This may seem like a very strange topic to bring to your attention, but it does tell a salutary tale about how media has been manipulated. It is of importance to us because media is a pathway to spread the Gospel; and if voices in the media can be muffled, then the God-fearing voices in the media can also be muzzled.

Normally long messages on Twitter either appear as Twitter-threads or as a series of numbered stand-alone tweets. After a person gets to about 30 in a series, and it is generating massive discussion sometimes the Twitter-threads get broken. That’s what happened more than once. Thankfully there were generous people who attempted to put the tweets in chronological order to make them easier to read for those who have little Twitter experience. They had a difficult task.

A bit of background may help. Some weeks after Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter he promised to release information held within the Twitter databases about the events that led to the expulsion of President Trump from Twitter on 8 Jan 2021. To do this Elon selected a few journalists and gave them access to the files at Twitter. However it was a requirement that what they released had to be published on Twitter first before it was published on any other kind of media.

On Saturday 3 Dec 2022, Australian time, the first of the Twitter Files was released via @mtaibbi. It laid the groundwork for what was to follow, and each batch of Twitter Files builds on the previous batch. Bear in mind that if these things were going on at Twitter, they were certainly also going on at other social media sites and in main-stream media as well.

The first one is here, but there is irrelevant stuff between the actual tweets.
Keep going till you get to the very end.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-elon-musk-releases-files-on-twitters-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story

This is part of @mtaibbi’s introduction, which is provided as an enticement to learn more:

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

Although further information was supposed to be released the next day, nothing happened for several days until @mtaibbi released supplemental information.

You can read it in full here:
https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/07/second-twitter-file-thread-supplement-to-the-1st-thread/

Here is a mini summary:

“On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.
The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.
Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @bariweiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was Jim Baker. He had been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess.”

Within a day or two the second set of Twitter Files was released. It has the inside scoop on shadow banning. Yes, many suspected this was happening, but to see actual evidence of it was stunning.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/08/twitter-files-part-2/

Here are the introductory tweets for this second set of Twitter Files:

2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) ) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.
4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.”
5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.”
6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.

The rest of this series of tweets shows that shadow banning based on political viewpoints and ideology did happen. Unless you know how bad it got, it will be difficult to understand the next series of tweets.

The third set of Twitter Files was about how President Trump, while he was still President, was shadow banned in various ways before and after the 2020 American presidential elections.
Yes, while he was still in the Oval Office.
It is serious stuff. 67 tweets worth.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/09/twitter-files-part-3/

Here is part of the introduction:

5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.
6. As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”
7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.
8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

The fourth set of Twitter Files sadly were not numbered, and they might not be all in this link because there was a 2-to-3-hour gap between part 1 and part 2. Look for posts on 11 December from @ShellenbergerMD for the missing tweets. The previous set of Twitter Files took us up to 6 January 2021. This set takes us from there to 7 January 2021.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/10/twitter-files-part-4/

Here is part of the introduction:

“For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump. “Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info... [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack (Jack Dorsey) grows. Former First Lady @michelleobama , tech journalist @karaswisher , @ADL, high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, , and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.
Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel, Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya, Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.
As context, it's important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff's political donations went to Democrats.
On January 7, @Jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension After, Roth reassures an employee that "people who care about this... aren't happy with where we are"”

The fifth set of Twitter Files reveals the internal communications on 8 January 2021 which led to the permanent suspension of President Trump, who was still officially the President of the United States of America until 20 January 2021 when Joe Biden was sworn in.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/12/the-twitter-files-part-5/

Here is an introduction to this set of files, which may or may not be the full set of files:

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
8. But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier.
9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee.
10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer. It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another.
11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”
12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies. “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.
13. “It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”
14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.”

Notice that President Trump was declared innocent of violating the Twitter Terms of Service, yet he was still permanently suspended from Twitter. His account was re-instated by Elon Musk in recent weeks, although it has yet to be used. So the first thing a viewer of @realDonaldTrump’s account will see are these non-inciting tweets.

