One
international body that universally embraces traditions and rejects the
newfangled inventions of today is the Catholic Church. However, the Vatican has recently yielded to
the sleek grasp of change; eighty-five-year-old Pope Benedict, who “is known
not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand,” will soon
board the back of the blue bird. Yes,
Pope Benedict intends to join Twitter.
“Primarily
the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday
blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world
events, such as natural disasters.
“The
leader of the world's 1.2 billion or so Roman Catholics will not, of course,
write the tweets himself, but he will sign off on them before they are sent in his
name.
“But
even divine intervention might not help squeeze the gist of a papal encyclical,
which can run to more than 140 pages, into 140 characters.
“Those
tweets will probably be limited to a link to a URL with the entire document.
“The
papal handle has not yet been disclosed but it is widely expected to be
@BenedictusPPXVI, his name and title in Latin.
“The
pope has given a qualified blessing to social networking.”
While
I hardly condone social networking, I propose that a papal Twitter presence
will improve the world a smidge.
RELIGIOUS LEANINGS ASIDE, the concept is a good one, as mankind would
benefit from the heightened accessibility of benevolent, righteous, and spiritual
guides.
Imagine
this. A man suffers a horrid day of
spousal drama, professional pains, and personal dissatisfaction. As usual, he checks his phone before
returning home for the evening.
Generally, he scans the tweets of his friends, all of which are either somber
complaints or useless nonsense. Today,
however, he scans the uplifting and compassionate offering Pope Benedict posted
to Twitter moments ago.
Such
a scenario heightens that man’s likelihood of smiling, sympathizing, and
succeeding. That man will arrive home
with corresponding kindheartedness and will straighten every gnarled branch of
his own tree of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment