CiD

More Catholics embrace online social networking

In this Our Sunday Visitor article, CiD member Dr. Sebstian Mahfood offers netiquette tips for Catholics involved in social networking:

• Remember the human. That sounds basic, but is often forgotten. “All technologies are extensions of the persons who use them,” Mahfood told OSV. “Behind every communication is a real human person who is not only an individual substance of a rational nature, but is also a being created in the image and likeness of Christ.”
• Keep Christ at the center of any social network that is developed. Mahfood explained: “The temptation exists in our social interactions to bracket Christ when we perceive a good or a value that we would like to pursue in the satisfaction of our own desires. The advice is traditional, but meaningful for online interactions — never do anything or say anything online that you cannot share with the Eucharist.”
• Begin all real-time chats with prayer “for the good of the community gathered and the participation of the Holy Spirit,” he continued.
• Apply established “netiquette” rules to the social networks that are created. “People who find themselves the hosts of very large social networking sites will not only want to follow established standards but promote them actively as a form of evangelization and prayer,” Mahfood said.

For those in the St. Louis area, Dr. Mahfood will address CYBERETHICS:
Our Relationships in Cyberspace on Thursday, February 19, 2009.

Tags: cyberethics, evangelization, events, internet, technology

Crazy Mirrors for a Deranged Society

Are you as oblivious as Humpty Dumpty when it comes to the media, naively considering yourself a critical thinker when in actuality, you meekly swallow the preaching of today’s opinion-makers? — Zenit.org

Zenit summarizes the remarks of Dr. González Gaitano, dean of the faculty of institutional communication of Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, at the 6th World Meeting of Families.

Tags: disinformation, Gonzalez Gaitano, media, propaganda, World Meeting of Families