Many of the tweets that form the Twitter Files are backed up with screenshots of actual internal Twitter communications with some of the names and dates redacted.

What is on this blog-page is only a taster of what is in the full five Twitter Files. Please read and absorb it all. Understand that this kind of social media behaviour has been impacting countries throughout the world, not just America. Reading them certainly made me angry, as they should. But it should spurn us both to prayer and to action. Prayer that such evil is drained away completely and never holds sway again. Action that shares with others what you have discovered; and shares it as far as possible with those who have only ever heard the shadow banned version of events.

For evil to flourish all that is required is for the good to keep silent.
​
May God help us do what we must. Amen.
 

During the past few weeks, I have been pondering what determines an authentic healthy relationship with God. Two particular conundrums have been highlighted in my life, Person A and Person B, although there are others, and there have been some online conundrums as well.

Person A has considerable time set apart for prayer on a daily basis; and is displaying devotional warmth and a noticeably higher level of reverence than the average. But has not been seen beginning new relationships on own initiative, and is very reserved in personal interactions, i.e.. a person of few words and minimal answers.

The question is: how authentic can this be if there is no observable deepening in relationships with others, and no observable outward focus in either service to others or in an intercessory prayer burden for others?

If you recall the galactic analogy, if you place God as the largest star in the centre, and yourself as a tiny star attracted to the centre, then in order to get closer to God you necessarily have to get closer to the other tiny stars; since the closer to the centre of the galaxy you are the more densely packed it is.

Person B has a substantial daily prayer routine with a somewhat regular touch of the supernatural happening.

The question is: how authentic can this be if there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding growth in reverence, in commitment to going the extra mile, and in outward focus on others. General impressions have a focus on ‘why me?’ and ‘what does this mean’?

At this point a personal stock take is necessary. Is there a daily committed time for prayer? Is there service in my life beyond friends and family? Is love and reverence for God growing? Is there any evidence of more patience, trust, gentleness etc than last year?

Person C has a committed prayer life with deep devotion, and a Mary of Bethany type focus in prayer. There is a degree of outward service and willingness to serve.

The question is: how authentic can this be if that outward service is usually either publicly visible, or at least visible to the priest, and people tend to tread on eggshells in this person’s presence lest they do something incurring disapproval and verbal reprimand?

Person D looks like they are walking the talk, have fingers in many service pies, are social to a point, and seem to have a regular prayer life.

The question is: how authentic can this be if you feel like purchasing a lottery ticket when they arrive for Mass on time or two lottery tickets if they are ever early?

Person E is a seminarian yet either comes to Mass just in time; or comes in for personal prayer early and doesn’t greet anyone. Then when Mass is over leaves without any eye contact; or heads off to a private chapel to pray alone rather than in common with others – unless the priest or someone relatively important makes a beeline to talk to him.

The question is: do they train them in seminaries to behave like this? How authentic can training for priesthood be if it actively discourages interaction with parishioners? Where is the balance between loving God and loving others?

Person F is usually a religious or ex-religious who is vastly superior to everyone else, and who can with ease make someone else feel like an insignificant gnat.

The question is: how authentic can a religious life be if it doesn’t possess the kind of humility that helps build others up, or at least treat others as befits their dignity as children of God?

Yet God loves them all, and is infinitely patient with them, always seeking to lead them along the path of greater authenticity of relationship with Himself.

Now for the online conundrums.

The biggest litmus test for these is, have they been written primarily for an audience of one (i.e. God)?

The first one is both insidious and commonplace. You start out reading reflections on a particular passage of scripture, or a written conversion testimony, or something that passes for a written prophetic word, or a topic relevant to living the Christian life. The content is useful and good until you get near the end. Then you get hit with a ‘buy my book’, ‘listen to my podcast’, ‘join my online mentorship group’ or similar. And you feel duped because what you’ve just read has been primarily a sales pitch.

