Vatican Launches Twitter Feed

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VATICAN CITY, MARCH 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican made its foray into the social networking platform Twitter this weekend by launching a feed in six languages. Twitter is a free, micro-blogging service that allows users to send or receive brief messages – or “tweets” – through a computer or smartphone.

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Catholic_Press said:
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican made its foray into the social networking platform Twitter this weekend by launching a feed in six languages. Twitter is a free, micro-blogging service that allows users to send or receive brief messages – or “tweets” – through a computer or smartphone.

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Bad! Bad idea!
It is infra dig. The Church is eternal, having a website is quite modern enough, basically a concession to necessity, but Twitter? Puh-leeze!

What’s next, will His Holiness have a Facebook page?
 
didymus said:
Bad! Bad idea!
It is infra dig. The Church is eternal, having a website is quite modern enough, basically a concession to necessity, but Twitter? Puh-leeze!

What’s next, will His Holiness have a Facebook page?
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He does have a Facebook page. I’m his fan. 😃 There’s also a Vatican YouTube channel. 🙂

I think it’s a good idea. The Church should have a presence on such sites else we abandon them to those at odds with the Church.
 
I don’t think Twitter is a good platform for the Church. Not that its sinful or disrespectful or bad of them to have it, but what can the Vatican do with it? The character limit is something like 275. That’s way too few to spread any real worthwhile messages. Facebook is useful, I suppose, and Youtube can be used to promote many things (I personally think that the Vatican should start putting up virtual tours of the stational churches up. Have a priest explain the significance and history of the symbolism, altar, statues, and architecture of the churches. What a fine way to show the splendor and glory of the Catholic Church that would be!), but Twitter is too limited.

In fact, I couldn’t have Twittered this post. I don’t believe anything worthwhile will come out of it.
 
Lujack said:
I don’t think Twitter is a good platform for the Church. Not that its sinful or disrespectful or bad of them to have it, but what can the Vatican do with it? The character limit is something like 275. That’s way too few to spread any real worthwhile messages. Facebook is useful, I suppose, and Youtube can be used to promote many things (I personally think that the Vatican should start putting up virtual tours of the stational churches up. Have a priest explain the significance and history of the symbolism, altar, statues, and architecture of the churches. What a fine way to show the splendor and glory of the Catholic Church that would be!), but Twitter is too limited.

In fact, I couldn’t have Twittered this post. I don’t believe anything worthwhile will come out of it.
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Actually, I think the character limit is only half that: 140.

I do agree with you that you can’t really say anything substantial with those limitations. Our culture has sadly moved to the point where many people are satisfied with sound bites rather than substance. We wouldn’t want the Church to be reduced to dispensing fortune cookie style sayings.

I guess my assumption is that it would be primarily used to give links to news articles and Church documents. For example: “Pope releases new encyclical [insert link]”. Thus, for those on Twitter, they can keep up with the latest Church documents and goings on. Basically it would be like the VIS emails you can receive, only putting each story in it’s own “tweet”.

That’s a great idea about the virtual tour! There are lots of things like that the Church could do. Imagine taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or Fatima without leaving your house. For those of us who can’t afford international trips, it would be really cool to be able to see those historic places.
 
I think it’s great that the Vatican develops a presence in various media platforms so that it can model for the rest of the world how to use the technology properly. Technology and scientific advances are not bad in and of themselves, they can be used wisely or poorly. Let the Church be the light here as well.
 
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