Pope Proclaims: Go Forth and Blog

What I find most remarkable about this decision is how fast it has come and that is opens to door for thousands of professional voices to be heard on the Blogosphere.  Imagine, if you like, the Chinese communist party telling its cadres to do this, or perhaps the US officer corps, or perhaps the managers of Microsoft been given this license. 

Amazingly, the Catholic Church is leading on this.  The Pope has chosen to trust his priesthood, obviously a good bet, but it still blows the door open for a public debate and real public participation.  I suspect that it will work out just fine.

The press loves to take cheap shots at the Church over its famously slow response to change, though that has waned in resent years as more are coming to respect the nature of the Church not just as another institution, but as almost the only institution that must make definitive moral decisions and those policies are always the standard for others.  Other churches and religions have dabbled in this and have typically been found wanting.

In fact, the modern age has seen the disappearance of some of the most egregious anti Catholic propaganda commonly deployed by a lot of other Christian faiths, or perhaps I simply am too successful at avoiding such people.

For the nonce, the Church has decided that its thousands of priests can and will blog and compete with each other for attention and ultimately reach their own audience of believers.

This is very powerful.  No longer does a believer have to accept whoever is at the alter to provide their spiritual instruction.  They can choose a priest who speaks successfully to them personally.

There are presently 400,000 priests worldwide, each typically providing service to an average of 3,000 believers.  I can from my own experience, can say that without the use of a blog, it is impossible to properly reach out to that many people.  The truth is that you reach ten percent and rely on family and the rest to maintain the rest.

With a blog, a gifted writer can communicate with and even develop a much larger effective audience than otherwise possible.

Pope To Priests: go Forth and Blog

By Associated Press

Saturday, January 23, 2010

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

The pope, whose own presence on the Web has heavily grown in recent years, urged priests on Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

And just using e-mail or surfing the Web is often not enough: Priests should use cutting-edge technologies to express themselves and lead their communities, Benedict said in a message released by the Vatican.

"The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ’menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web," but priests are "challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources," he said.

The message, prepared for the World Day of Communications, suggests such possibilities as images, videos, animated features, blogs, and Web sites.

Benedict said young priests should become familiar with new media while still in seminary, though he stressed that the use of new technologies must reflect theological and spiritual principles.

"Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ," he said.

The 82-year-old pope has often been wary of new media, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence, while lamenting that the endless stream of news can make people insensitive to tragedies.

But Benedict has also praised new ways of communicating as a "gift to humanity" when used to foster friendship and understanding.

The Vatican has tried hard to keep up to speed with the rapidly changing field.

Last year it opened a YouTube channel as well as a portal dedicated to the pope. The Pope2You site gives news on the pontiff’s trips and speeches and features a Facebook application that allows users to send postcards with photos of Benedict and excerpts from his messages to their friends.

Many priests and top prelates already interact with the faithful online. One of Benedict’s advisers, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the archbishop of Naples, has his own Facebook profile and so does Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles.

In Saturday’s message — titled "The priest and pastoral ministry in a digital world: new media at the service of the Word" — Benedict urged special care in contacts with other cultures and beliefs.

A presence on the Web, "precisely because it brings us into contact with the followers of other religions, nonbelievers and people of every culture, requires sensitivity to those who do not believe, the disheartened and those who have a deep, unarticulated desire for enduring truth and the absolute," he said.

Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican’s social communications office, said that Benedict’s words aimed to encourage reflection in the church on the positive uses of new media.

"That doesn’t mean that (every priest) must open a blog or a Web site. It means that the church and the faithful must engage in this ministry in a digital world," Celli told reporters. "At some point, a balance will be found."

Celli, 68, said that young priests would have no trouble following the pope’s message, but, he joked, "those who have a certain age will struggle a bit more

Holy See Plans Largest European Solar Plant

This piece shows that this institution has decided it makes good sense to lead in terms of energy conservation. It makes good economic sense and makes a point to those that listen. It reinforces other similar messages and thus must be welcomed.

Those that follow this blog know that the whole question of how to supply energy is in flux like never before and everyone is affected. Locking in renewables gives the user an effective safety net against an energy shock that has become all too visible.

Oil production is geared to decline to under 50 million barrels from the present 85 million barrels. The decline looks to be as bumpy and rough as we could imagine. It is thus prudent and eminently sensible to come off grid and be an energy supplier.

The church is moving ahead of the curve as strongly as they can in light of current knowledge. Breakthroughs are popping up everywhere today except they are way behind the curve and cannot possibly help obviate pending supply crisis.

Pope to Pursue Heavenly Power in Europe’s Biggest Solar Plant

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aO042nyR0px4&refer=europe

By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Flavia Rotondi

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- On pasture land a day’s walk north of Rome, the inventor of radio Guglielmo Marconi set up a broadcasting service in 1931 for the Vatican.

The world’s smallest state now intends to build the biggest solar plant in Europe for 500 million euros ($660 million) on those same 740 acres near the medieval village of Santa Maria di Galeria, project engineer Mauro Villarini said in an interview.