The next one is easier to suspect from the get-go, and therefore easier to avoid. Because they usually have ‘wealth’, ‘prosperity’, ‘financial breakthrough’ or similar in the title. It normally goes something like: if you do X, Y and Z in that order, and exactly as I say, then God will give you everything you want. Some a little more sophisticated than that, but otherwise essentially the same. The truth is that there is no substitute or short cut for developing a relationship with God, and a relationship with God is the ultimate prize, compared to Him riches rank as dust.

After that come the ‘sow a seed’ websites, citing the scripture that says assistance to a prophet earns a prophet’s reward. As you might have already guessed, I have a problem with these. That’s because throughout Christian history God has called some to live trusting completely in His providence, only going out to beg on the streets when things are grim. When God’s ministers are doing good work, the natural impulse is to assist them. There is a significant difference between those who don’t have a ‘sow a seed’ or donation page, and those who do. With the former you know they are trusting in God, and writing as He directs, because there are no kick-backs in it for them. With the latter there’s an aspect of turning what God has asked you to do into an income stream. With that comes the temptation to write to attract donations instead of writing to attract God’s blessing; and the temptation to turn God’s anointing into a business.

The last type is insidious because it appeals either to our curiosity or to our need, making them difficult to resist. The former has click-bait style titles promising answers to satisfy our curiosity about heaven and hell, but which don’t lead us to greater love, awe and worship of God. Will you see your favourite pet in heaven? Did your favourite actor get to heaven? That kind of thing. The latter has click-bait style titles promising to do something God and only God can do, e.g. get the key to release everything the Holy Spirit wants to give you; conquer your demons and love with abandon; get success in petitioning the courts of heaven. That kind of thing. The most anyone of us can do on earth is to tell how God has worked wonders in our lives and in the lives of those we are close to. Frequently that sparks new wonders because those stories raise faith and expectancy in others. But no one can claim that they have a never-fail gifting from God. e.g. Some people are gifted by God with a charism of healing, and many do get healed, but it is always God who does the healing, and the gifted person cannot predict who will be healed and who won’t be.
​
Can God use powerfully the gifted people who are the catalysts for these disappointing online offerings. Yes He can. But approach them with significant caution and don’t make them your primary go-to websites. God will always speak clearer where the sources are cleaner than where the sources are muddied.

This was an online seminar which took place on Saturday 11 Sep 2021.

Some people are called by God to write in various ways, and for different purposes. When they partner with Him, His message finds a positive response in many hearts.

But as Jennifer Eivaz discusses in the seminar, it requires discipline and skill, wisdom, prayer and hard work, to co-operate with such a calling from God.

At times, in order to bring hope and healing to many, God calls people to write about the darkest and most vulnerable chapters of their lives.

If any of this is striking a chord with you, then may these 10 pages of notes be of assistance to you. 

Should you have been reading this blog for a while, you will soon see some changes. They result from a general queasiness and from the recent attacks against free speech.

When I began the foray into the wilds of Reddit, I experienced a general queasiness about the dichotomy on one hand of attempting to answer a person’s real questions and on the other hand those contributions becoming part of the product that is Reddit. Answering questions I am OK with, but becoming part of the product I was definitely not OK with. Why I felt this more with Reddit than with the other social media options, I don’t know, but I felt it strongly.

Last week President Trump was removed from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other social media places. Many of the other people on those sites that I had been tuning into for up to date and reliable information also got shut down. If the duly elected President of the United States of America is denied free speech, then everyone else’s right to free speech just got shot down too, and not by a government, but by a multinational corporation.

So I asked myself if I could in conscience continue to be a partaker in these social media sites, and the answer was No.

As my little protest, I am withdrawing from engaging in them except for the purposes of responding to direct messages and refreshing my memory for the names of the people I want to find on non-censored sites. It is a tiny protest, but I can no longer contribute to the censoring media’s bottom lines.

Therefore I am going to bring what I’d normally do elsewhere onto the blog.

This means you should now see a weekly reflection on the Gospel for the upcoming Sunday, and a few obituaries from time to time.

It also means that I am open to answering r/Catholicism type questions (if you send them to me), and that I might do some blog-posts on perennial questions that Redditors asked.

