Here are two, simple, practical, totally doable things that the Vatican (or somebody) could do right now. And they would make a tangible, real and significant impact in the Church's evangelization efforts online, almost immediately.
We're often looking for the Church to do flashy, obvious, big, grandiose things in regard to its use of technology. We need that, too. But there are more effective things they can be doing which more directly accomplish the mission of the Church. And most of us wouldn't even see or know about them. In fact, the Vatican may already be doing these things behind the scenes (which would be beyond sweet). However, I'm pretty sure they aren't. But they (or somebody with the resources and mind of the Church) should be.
These aren't novel ideas, either. Lots of other faith groups — and every major brand in the world — are already doing these things. They are simple and they work.
The first has to do with search engine results. The world is filled with people who have questions. The Church has answers. The challenge of the Church has always been connecting the two together. Well it just so happens that billions of questions are asked every day on one, little ol' website whose primary purpose is to provide the "best" results/answers from the entire internet to people who are looking for them:
As I (and many others) have pointed out before, the Church does terribly in its search rankings for key terms/questions being asked. Embarrassingly so. But the answer is probably not what you are thinking. We don't just want a Vatican website showing up for every search result. That's good, too. But it's not necessarily the goal. The goal is to make sure people get great answers to their questions. St. Augustine said three aims of rhetoric are to "teach, delight and persuade."
Well, guess what, depending on where somebody is in their faith journey, they may or may not find Vatican documents very persuasive or delightful at all. I know we're a universal Church, so it's tempting to always think in terms of solutions that will work for absolutely everyone (so we don't leave anyone out!). But always trying to come up with one-size-fits-all kinds of solutions that work for everyone often end up leaving everybody out. And most answers that are generalized and universalized for broad audiences are usually the least effective at persuading people. I think 1000 different people are much more likely to get their questions answered persuasively by 1000 different bloggers who can translate the questions and answers through their unique lens and relationships, rather than from one central, universal resource. It's just like in the off-line world. Most evangelization, while it's helped by universal resources, is primarily done in the give and take of *personal* relationships. We have to start realizing that the web is no different. Personalism applies here, too.
For a particular truth, what will persuade a 15 year-old male from a single-parent household who grew up with Lady Gaga on his New York City bedroom wall will not be the same thing that persuades a 40 year-old wife and mom raising three kids in the rural hills of Spain.
The beauty of the web is that what *is* uniquely persuasive to each of these folks is probably already on the web. They just haven't found it yet.
The solution is to help them find it. And it's not rocket science, it's search engine science. And the beauty is that the technology already exists and people don't even have to know about us in order for us to help them find it.
What the Church needs to do is put together a team of people that finds great content on the web, matches it specifically to what demographic finds it most persuasive, and then offers free consulting and help to the content owner that gets their content ranked properly. There is already excellent Catholic answers to Catholic questions all over the web. It's just that most of the folks with the answers don't know much about engineering a website or search engine optimization. Let's help them.
And then the next time that 15 year-old in NYC asks an important question in a search engine, he will get a really great Catholic answer that teaches, delights and persuades him. And the next time the mother from Spain does the same thing, she'll get an equally, but different, result that teaches, delights and persuades her.
The second thing they should do is to employ and deploy digital missionaries. For thousands of years the Church has inspired, sponsored and sent out missionaries to every continent. It's time to apply that concept to the digital continent. Mormons and other faiths already do this, by the way.
It's pretty simple. Recruit smart and capable people, train them, support them - just like you would any other missionary. The only difference here is that these missionaries are digital pioneers, wading through social networks, connecting with folks in comboxes, developing real relationships in online forums, being online witnesses of our faith and helping those in need to find the help they require. There are millions of people asking questions online right now, let's go out and find them and make sure they get a good answer. And let's do it as a Church in a big, serious way.
One caveat to both of these ideas is that, while they ideally would be backed and supported from the Vatican, they should be operated at a local level. The teams executing these projects would have to be entrenched and a part of the culture within which they are working. And you would ideally start with one regional experiment, learn some lessons and then uniquely apply it to other parts of the world in a similar way.
