noted that while Doran's Twitter profile remained accessible, the tweet had been removed and he had been barred from posting.

Apparently a Twitter algorithm was behind the deletion.

"Although the intent of the post was the opposite of what Twitter claimed, upon appeal, the social media giant doubled down on its stance and said: ‘Our support team has determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision,'".

David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, says "Twitter rightly has algorithms which target tweets that seem to promote self-harm and obviously Bishop Doran's message was badly misunderstood as he was doing the opposite."

"What is remarkable, however, is that his [initial] appeal was turned down. I also wonder if the algorithms have ever done the same to someone who is pro-assisted suicide? They always use phrases such as ‘dying with dignity' such as the one used by Bishop Doran."

"Twitter is already strongly suspected of ideological bias and incidents like this do not help its reputation."

A spokeswoman from the Elphin diocese says the tweet has now been restored. Dolan hs not commented about the incident.

Removing Dolan's tweet is the latest in a series of incidents involving Catholics and Twitter.

Last October, Czech Cardinal Dominik Duka's Twitter account was suspended without explanation.

After the account was restored, the Prague archbishop compared present-day censorship to communism suppression in the 1980s. Thisngs are "not much different" today, he said.

Last November, Twitter users criticized the company after a hashtag calling for Catholic priests to be burned was allowed to trend online in Spain.

Just last month, Twitter temporarily locked the Catholic World Report newspaper's account over a post describing Biden appointee Dr. Rachel Levine as "a biological man who identifies as a transgender woman."

A Twitter spokesperson later said that the account was blocked in error.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic Ireland.net

The full text of the letter dated 1 August was posted last Friday evening by the ‘Cardinal George Pell Supporters' Twitter account.

Prison authorities are investigating whether Pell broke Melbourne Assessment Prison rules by posting the letter.

A Department of Justice and Community Safety spokeswoman on Saturday said prisoners are denied any access to the internet or social media, and it is a prison offence to "commission other individuals to post something on social media on behalf of a prisoner".

There has been no comment as to whether Pell asked his supporters to pass on his letter to a wider audience.

The Twitter account has since been taken down.

Critical of Amazonian Synod

In the handwritten, signed letter, Pell criticises the agenda of the upcoming synod on the Amazon.

"We have reason to be disturbed by the Instrumentum Laboris of the Amazonian Synod," writes Pell.

He calls the Instrumentum a "low-quality document".

The Instrumentum, which has been the source of considerable discussion and commentary, includes discussion, for example, on the subject of ordaining viri probati, (married men, to answer a shortage of priestly vocations).

It also calls for "a Church with an indigenous face," and recommends the synod identify "an official ministry that can be conferred upon women, taking into account the central role they play in the Amazonian church".

Cardinal Müller has written "an excellent critique" of the Instrumentum, Pell writes.

Noting he doesn't know the Amazon region, Pell says in his letter: "One point is fundamental, the Apostolic Tradition, the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, taken from the New Testament and taught by Popes and Councils, by the Magisterium, is the only criterion doctrinally for all teaching on doctrine and practice."

"Amazon or no Amazon, in every land, the Church cannot allow any confusion, much less any contrary teaching, to damage the Apostolic Tradition," he said.

Life in prison

Pell says prison life is helping him develop his faith and compares his suffering to that of Jesus.

"My faith in our God, like yours, is a source of strength," his letter says.

"The knowledge that my small suffering can be used for good purposes through being joined to Jesus' suffering gives me purpose and direction.

"Challenges and problems in Church life should be confronted in a similar spirit of faith."

Pell says he's received between 1500 and 2000 letters since his imprisonment, and that messages from his supporters have brought him "immense consolation, humanly and spiritually" while he awaits a decision on his appeal.

Sources

• The Age
• National Catholic Register
• ABC News
• The Australian
• Image: The Courier

He had posted several tweets to Trump after Saturday's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas where 22 people were killed.

Garcia-Siller was one of many people who, in the aftermath of recent shootings (including the ones in Dayton, Ohio and Gilroy, California), connected the violence to Trump's political rhetoric.

In his tweets, Garcia-Siller called the president "poor" and "weak", said Trump had done "too much damage already" and told him "stop racism, starting with yourself".

"All individuals have God-given dignity and should be accorded respect and love as children of God, especially in our conversations and interactions," Garcia-Siller said on Tuesday after deleting the tweets.