I imagine that the big social media sites are betting that we are so addicted that we will eventually give in and go back. Yes I am going to miss the international updates, and I am going to miss most of the personalities and the memes that I found funny. But No I am not going back. The importance of free speech as a safeguard against totalitarianism is too great for my resolve to waver.

It will require a bit of creativity to discover how to connect with them in other ways, but it is do-able.
​
May God bless us as we start all over again from scratch on the non-censored social media sites, so that what we collectively build is much better than we ever had before. Amen.

As you may, or may not, be aware, the right to free speech is under serious attack.

The most glaring example of this is President Trump’s accounts on social media and email server being shut down. If the right to free speech is taken away from the duly elected leader of the USA, then no one’s free speech is safe.

It used to be said, ‘I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.

Now it is, ‘If I don’t like what you say, I will take it (and you) down’.

There seem to be two ways things can go from here, but they both end up with the same result:

Scenario A, there is some kind of social media blackout between now and inauguration day, and possibly for longer.
Scenario B, proof emerges of social media complicity in false election results, an existing executive order comes into play, and the social media owners and their sites all get taken down (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, SnapChat, WhatsApp etc).
The same result is that the days of social media as we now know them are numbered.

So be prepared.

If there are voices on social media that you trust, then find out if they have a blog or website, and if so, sign up for email notification of new blogs and bookmark those websites.

If not, and you have alternative means to contact them, urgently encourage them to get a website and associated blog set up.

Are there alternatives? Yes there are.

Many have migrated to Parler, but because significant verification protocols are in place (in addition to an email address, a phone number must be provided, and to be a verified user images of driver's licence are required) it makes it easier for the enemies of free speech to find you via hacking, and easier for public calls to shut it down to be made.

Others have migrated to Gab, where being anonymous is still possible.

Both are receiving deluges of new members.

I have seen a list of alternatives to YouTube, I can’t recall what they were, but they do exist.

Be prepared

Think about what plans need to be in place to keep in contact with family and friends when social media becomes unavailable; and start putting them together.

Think about whether you still want to be an active part of social media organisations that have shut down free speech.

If your spidey-sense has been twitching, then you have been asking questions like...
How come the security at the Capitol was so poor?
Were they really outraged patriots who stormed the building or Antifa/BLM wearing MAGA gear?
How come Trump’s speech at the 6 Jan rally got glossed over so quickly?

If so, you may find these websites worth a browse
https://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/
https://themarshallreport.wordpress.com/
https://www.neonrevolt.com/

Why is this important?
Because the truth has to be important to anyone who follows Jesus who said, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life', and 'The Truth will set you free'.
And how can you come to the truth unless you have access to multiple viewpoints on the same topic/event? As soon as an alternate narrative is suppressed, freedom departs and persecution begins.

Who would ever have thought that we would see all levels of American government resolutely refuse to investigate allegations of election fraud? Seekers of truth don't do that, they investigate until an unequivocal 'yes there was' or 'no there wasn't' is determined to public satisfaction.

Peace isn't possible unless it is based in Truth. 
Any attempt to build peace based on untruths will crumble. 

​May God graciously help all of us to come to full knowledge of the truth, no matter how disturbing or painful that might be. Amen.

Obviously I have a particular organization, and a particular online event, in mind as I write. But these thoughts are applicable across the board, in parishes, dioceses, religious organisations etc.

So I dare you to come and do a pulse check on your church culture.

Some of you may have participated in the Pilgrimage to Pentecost that happened this year in the 6 weeks leading up to Pentecost 2020. Each week 2 tranches of talks were released, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday. You had to sign into a website portal to gain access to these talks, most of which were in the 20-30 minute range, from a wide range of international speakers, and a diversity of vocations. Each talk had a page with a brief description of the talk and the speaker, the link, and a place to leave comments. Participants left a healthy number of comments, 30 comments seemed to be about average for each talk, and the subset of commentators varied significantly from talk to talk (it wasn’t just the same people leaving the same comments). This is a healthy level of engagement.