The Church has never sat back and expected folks to just show up at our holy sites. Why then do we expect them to just show up at our websites? We have always gone out and met them where they already were and invited them to something deeper. We need to think differently about how we can do that in creative ways that solve the unique challenges of our Church.
But, again, both of the ideas proposed here are neither new, nor unique. They are being used by lots of organizations in the world already because they work. We just need to do them with the full weight and resource of the organized Church. It's true that each of us could do these individually on our own. We should. But the power of an organized effort would maximize results. And would probably cost a lot less than the money already being spent on a lot of other less effective efforts right now in the Church. These approaches just aren't as glorious or glamorous and most people would probably never know about them. But that's not why we'd be doing them. We'd be doing them — and we should do them — because they will magnificently contribute to the mission of the Church.
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Great idea with the search results, Matthew! (CS and CE majors, get on that!)
As for the “digital missionary” idea, I like it but I think they would have a different sort of goal other than relationships online. Strictly online relationships don’t work. Who is a notable strictly online personality who influences others? Is it even possible? People “follow” people online for who they are OFFLINE, as far as I can tell.
Catholic digital missionaries would have to focus more on creating thought provoking media that is attractive and clear. This media can help to foster conversations, where afterwards real people can then talk with real people about it. It can also answer questions and clarify theological issues for the general public. I am very curious what FOCUS will do with their new digital campus in this upcoming year, that will be a great test run for general online evangelization.
A final note: where’s the one-stop-shop Catholic hub page? The Mormons have mormon.org. Us Catholics have… A lot of separate sites that do not work well together. News.va was a step in the right direction. The Holy See site is also something. But how does someone interested in the Catholic faith find good info online? We can do better.
those are very good ideas. Have you seen the YOUCAT and Compendium of the Catechism? They are done in a Q&A format that would lend itself to a web based forum.
This website is pretty good, in my opinion.
http://www.youcat.org/
The earliest ‘search engine’ used by Christians were pedal appendages. Feet. :-) Acts 20:20
I would enjoy a website that took the Church’s documents and simplified them for the everyday person. The idea is that these simplified documents would help explain what the Church teaches and hopefully get the reader to investigate the original document as well. In a way, these documents would “dumb down” the faith, but only to present the questioning and faithful with something that will entice them to go even deeper.
A digital missionaries initiative coming out of Colorado already exists:
http://onebillionstories.com/
For the search results, I’m not convinced that we’re doing so badly. I tried putting a few questions into Google just now, and here is a summary of my results:
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“was mary always a virgin”: The first three results are solid answers to this question from Catholic sources.
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“when did the catholic church start”: The third and sixth results are from Catholic sources.
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“why do catholics oppose gay marriage”: The first four results are from Catholic sources, and two of them give a good answer to the question. (The other two seem to be fine, doctrinally speaking. They just don’t directly answer the question.)
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“do catholics have to obey the pope”: The first, third, and sixth results are from Catholic sites, though they probably aren’t the best online answers to this question. (They’re not bad though.)
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“why is the vatican so rich”: The first search result is from Catholic Answers Forums, where some good answers are given. However, some of the other high-ranked results are questionable, including one from chick.com.
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“is the catholic church the true church”: The very first result is from chick.com—not good! But the second result is “Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth” from Catholic Answers.
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“why do catholics pray to saints”: Almost all of the results on the first page are from Catholic sites.
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“did jesus have brothers”: The first two results are from non-Catholic sites and go against Catholic tradition in their answers. However the third and fourth results are from Catholic sites and give pretty good answers.
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Please note I did not cherry-pick these search terms by discarding searches that had poor results. The search terms listed above are the only ones that I tried. And in all cases, there was at least one Catholic answer in the top three results, which is not too bad, in my opinion.
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One can always say, “we can do better,” and I agree that this is true. It would be great if the very first search result could be a good answer from a Catholic site, for hundreds of common questions related to the Catholic faith, and we’re evidently not to that point yet. But still we aren’t doing too bad right now, from what I can see.
Technical Training for FAITHFUL Catholic site owners would be great.
It would also be helpful if the Vatican and local Diocese Bishops would tell all unfaithful/dissident organizations owning web sites to stop using the title “Catholic” in their names. This merely causes scandal and confusion.
