The Catholic News

HOW many friends do you have?

How you answer that question has a lot to do with your age and where you spend your time on the Internet.

Until recently, most people would answer with a figure low enough to count on the fingers of their hands. With the rise of Facebook, however, the definition of “friend” has changed.

It’s no longer someone you depend on who can also depend on you. Instead, it’s a list of people you often know only casually, even if you rarely see them face to face.

The shift in the meaning of the word “friend” is one of the most dangerous things that has happened to society over the past few years. By usurping the meaning of “friend”, people in real need are being put at risk, because when they need friends, they’re learning often too late that the word no longer means what it once did.

Simone Back, for example, had 1,082 “friends” on Facebook. One Christmas Day, she posted a note on her wall: “Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one.”

When do texting, 'Facebooking' and tweeting become simply too much, asks Liz Quirin

IF NOT actually ruling our lives and the universe, technology has become ubiquitous.

If people aren’t texting in meetings, or even in church, they’re sitting at the dinner table in homes or restaurants with their phones in their laps, staying connected to someone through SMSes.

In fact, some people prefer texting to talking so they are not so much interrupted as redirected briefly by a text and then a reply.

Whether it’s texting, “Facebooking” or tweeting, people use their technology for good or ill, based on their ethical frame of reference. If we consider the need for texting or actually calling people, the technology can potentially save lives.

For instance, schools can send a text or voice blast to all of their students if something happens on campus that everyone needs to know immediately.

Instant communications can save lives, and technology can alert people to potential dangers.

However, though we live in an age that touts all of the technological advances that have been made, we also live at a time when moral and ethical behaviour in cyberspace need to be addressed.

ROME – Church communicators have an important and serious duty to obey Church teaching and defend the Church’s mission of saving souls and safeguarding truth, said the head of the Vatican’s highest court.

Caution as well as control over content and where it’s distributed are needed because while the field of communications “has great potential for good,” it “also can be turned to the harm of the faithful,” said US Cardinal Raymond L Burke, prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature.

Communicators should be guided and directed by priests to make sure their content is free from doctrinal and theological error, and Catholics should avoid outlets that openly attack Christian morality, he added.

The cardinal was one of dozens of speakers at a biennial seminar for people who work in the field of media and communications for dioceses, religious institutions and other Church organisations.

Sponsored by Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the April 16-18 seminar focused on ways the Church could better portray the essence and vitality of the Christian faith.

BIRMINGHAM, UK – History was made in the Catholic Church in the UK when Bhai Sahib Bhai Dr Mohinder Singh Ahluwalia and Mr William Ozanne were made Knights of the Pontifical Order of Pope St Gregory the Great on April 22.

The ceremony took place during a special Mass and Investiture at the Metropolitan Cathedral and Basilica of St Chad, Birmingham.

Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham invested the internationally known and respected spiritual leader and chairman of Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha, based in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, with one of the highest papal awards.

The Order of St Gregory is normally bestowed on Catholics but in rare cases it is also conferred on non-Catholics in recognition of meritorious service to the Catholic Church and the exceptional example they have set in their communities and country.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, USA – Pope Benedict XVI wants the Catholic Church in the US to be in the forefront of reviving Catholicism worldwide, the apostolic nuncio to the United States said in Columbus.

“The Church in the United States should lead the entire Church in the world” in a revitalisation effort, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said.

“This is a great task, but you have the determination and the grace to do it. This I know is the vision of the Holy Father regarding the Church in the United States.”

The archbishop was speaking to an audience of seminarians and benefactors of the Pontifical College Josephinum at its annual rector’s dinner on April 23.

He called on the American Church to go beyond its mission of evangelising to the United States and “to be missionaries not only to the Third World, but especially to the countries of Europe.