Compare this to the final talk of a conference, shared on a religious organisation’s Facebook page, bearing in mind that the organisation would have to have upwards of 400 members. Admittedly the holding image for the video recording was uninspiring, but zero comments, 2 likes and 1 share? That is definitely Not a healthy level of engagement!

On the week after the conference the number of likes on YouTube for the talks were in single digits, and now three weeks later they are in the teens, and only one or two comments. Again, this is a very low level of engagement.

If you have proportionately low levels of engagement on social media for your major events, that means there is something amiss with your organisation’s culture.

If something is good, the natural response is to share it, and to share it with as many people as possible.
So either the event didn’t touch a chord with your people,
or your people are ignorant about social media,
or your people are not alert to the easy ways of promoting a message,
or a combination of all of them.

Organisations that value the means of social communication will automatically include a final note which says, ‘If you found this useful or valuable to you, please like and share this ….(insert type of media)… or leave a comment or subscribe so that you don’t miss out on future content”.

Because people do look at the number of views, reviews, likes and comments before committing themselves to watching something on YouTube, or downloading a game or app, or buying a book.

The next thing to remember is that when you post online content, be it website, Facebook, or anywhere else, the whole world is watching. This means that you need to rethink any member only information, and how things look to an outsider.

For example, doing a lovely 30 countdown to a major event as an encouragement for members to pray and fast for the event is great. But to then have radio silence as the event is happening is not great at all. If you want to make it even worse, barely refer to the event after it concludes. Those outsiders who have been watching your countdown on social media will now be completely baffled as to what all the fuss was about, and as a result will consider unfriending or unfollowing your organisation.

At a minimum you should be inviting online discussion after each talk of your event, and/or posting a brief video clip from each session as a discussion starter.

Do you realise that at secular events and at many religious events, that people choose to live tweet during the event? They do, it is a really good thing to do, and it should be encouraged. Not only because they capture the most important points of a talk/presentation, but because they also provide access for those unable to attend, and because it documents your event. These days it is true, if it didn’t make it to social media, then it didn’t happen (even if it did!).

If you don’t have ‘roving reporters’ sharing the best of your event, then you need to find the people you already have who are capable, training them up, and activating them. It will be harder if the event is online, but just as necessary. Screen shots are easy to produce and package for social media, if you know how. Encourage them to always add text, because an photo/image on its own says ‘we were having a great time, and you missed it’ whereas adding text says ‘we were having a great time, this is why, and I don’t want you to miss out on this part that touched my heart’.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to online events where a registration fee is paid.
The first school says only those who paid should have access. In that case, you need to set up some kind of simple login procedure to give access. Pilgrimage to Pentecost did it with a website link that required email address for access.
The second school of thought sees the registration fees as seed for harvest; the fees enable the event to happen (technical equipment, labour, administration, marketing, talent), but once the event is live and recorded, the expectation is that it gets shared to as many people as possible, so that the maximum number of people benefit.

If it is an event that has the capacity to bring someone closer to Jesus, surely you want to maximize those who experience it (in person and/or via recording).

There are hybrid models, where only the plenary sessions of an event get shared publicly, and the non-plenary sessions get recorded but not put online, and later the recordings get packaged for sale.

Or where a temporary YouTube channel is set up for an online event, permitting people to get to all the sessions in their own time, and re-watch them if desired. For this one, by its very nature, if it is on YouTube and not login protected, then anyone can share it. If the content is good, then such sharing should be encouraged.

Isn’t it better if 650 people or 830 people or 2000 people see the fruits of the hard work and many prayers rather than only the 400 who registered?

Some may object, ‘Why bother paying a registration fee if I can get it for free?’, but most will be happy to pay a registration fee (if it is reasonable and not exorbitant) if it is presented as seed money to get the event possible and happening, and even happier to pay that seed money if there are plans to share the good content of the event as widely as possible, and to enable those who could never afford it to participate.

