And we rave about all the technology we to make us more accessable not to mention the investment yet thats not good enough? Now as far as $300 dollar wardrobe almost every jr. high school or high school is full of kids wearing $100 shoes, pants, shirts etc.
Technology is good and useful if it’s in the right place. If it’s in the wrong place, it’s not very helpful. If you want to create a major news organization that commands respect and that has access to what Reuters, Warner, CNN, United Press, Vatican News Agency and others have, you must place it where it can compete and where it will be noticed and will be easily accessed.
The heart of the Church in America is in Washington, DC. You can get visiting prelates to stop by your station when you’re up the street from the Bishop’s Conference. You can be on hand to get first-hand news from almost every religious order in the USA when you have all of their houses of formation around you. You can get the brightest minds in the American Catholic Church in front of your cameras when they’re across the street at Catholic University, next door at the John Paul II Institute, your neighbors to the left and right when they’re at the Canon Law Society or the Biblical Association. They were unable to do this when they operated out of a single studio in Irondale. They needed to move their technology to where they could make good use of it.
The Franciscans gave it their blessing. Franciscans have always gravitated to cities. From our early days, we moved things from small towns to major cities. The government of the order was moved from Assisi to Paris and later to Rome. Our scholars were moved from Assisi to Parish, Oxfordd, Salamanca and to Padua, where they helped to found the great universities of Europe, universities that they would later hand over to secular Catholics to operate.
If you want something to prosper and to grow, you have to put it where it will grow. It’s not enough to have technology, just as it was not enough for those friars to have scholars and books. They needed students. The students were not going to come to Assisi. They needed to govern an order that had grown all over Europe. They could not keep the center of government is the City of Assisi, up in the mountains, where they were trapped during the winter for lack of good roads. If our Catholic news service wants to play with the big boys, it has to go where the big boys are.
On the other point, I was not asking what are kids wearing. I know what they wear. I also know that they can look good for less than that. I was asking what you have against Mr. Arroyo’s suits. I gave the example of the habit, because you seemed to imply that he dresses expensively. I was trying to say, “So do the nuns and the friars. But if we change that, everyone whill criticize it.” In other words, no matter what Mr. Arroyo wears, someone will criticize. Not to mention the fact that the man earns his money. He works very hard.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
