The Bridge

TigerHawk wonders what it would be like if one of the Cardinals blogged during the Conclave:

Wouldn't it be cool if one of the Cardinals was a blogger?

Can't you just see it now: one of those guys banging away on a laptop in his otherwise spartan Vatican quarters, red yarmulke by his keyboard, hoping that Blogger will publish without eating his post?

No doubt that would be interesting, but it would also violate the vow of secrecy which is part of the whole ordeal. That got me thinking about the role of the internet and religion. And then I realized:

Forget the Cardinals.

If the next Pope has any awareness of the net, he would start blogging. What better way to reach the faithful all across the world? I guarantee he would enter the top 10 technorati and TLB blog sites within a week. Probably only a day or two, in fact. Preaching the Gospel has never been easier than now.

That is the comment I left on TigerHawk's site, and I would like to expand on it a little further. The Internet is the future. The future of communications, the future of culture, and ultimately, I suspect, the future of religion. There is no better medium to communicate religious thought than the Internet right now. If the next Pope were to blog it would be enormous. He could have an audience of millions, with proper linguistic support. He could blog on culture and religion, and people would listen, believers and non-believers alike. One of the names for the Pope, Pontiff, comes from the Latin words for Bridge Builder. The internet is currently the greatest bridge every built, bringing people together from all over the world. If building bridges is the Pope's job, then his workplace should be the Net as well.