Web of Priests

"Go forth and blog all nations..."
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The big news is that the Holy Father is once again encouraging priests to blog - well, to get online, if they aren't already.  (Fr. Blake provides an excellent example of a parish priest online.)  This has been the call of the Church in modern times to use all means of communications to evangelize.  St. Maximillian Kolbe did it, St. Francis De Sales before him, Archbishop Sheen after him (Max), followed by Mother Angelica and Fr. Cutie - just to name a few.  One mustn't forget Fr. Charles Coughlin either.  (I know!)  General media thinks it is a new commandment - but Catholics have been doing it all along.
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Excellent encouragement though.  And the good news is there are many priestly blogs already.  I have a few listed in my favorites, and I have others in my blogroll.  I rarely, if ever read Catholic apologist's blogs - the famous ones that is - in fact Patrick Madrid is about the most famous one I read.  I like him.  I like the priests I link to as well - people think I don't, but I do.  And I trust a priest over some amateur, armchair-church-lady-observer like me.
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Anyway, some of what the Pope said can be taken to heart by lay people who blog as well as the priests and religious who are twittering to be heard.
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"In Saturday's message - titled "The priest and pastoral ministry in a digital world: new media at the service of the Word" - Benedict urged special care in contacts with other cultures and beliefs. 
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A presence on the Web, "precisely because it brings us into contact with the followers of other religions, nonbelievers and people of every culture, requires sensitivity to those who do not believe, the disheartened and those who have a deep, inarticulate desire for enduring truth and the absolute," he said. 
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Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican's social communications office, said that Benedict's words aimed to encourage reflection in the church on the positive uses of new media.

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"That doesn't mean that (every priest) must open a blog or a Web site. It means that the church and the faithful must engage in this ministry in a digital world," Celli told reporters. "At some point, a balance will be found." - Source
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"Is there anything better on earth than gentleness? If there were Jesus Christ would have taught it to us. But Jesus has given us only two lessons. 'Learn from me,' he said, 'for I am meek and lowly of heart.'" --Saint Francis de Sales.  January 24 is the memorial of St. Francis.
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Art: Priests - Simeon Solomon