"We should be aware of this in our discourse about the Office of the President of the United States, which is due our respect."

Tweets focusing on the issue in Garcia-Siller's Twitter account include several alluding to the dangers of racist rhetoric.

One mentions the "selfishness of many in power" that has led to "destruction and pain".

The archbishop also released a video statement on Facebook.

In the video he recalled a statement from the US Bishops, "The Enduring Call to Love: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism;" "Every racist act—every such comment, every joke, every disparaging look as a reaction to the color of skin, ethnicity or place of origin—is a failure to acknowledge another person as a brother or sister, created in the image of God".

Pointing out that no one has the moral right to make racist statements, García-Siller said "There is growing fear and harassment, and at times American public discourse uses rhetoric that instigates fear against foreigners, immigrants and refugees....

"We do not need more division, but rather, we need to move forward in freedom to discuss these topics more deeply in light of the Gospel."

Source

• Fox Network
• America Magazine
• Image: Heavy.com

In a policy update on Tuesday, Twitter said it would take down "dehumanising language" that targets specific religious groups.

Examples of the type of language that would be removed would be the description of a user's religion as "disgusting" or referring to them as "filthy animals". Read more

The graphic purportedly violated Twitter's "health and pharmaceutical products and services policy." Read more

He says it "has become a major distraction," an "obstacle to my spiritual life" and "an occasion of sin for me and others." Read more

The conversation, which will be facilitated by the United States Diocese of Arlington, is open to all.

Its focus is on the encyclical which reaffirms artificial birth control is "intrinsically wrong".

People interested in participating can follow the Arlington Diocese on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as Pecknold on Twitter. Two hashtags will be used: #HV50 and #AskTheQuestion.

Those who do not use social media can visit a website with all the conversation content from each day.

The social media forum will include two or three tweets a day for the first three weeks, and then a social media symposium on 25 July - the encyclical's 50th anniversary.

Dr Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at The Catholic University of America, will host the primary conversation on Twitter.

He will provide some content and will also address questions from participants.

He says he is encouraging "everyone to think out loud on social media about the points that are made in Humanae Vitae.

"I hope young people will do what they do in the classroom, which is to try to be courageous and formulate a question," he says.

Besides its affirmation of the church's stance on contraception, Humane Vitae also talks about the dignity of human life and sexuality, and outlines the use of Natural Family Planning as a morally valid method of planning and spacing children.

In the encyclical, Paul VI predicted that if the use of contraception became widespread, society would see devastating consequences.

These consequences include:

• an increase in marital infidelity
• a general decline of moral standards
• the possibility of governments using coercive measures to force contraceptive use upon people
• a loss of respect for women
• a general decrease in humility regarding humanity's dominion over the human body.

Each of these predictions has come true in the modern era, says Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Wyoming Public Media
• Image: Iowans for LIFE

Launched by Benedict XVI in December 2012, the account is available in nine languages.

Since taking over the @Pontifex account, Francis's followers have grown steadily, especially in English, which has 11 million followers.

There are a further 13 million Spanish language followers.

Of all Twitter account holders, his tweets are said to be the most re-tweeted.

One of his most retweeted messages in the past few weeks is that of 30 June, which refers to Charlie Gard and other children who have serious illnesses. This tweet says:

"To defend human life, above all when it is wounded by illness, is a duty of love that God entrusts to all".

Speaking in relation to social media, Professor Paolo Peverini, who is a lecturer in semiotics at the LUISS Guido Carli University and consultant to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communication says:

"The Pope's ability to fuel public debate on complex issues is of great interest."

Peverini then moved on to comment about other social media Francis has adopted, saying:

"In my opinion, we should especially emphasise the growth that characterizes the Instagram account, @Franciscus, which involves young users.

This is the "capacity of Pope Francis to be 'heard' by users who a few years ago, may have been a bit distant from the Church.

Source

• Herald Malaysia Online
• Zenit
• Newsmax.com

A Twitter posting by a Spanish journalist from an event at the Vatican publishing house responsible for printing official documents revealed the information.

The encyclical will be given an Italian subtitle: "Sulla cura della casa comune" (On the care of the common home), the journalist stated.

The Vatican press office neither confirmed nor denied the document title or release date.