Here's the pulse check:
*Do you have healthy levels of online engagement for your organisation’s size?
*Do you have reminders somewhere in the content, to like and share if they found it valuable?
*Do you encourage people to leave comments on your online content?
*Do you encourage your people to engage with your online content?
*Do you have enough members online?
*Do you encourage or discourage social media use in your organisation? (not talking about it at all is passive discouragement, talking about social media negatively is active discouragement)
*Are you on social media yourself? (lead by good example)
*Does your online content remember that it isn’t a members only forum?
*Do you promote online discussion after special events?
*Do you have any ‘roving reporters’ or ‘social media natives’?
*If so, have you activated them and given them a vision for this kind of ministry?
*Do you include text with your photos, or do you leave people to guess why you posted them?
*Do you have a plan and a vision for maximizing the number of people who can access your events, your content and your message?

Now is the time to start doing something about it, if you weren't able to answer Yes (honestly, and with evidence to back it up) to just about all of them. A great number of the people you want to reach with the Gospel message are online, but you have to be intentional in your online activities in order to reach them. 

Following the blog post of 30 Aug 2020, 
​august-discoveries.html
it seemed like a very good idea to produce a beginners guide to Reddit, to assist anyone who felt called to take up Bishop Barron's challenge. 

What's Reddit?
Reddit is basically a large group of forums in which registered users can talk about almost anything you can imagine, from news, to pop culture, to technology, to comics, to film, to literature, to the weirdest things in the world, including 'Not Safe For Work' stuff.  Reddit is a massive and diverse community. And just like a vibrant city, there are the nice parts of town and there are those notorious streets where you shouldn’t park your car. Redditors are looking to learn, read, and debate all the important issues in their life.

What's a subreddit?
Those specialized forums are called "subreddits," which are referred to as r/"topic" (example: r/gadgets). There are more than 138,000 active subreddits. You can read and participate in all of them freely except private subreddits, which require an admission process. You can also subscribe to the subreddits, so their most popular posts appear on your personalized Reddit front page.

It can sometimes save time just to type in the subreddit you are primarily interested in at the search bar at the top.

Why join in?
Because it is a place where many young people (aged 13-30) go to ask questions, most of them young men, questions that they are not getting answered elsewhere or that they are not comfortable asking in person. If people with faith, experience and knowledge don't answer them there, other people certainly will (directing them to sites like Recovering From Religion).

The subreddit r/Catholicism gets a vast array of questions ranging from the precise liturgical, to pre RCIA and RCIA questions, as well as lots of God-seeking questions, confession related questions (lots of people with scruples), how to deal with demonic influence questions, and lots of struggling with male chastity questions. This last one is a real need, one which could really do with input from people experienced in helping young men via the training received in seminary or in religious formation, and from those with life experience in guiding other young men through to victory in these areas.

At times it can be hard to judge whether a question is honest, or someone larking around. For these questions it is better to assume they are honest ones, lest a real one slip through the cracks.

r/Catholic is a less safe place
r/exCatholic has a lot of vitriol, but the occasional honest question
r/agnostic is a bit on the wild side, but it is far less toxic than r/atheist
r/Christianity gets its fair share of 'how can I know God is real?' questions like R/Catholicism does, and a few other questions where a gentle Catholic perspective would help
r/CatholicPhilosophy is also available
r/RCIA exists, and is very small compared with other subreddits

But if no one shines a light in these dark corners, how are they going to find it?

With some questions, all you can do is pray, and that may be enough.

Sometimes all that is necessary is to upvote someone else's good answer.

There are some bishops (few), priests and seminarians who are active on Reddit. Should you find someone that has a track record of talking sense, by clicking on their Reddit handle you can choose to follow them and therefore have their posts etc show up in your personalised feed. Many of them need the support and encouragement of upvotes particularly when they are trying to present unpalatable truths in the most palatable way possible.

Don't be surprised to see people who profess to be Catholic holding opinions at total variance to the teachings in the Catechism. Be gentle, everyone is on the path to the fullness of faith and will have many mini conversions along the way. The most we can do is pray, and offer the best counter arguments possible, without getting personal, vindictive or emotional.