Advised by German solar-panel maker Solarworld AG, the Holy See is running counter to many governments that say harnessing sunlight on a grand scale is too costly to help curb global warming, especially in the deepest recession since World War II.

“Now is the time to strike,” Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican City’s governor, said in an interview from his study overlooking the Michelangelo-designed Basilica of St. Peter’s. “One should take advantage of the crisis to try and develop these renewable-energy sources to the maximum, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards.”

European nations, daunted by spending needed to stimulate their economies, find it harder to invest in clean power generation required to meet the European Union’s target to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent by 2020. Italy is balking.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in December threatened to play “bad guy” by resisting demands to trim emissions. The nation already is set to miss its Kyoto treaty target, which calls for releasing 6.5 percent less heat-trapping gases by 2012 from 1990 levels, European Union filings show.

Subsidized by Italy

By contrast, the Roman Catholic city-state is going greener. Advantaged by its small size, the pope will also count on revenue and solar aid from Italy after 2014. That’s when the new plant is scheduled to turn the Vatican into an electricity exporter to the nation that surrounds it.

“Certainly we will try to get what we can in a fair, friendly way with Italy, considering that the State and the Holy See have expenses” to cover by generating revenue, Lajolo said.

The 100 megawatts unleashed by the station will supply about 40,000 households. That will far outstrip demand by Pope Benedict XVI and the 900 inhabitants of the 0.2 square-mile country nestled across Rome’s Tiber River. The plant will cover nine times the needs of Vatican Radio, whose transmission tower is strong enough to reach 35 countries including Asia.

“It’s a wise investment in every way we look at it,” said Umberto Bertelé, chairman of the management school at Politecnico di Milano, in an interview. He said the Vatican will benefit from Italy’s solar incentives that include requiring local utilities to buy sun power at above-market prices.

Inside Track?

The Vatican hasn’t decided how much to rely on photovoltaic panels, which turn sunlight directly into electricity, and on thermal devices that heat water for generators, Solarworld Chief Executive Officer Frank Asbeck said in a telephone interview from a holiday on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza.

The Bonn-based company in 2008 may have gained an inside track for a future contract by donating $1.5 million of panels for a 6,300-seat dome used for the pope’s weekly audiences to the world’s Roman Catholics.

A public tender for suppliers and builders is likely, Asbeck said. If the project goes ahead, “We’re quite confident we’ll get the job,” he said. German peer SMA Solar Technology AG, based in Niestetal, also donated equipment last year -- rooftop collectors for the audience hall. That benefited SMA Solar’s brand recognition in Italy, CEO Guenther Cramer said.

Including installation costs and products from other suppliers as a “turn-key project,” a 100-megawatt plant would cost 350 million euros to 400 million euros to build if it only used Solarworld modules, Asbeck said.

Polluting, Sinning

The Germany-born Benedict has been outspoken on environmental issues since becoming pope in 2005. During an address for World Peace Day in 2006, he said: “The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth’s resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development.”

The Vatican listed pollution as one of seven “social” sins in an effort last year to update the cardinal vices that date to the 6th century.

“You offend God not only by stealing, taking the Lord’s name in vain or coveting your neighbor’s wife but also by wrecking the environment,” Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, said then.

More recently the Vatican has put words into actions.

The 5,000-square-meter roof of the Paul VI auditorium -- built in 1971 by Pier Luigi Nervi, the architect who designed Milan’s Pirelli Tower -- was covered with 2,400 solar panels to produce 300 kilowatt hours of energy a year, enough for 100 households, cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by about 225 tons.

Sun-Powered Cafeteria

A large electronic board hangs by the entrance of the Nervi hall that counts the kilowatt hours generated and amount of carbon dioxide saved.

The Vatican’s 300-seat cafeteria for staff will be decked out this summer with a solar-heating system to provide air conditioning and heating for the whole building. Kloben Solar Evolution, based in Verona, won the 300,000-euro contract to install thermal collectors, Villarini said.

The pope’s own Castel Gandolfo summer residence, a 17th- century palace south of Rome in the Alban hills, may be the site of a renewable-energy project to break down biodegradable waste material to produce methane and gas. The Vatican’s engineers are conducting a feasibility study on this.

Horse-Stable Power

“We are not thinking only in terms of solar energy but also energy that can be produced from the gasification of natural products,” Lajolo said in a March 20 interview. “So everything that comes from the stable or from hay.”

The most ambitious plan is for the countryside around Santa Maria di Galeria, land that Italy donated to the church and is about 10 times the size of the Holy See. The solar station planned there should reduce about 91,000 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions a year that otherwise would have been produced by fossil-fuel generators, Villarini told Bloomberg.

“If we solve the environmental problem, the benefits are immeasurable,” Lajolo said. “They can cost a bit to be implemented but when they are, they generate incomparable savings if you consider the expense needed to produce oil.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome at fjackson@bloomberg.net Flavia Rotondi in Rome at frotondi@bloomberg.net