The phrase "Laudato Sii" reoccurs several times in St Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Sun.

Continue reading

The challenge, which has been trending on Twitter, is seen as a poor man's Ouija board.

In a demonstration of the increasing power of social media, in slightly more than two days, an estimated 2 million people have used the hashtag #CharlieCharlieChallenge.

The game requires a handful of pencils and supposedly summons a Mexican demon named Charlie.

Players draw a cross on a piece of paper and write a "yes" in two opposing sections and a "no" in the other two.

Then two pencils are placed in the middle of the drawing in a plus sign formation while the participants ask aloud: "Charlie, Charlie, are you there?" or "Charlie, Charlie can we play?".

The top pencil is likely to move because of its position - leading some to believe the demon is making its presence felt.

Pennsylvania school chaplain Fr Stephen McCarthy wrote an open letter to students warning of the dangers of the game.

The letter was linked to a student's Twitter feed.

"I want to remind you all there is no such thing as 'innocently playing with demons'," Fr McCarthy told the students.

"The problem with opening yourself up to demonic activity is that it opens a window of possibilities which is not easily closed."

Fr McCarthy suggested the Rosary and the Mass for students wanting to encounter the spiritual.

"I think you'll find these far safer and more rewarding alternatives in the long run."

He asked students to encourage others to avoid participation in the Charlie challenge.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church directs the faithful to place their cares and anxieties in the hands of God, and avoid any practices designed to access information, guidance and help from other powers. (CCC #2115).

Sources

• Huffington Post
• National Catholic Register
• Image: News.com.au

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith wrote that for "a digital illustration of respective theological worldviews, look at the two giants of social media".

The priest wrote that Facebook is "cheerful, friendly, conciliatory" and "tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed".

On the other hand, Twitter is "Protestant, or even Calvinistic" because it "allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation".

Anonymous polemicists on Twitter remind Fr Lucie-Smith of Martin Luther's insults against the Pope.

Facebook, in contrast, is "a congregation, a community - and that, in my opinion, makes Facebook Catholic", he said.

Continue reading

Food and technology remained the most popular categories that tweeting Americans reported giving up in 2015.

The top five choices:

• School,
• chocolate,
• Twitter,
• alcohol, and
• social networking

All ideas consistently popular for Christians since Smith began using Twitter's API to track Lent in 2009. [The final 2015 tally follows in the full article.]

"My hypothesis last year was that 'school' was so high because Ash Wednesday coincided with spring break at many schools, but that isn't the case this year. In the UK, A-Level exams are coming up at the beginning of March, so that may be part of it," wrote Stephen Smith of OpenBible.info who tracks hundreds of thousands of Lenten tweets during the week of Ash Wednesday.

Smith also reported on how retweets affected his Lent tracker.

While the top 15 terms are largely similar to the original list, college jumps nine spots to No. 2, and Obama jumps 61 spots to No. 9.

Overall, the number of tweets fell sharply from last year.

In 2014, roughly 646,000 tweets were published during the week of Ash Wednesday compared to the 409,000 in 2015.

Current events and pop culture are sometimes reflected in Lenten tweets, though Smith noted his surprise that given last week's harsh winter weather, "weather-related tweets aren't more popular."

"As a category, they move up one place from last year (to #12 from #13), though individually 'snow' moves up eight places and 'cold weather' moves up 79 places," he wrote.

In 2014, rapper Lil Boosie was released from prison during the week of Ash Wednesday, leading people to joke that he had given up prison for Lent. (The hip-hop artist came in at No. 51.)

In 2013, after Pope Benedict announced he leaving the papacy, some wrote he was abstaining from "being pope." (This phrase ranked No. 1.) Continue reading

Image: Christianity Today

The photo was shared by Gianluca Barile on his Twitter account on September 11 and is the first known selfie in which the retired Pontiff has appeared.

Hours later, Barile published a second selfie of Benedict XVI.

"There's two, not just one! This is the second selfie from today of Pope Benedict XVI, this time with Father Sebastiano Sequino," Barile wrote.

Continue reading (and to see Benedict selfies)

Fr Gabriel Egan took the selfie standing in the pulpit at the Redemptorist church at Mount St Alphonsus in Ireland during a solemn Novena.

It has been seen by more than 200,000 people, after he posted the image on Facebook.