This is a specialised ministry/apostolate that only some people are equipped for. Not everyone has the requisite combination of active faith, solid prayer life, wide knowledge, diligent ongoing study and sufficient life experience. Should you come across such a person, please invite them to take up this ministry/apostolate.

Because it is really is a ministry, you need to pray for the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit each and every time you open up Reddit. The Holy Spirit knows the answers that the questioners need most, and the best way of lovingly expressing those answers.

You may never know the impact the answers inspired by the Holy Spirit, pulled together from the raw material of your experience, studies and interests, will have. It isn't about chasing votes, it is about helping souls. Should you go to a lot of trouble to pull together a comprehensive answer, and it gets no public response, that's OK. You never know when that answer might be pulled up by a search engine in answer to a query, and have more impact than you could have ever dreamed possible. But if it only gets read by the questioner, that's OK, because we know Jesus is willing to go in search of a single stray whatever the cost.

How do I submit to Reddit, comment and vote?
Reddit is open to anyone to navigate and read freely. This means that you can take your time getting to know how the subreddits function before signing up.

You can also register and become more involved.

Registered users can make submissions to any of the public subreddits. This is like posting information on other social media sites. They can also join the subreddits, an action that will affect how Reddit's front page will look for you (more on this later).

Registered users can also comment on other people's submissions by just clicking on the open comment field right under the submission. In the same way, you can reply to people's comments by clicking reply.

And finally, registered users can upvote or downvote any of the submissions, which is the way that Reddit makes submissions surface to the front page. An upvote is not the same as a like, it is a vote for a worthy argument. In a similar way a downvote is not a don't-like, but sending a message that this is a poor, unworthy argument or not relevant to the discussion.

Posts on Reddit come in two categories; statements/something to share or questions.
The questions are usually far more interesting.

How does the front page work?
Reddit has a front page in which certain submissions are featured, thanks to different algorithms. This front page has different tabs.

If you are not registered, the default tab is "Hot," which is basically a view of the submissions with the highest scores over a period of time. The score is determined by subtracting the downvotes from the upvotes.

If you are registered, then the default tab is called "Best." It features the most-voted posts from all the subreddits but it takes into account other things, like the submissions in which you have spent time before or the subreddits you have joined. This is a personalized view that will also eliminate things that you have already clicked through the next time you load the front page. This is done to ensure that the Best page remains fresh.

On a subreddit you can choose how the posts are sorted, eg hot, new, top, controversial or rising. My preference is for the fresh questions, so my default is new.

No self-promotion or spam is allowed. Just be mindful about what you do, try to be respectful of others, and you will be fine.

Do subreddits have extra rules?
Yes, beyond the logical etiquette, (no self-promotion or spam allowed) each subreddit has its own rules that you should read and abide by when posting or commenting. Some subreddits — like r/pics — may only accept image submissions and no external links, for example. Others will require you to be more descriptive in your posts, like r/science.

What's a "flair"?
Some subreddits will require you to apply a "flair" to your submission, which roughly identifies what it is about. Example: The subreddit r/gadgets has flairs like Phones, Desktop/Laptop, TV/Projectors, Music or Transportation, among others.

There are other tabs, like "Rising" — which features posts that are new and are getting upvotes quickly — and "Controversial" — which uses an algorithm to determine which posts are the subject of conflicting opinions by looking at the fluctuation of the upvotes and downvotes.

Common flairs are 'Question', 'Support', 'Rant', 'Advice', 'Experience Report'.

Others are related to the subbreddit, for example r/Catholicism has a rule that promotions are only permissible on Fridays, hence the flair 'Free Friday'.

Other Tips
Setting up an account requires an email address, and for you to provide a username and password. The username cannot be changed. Anonymity is highly valued on Reddit.

Read the rules for individual subreddits, not all subreddits want you to act exactly the same.

