Way to reach young people
Fr Pawel Rozpiatkowski talks to Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport in the south-eastern part of the U.S.A, the author of the new blog (www.bishoploriblog.org).
FR PAWEL ROZPIATKOWSKI: - My first question is obvious: Why did you start the blog?
BISHOP WILLIAM LORI: - My answer is simple, too. I started blogging because the ways of interpersonal communication change - from printing through the radio, television to online communication, i.e. through the Internet. A blog is another good way to be with people.
- Who are your addressees?
- Naturally, I would like to reach everyone although I realise this is impossible. I treat my blog as one of the effective tools to realise my teaching office I have been entrusted with. I hope it will reach both young people and old people since the old also use the Internet. Blogging is for everyone.
- You said that blogging is another tool for evangelisation. In what ways is it better than the traditional tools like homily or catechesis?
- If I compare it with homily or catechesis I can see one advantage. I mean what the theory of communication calls 'feedback', i.e. immediate response of readers to your words. Those who visit my page write comments to my words. They make me think and they make other visitors think. Thanks to that, I hope, we can grow in faith together.
- Exactly, grow in faith, which is the result of evangelisation. Has anyone respond that your words helped him or made someone come closer to the Church or made one's faith stronger?
- My blog is so to say quite young. It has only been active for several weeks and probably, or rather surely, it is too early to announce victory. I am improving my web page all the time. I have addressed young people in the schools run by our diocese to point the weaknesses in my blog. The opinions of young people are very important because they are the best reviewers and, together with John Kennedy, who helps me, I take their suggestions into consideration. So my blog changes almost every week. We hope that thanks to that it will become a better tool to explain certain key Catholic issues.
"Niedziela" 28/2007