According to the Irish Examiner, Fr Egan said: "It was a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing. I got the notion to try a selfie at the Novena.

"It was during a warm-up period about ten minutes beforehand, and I said ‘let's try one together for the fun of it and see how it goes' to the congregation in the church.

"I had my phone in my pocket. Selfies can be quite hard to take at times, but this one came out very well."

Fr Egan explained that Pope Francis encourages clergy to use all forms of technology to spread the Gospel.

"And if that means using something like selfies, which for a lot of people can be fun, it gets the message out," Fr Egan said.

"As well as over 200,000 people seeing it, many have commented to me on it."

While Facebook is seen mostly by young people, Fr Egan said many older people are using the website and are familiar with it.

"I met people at the Novena who saw it and said that it reminded them that the Novena was on," he said. "

Some of the comments on Facebook remarked that the selfie was cool and that it was nice to see the Church using something like that.

Meanwhile, the 2014 Twiplomacy Study has named Pope Francis as the world's most influential Twitter user.

The Pope beat out US President Barack Obama's Twitter account, even though Mr Obama has 43.7 million followers and Francis has 14 million on his nine different language accounts.

But the @BarackObama tweets are only retweeted 1,442 times on average.

By this standard, Pope Francis @Pontifex is by far the most influential with more than 10,000 retweets for every tweet he sends on his Spanish account and 6462 retweets on average on his English account.

Sources

• Irish Examiner
• Examiner.com
• Twiplomacy
• Image: Irish Examiner

It's that he's consistently able to match the themes that animate his spirituality and faith with issues that people around the world are thinking about, such as economic justice, income disparities, and poverty.

Nearly 13,000 people retweeted his statement about inequality and social evil—clearly, this idea resonates.

If Francis seems radical, it's because he has a remarkable PR-savvy, winning the obsessive attention of bloggers and journalists, earning the retweets of the masses, and charming economists and his flock in one fell tweet.

Has the pope subtly endorsed the new book of a leftist French economist on Twitter?

This is the question Slate, the Daily Beast, and the Huffington Post breathlessly asked when @Pontifex once again took to social media yesterday:

Inequality is the root of social evil.

It's totally possible that Francis is an avid student of economics and has diligently picked up a copy of Thomas Piketty's new book about 21st-century capitalism—I would never venture to speculate on Papal reading lists.

But it doesn't seem very likely that the pope is trying to weigh on the somewhat-rarefied debate sparked by this book. Continue reading.

Emma Green is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees the National Channel, manages TheAtlantic.com's homepage, and writes about religion and culture.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: Google+

On April 28, Pope Francis posted to his Twitter feed: "Iniquitas radix malorum."

In English this translates to "Inequality is the root of social evil".

The papal tweet came only days after French economist Thomas Picketty's bestseller "Capital in the Twenty-First Century?" sold out on Amazon.

Picketty posits that an unregulated free market creates an ever-widening wealth gap.

The papal tweet had nearly 10,000 retweets shortly after it was posted.

Writing for the Religion News Service, David Gibson noted that the papal tweet had drawn criticism from the libertarian, Catholic-run Acton Institute.

"Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by @Pontifex? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty?" tweeted the Acton Institute's Joe Carter.

"Hate and apathy are the roots of social evil," he added as a counterpoint.

"So, if we achieve maximum redistribution of resources, we will have eliminated ‘social evil' , whatever that is?" wrote Rod Dreher at the American Conservative.

"Yes, and that's why the Soviet Union was the Garden of Eden," Dreher added.

Gibson noted that Catholic Culture editor Phil Lawler called the Pope's tweet "a fairly radical statement" and as "a piece of economic analysis a very simplistic one".

Lawler added that Francis probably doesn't know what's going onto his Twitter feed anyway, and the Pope does not speak English.

"So we can be sure those aren't his exact words," Lawler said, echoing previous conservative efforts to downplay or explain away some of Francis' more provocative statements.

Yet Vatican officials have said that in fact Francis personally approves all of his tweets, and did so in this case as well, Gibson wrote.

Moreover, they noted that the tweet is taken directly from Francis' exhortation from last year, Evangelii Gaudium (see paragraph 202).

In his exhortation, Pope Francis attacking the "idolatry of money" and calling on politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and healthcare".

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Religion News Service
• Evangelii Gaudium
• Image: salon.com