(Examples would include but not be limited to: the N.Catholic Reporter, Catholics for Obama, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
Therefore Bishops and their Staff need some training about the internet as well.) We can expect to see more heresy and schism being promoted on the web as well.
For those who may be unaware, the CCC has paragraphs on the “Use of the Social Communications Media” (2493 - 2499). This applies not only to journalists and web site owners, but even those who post messages.
Try - http://whatcatholicsreallybelieve.com
:)
d2, in response to your: “I would enjoy a website that took the Church’s documents and simplified them for the everyday person.”
On the internet search: “What Catholics REALLY Believe Source”.
http://whatcatholicsreallybelieve.com
I don’t believe “dumbing down” the Church documents is the correct answer. We want people who are truly seeking and those who want pat and fast answers are often not truly seeking TRUTH. There is enough dumbed down stuff out there already.
In addition, ‘Yippy’ is a search engine which the Vatican may want to take a look at. It’s supposed to be educational in nature and it keeps out the disgusting results that most other search engines don’t.
Please check out www.Focusequip.org
and our new digital campus www.focus.org we have just added a 74th campus and have 5 missionaries serving full time.
Great post, Matt! In response to your first question, is this what Aleteia is supposed to be? There was an introduction of the site at the CNMC but I wasn’t extremely clear on what is does or how it will be different from “Catholic Facebook.”
“...it’s tempting to always think in terms of solutions that will work for absolutely everyone (so we don’t leave anyone out!)...”
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## What a mad idea LOL. Only a culture that devalues individiduals and thinks all human beings come off a production line, ready made to have Catholicism poured into them, could ever imagine that, in the things of God, one size fits all.
“For a particular truth, what will persuade a 15 year-old male from a single-parent household who grew up with Lady Gaga on his New York City bedroom wall will not be the same thing that persuades a 40 year-old wife and mom raising three kids in the…hills of Spain.”
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## Exactly. To apply the same doctrine in different ways according to the capacity of the hearer is not “relativism”, but the ability to apply the same principles in different ways, according as is needed. People are individuals, not conversion-fodder provided for the CC to “win” like so many scalps. People are people first, potential future Catholics second, or third, or fourth. Any inability of Catholics to treat people as people rather than as nothing more than potential converts is the same failure to treat people that makes abortion possible. If Catholics are not prepared to be friends with those they hope to convert, they are not treating them as human beings.
I must respectfully disagree. There is a famine for the Word of God. And yes, the Word of God does fit all. We are not trying to treat them all the same, even a brief look at what we are doing would dispel that simplistic misconception. What we are doing is trying to share with them the capacity to love in the truth.
If you went to a village where people were starving, you would feed them. Yes, food works for everyone. Then , as they regained their strength you could address their individual needs, and over time they would regain the ability to help others, The goal is NOT to replace personal care with technology, but to utilize technology to cultivate personal care. This is why, 73 of our campuses have missionaries serving full time and one team serves the students that we can not reach yet with missionaries on the ground, with digital missionaries. The hope is to add more campuses with people as soon. as possible. The fact that our efforts may not have much of an affect upon Lady Gaga, in the short term, is no reason to stop what we are doing…. and might I ask, how effective have you been personally in your ability to reach Lady Gaga, or with 40 ear old wives and mothers. It is my experience that most critics have little experience of success in the area they offer criticisms. I will take real effort an d some success over no effort and no success Amy day.
Why not begin by reminding our Bishops that as shepherds, and servants of The Word of God, they have the responsibility to separate the wheat from the chaff, and their failure to do so, has caused mass chaos and confusion within Christ’s Church.
and while we are at it, let us Pray that The Holy Father, in union with The Bishops, will consecrate Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart in order to end the schism in her Son’s Church, from the beginning. What is needed is a Miracle, and every Miracle requires an act of Faith.
“Behold, your Mother.” - Jesus, The Christ, The Word Of God. There Is only One Truth of Love.
Paul H - the reason you are having such fair results is because you are asking a lot of Catholic apologetic-type questions. That’s a small narrow niche of the kinds of questions being asked about God/Faith etc. out there. In fact, most people wouldn’t even know to ask those questions.
If you look at searches like “Is there a God?” or “Who is Jesus?” etc. you’ll find the Catholic Church does very poorly in the results.
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