Father Z writes in the Catholic Herald about the Internet

and how the Catholic Church--guided by her bishops-- needs to use it to her advantage:

Catholics intuitively look for leadership from priests, to be sure, but in a special way from diocesan bishops. I have met only a handful of bishops who actually grasp that there is an internet. Few take it seriously. On the live internet stream of the November meeting of the USCCB a bishop observed that, while he appreciated reducing paper consumption by giving him a CD-ROM disk, he didn’t know how to use it. I met a prelate in Rome, working in social communications, who didn’t know how to turn on his computer.

An American cardinal quizzed me about my footprint in cyberspace and mused: “More people read you in a day than read me in a week in our newspaper.” As a new generation of bishops emerges, episcopal savvy about modern tools of communication will improve. Nevertheless, bishops can’t themselves be the point men for a diocese’s online ministry.

Vicars for online ministry don’t have to exert control over the Catholic internet space – as if that were possible. Rather, they should take advantage of a natural desire on the part of Catholics for official leadership in all areas of communication and education. Dioceses have to fill in the vacuum that now exists in terms of information channeling and interpretation. They do this usually, and not always well, through “official spokesmen”.

An alternative media has its important role, but bloggers are at risk of becoming the sole free-flowing channel of news and information both about what is going on in the Church as well as what current events mean. If anyone doubts the universal effects of Original Sin, let him watch an intersection with a four-way stop sign for a while, or read the combox of an interactive website. You Brits have those roundabouts – but I’ll bet the analogy holds.