Vaticaneese

Since the Vatican has urged its clergy to "get with it" and use the internet to spread the Good News, it is now looking at itself. Good thing, too. I try. My chapter tries. My friends try. All serious Catholics try. But try as we might, it takes a person with a strong sense of purpose, to successfully plow through Vatican documents.

Catholic News Service explains what the Vatican is trying. I readily identified with the passage reading that the Vatican recognizes that even the most papal sympaticoes are discouraged when reading papal texts.


"This is a topic we need to face in an explicit manner. Many times we speak, but in a language that is no longer comprehensible," he said. He said that's something that may be the focus of an upcoming plenary session of his council.
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Msgr. Paul Tighe, secretary of the communications council, launched what might be called a trial balloon on the question of language in a recent article in Cultures and Faith, a publication of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
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As things stand, he said, the church relies too much on texts, which often use a vocabulary and forms of expression that are experienced as "unintelligible and off-putting even by sympathetic audiences."

He said the church needs to recognize that today's younger audience is fluent in "a language rooted in the convergence of text, sound and images," and will quickly move on if their attention is not immediately engaged."



My chapter is currently reading Caritas in Veritate. Oy Vey!
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