No Wonder It's Called The Jesus Phone

No sooner did my post go up (about the pope joining Facebook) than my iPhone overheated and I'm now seeing the white screen of death. Jeez... I was just kidding. You don't mess with Texas and you certainly don't want to mess with you-know-who. Now I understand why it's called the Jesus phone :-D

Looking For Love In All The Right Places

Within a few hours of my Pope 2.0 post, I found out that Pope Benedict XVI finally joined Facebook. At first, I couldn't tell the exact date when he joined and I was thinking to myself: "Wow! Looks like he just joined a few hours ago...who said that he doesn't listen to his peeps?" Upon further digging though, I discovered that he joined last week O:-) Welcome, your Holiness- I hope you have more friends than anybody else. This is the certainly the place where you'll find the next generation of believers/ followers/ members & God knows (as I'm sure you know all too well, what with the direct line you have and all) that we could use more peace and love in this world. Is it really him? I dunno, but I'm thinking I'd better friend him up just in case... doesn't hurt to get some extra points with the Man upstairs ;-)

Pope 2.0

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal claims that John Paul was the perfect pope for the television age, "a man of images," whereas Benedict is the perfect pope for the Internet age. She says "he is a man of the word. You can download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it." It's a nice article that reminisces about John Paul and contrasts his style with that of Benedict's and ends with some hopeful words: "Nothing is ended, something beautiful has begun, we just won't understand it for a while."

As the pope embarks on a historic visit to America, here's what I don't understand: if Benedict is Web 1.0, when will we see the Web 2.0 version? Yes, the Vatican has a website and podcasts and videos that they use to disseminate their message. But it looks to me like a one-sided conversation. A generation that seems to spend most of its time pushing buttons (cell phone, video game, iPod, you name it) needs something more interactive. How about using social media to create a dialog with the Church? Should the pope start a blog? Or heaven forbid, get on Facebook or Twitter? Why is the Vatican not using modern technology to communicate? Shouldn't the pope tweet his peeps? It's one of the most effective (and instantaneous) mass communication mediums I have seen. Seems to me that Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki & Gary Vaynerchuk are doing a better job of umm... evangelizing their brand than His Holiness. Of course, they're not working with material that is 2008 years old, but still... we live in difficult times where moral values are in danger of being replaced by moral relativism and the Church needs to find a way of getting its message out in a format that is relevant to the 21st Century.

Not all is lost though: according to Sister Judith Zoebelein, editorial director of the Holy See, the Vatican has recently switched to Macs. What's that you say? Don't bite into the Apple? Sorry, too late ;-)