If you don't have time to comment, but want to do so later, you can save the post. Just click in the top right hand corner there is a white icon. Then later open up your profile, and one of the options is 'Saved'. You will find any saved posts there. It is a rather useful feature.

It can also be useful to click on someone's reddit handle, or hover over it. Sometimes there are descriptions. If you click on the handle/username you can see their most recent posts. Often there can be more than one post on a developing situation or struggle.

Start getting karma by commenting smart/funny/constructive things and eventually post your original content on relevant subreddits.

/s means sarcasm which may result in a bunch of downvotes if you interpret this incorrectly.

At first, you will have a limit on the number of comments you can make. This is to ensure that you aren't a spam-bot. Once you get some positive karma, you will no longer be limited.

Seriously take the time to really become a Redditor, so you can understand the platform, its features, and its users.

Find the Subreddits you are passionate about so that you can better understand the conversations happening. Become familiar with the intricacies from one Subreddit to another and participate with a sense of authority around the topics and discussions you already understand.

Take the time to really understand all the features Reddit has to offer, including settings options and the various sections of your profile.

Learn the Reddit language, so when you are engaging in each Subreddit, you sound like you belong. There are a lot of Reddit terms and phrases you definitely do not know but should if you want to have success on Reddit.
​
Is there any specific Reddit lingo?
Yes, there is. Aside from the usual internet acronyms like 'As Far As I Know' or 'In My Opinion', Reddit has a lot of specific acronyms and expressions. Here are some useful ones: 
AMA: Ask Me Anything. People — generally those who are famous or have done something of interest — use this acronym on a submission to have a dialogue with redditors. There's also a subreddit dedicated to AMAs in which everyone from Barack Obama to NASA scientists to Bill Gates (who often participates) answers questions from users. To get an idea, here's a top 10 of best AMAs ,or just go to the subreddit here.
ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5 (years old). If you have a question about a complex subject, use this to ask it. There's a subreddit for this, too.
EDIT and ETA: Edit and Edited To Add are expressions added to comments when people edit them. It seems to be etiquette to explain why you edited a post or comment.
TL;DR: Too Long; Didn't Read. This is used at the end of long text posts or comments to criticize an article or comment as being too long to read. It can also be used to provide a summary of the main point of the text in case people don't have time to read the entire thing. 
Alt - Alternative user account.
AMAA - Ask Me Almost Anything
At a [0-10] - "Being at a [0-10]" is a sliding scale of "highness" from marijuana, with 0 being sober and 10 being blown into space. Mostly used in subreddits like /r/trees. Example: "I wrote this at a solid [7]"
Cakeday - The day a user joined reddit. Like a birthday. It displays a small icon next to the username.
Crosspost - Indicates that the post was also posted on another subreddit where OP recognized it.
Ctrl-F - Indicates that the user was searching for this specific reference in a thread.
DAE - Does Anyone Else - An appeal to a common feeling/situation/dilemma. Also a subreddit
EDIT - Indicates someone has changed their comment after first posting it. Usually followed by additional text, responses to subsequent comments, or explanations of why they edited their comment and what they changed.
Flair - The images or text that appears next to usernames in certain subreddits. Usually customizable.
[FIXED] - A remix of an original post, often with the effort of making the post more relevant/close to the truth.
FTA - From The Article
FTFY - Fixed That For You - A small edit of a previous comment that changes the meaning in a (sometimes) fundamental and (almost always) humorous way.
IAMA - I Am A - Also a subreddit in which famous or uncommon people get interviewed by the reddit community. It featured guests like President Obama, Snoop Dogg, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Scientists of the Mars Curiosity Rover Mission and many more.
IMO - "In My Opinion".
IMHO - "In My Humble (Honest) Opinion".
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly.
ITT - "In This Thread".
Karma - The point system Reddit uses. If people upvote on of your posts you get link-karma, if they upvote one of your comments you get comment-karma. The opposite when they downvote. Self-posts (submissions in "text" mode) don't bring you karma. You can see a total of your karma on your overview page (when you click your username) and it is broken down in to comment and link karma if you use the RES extension. Karma is practically completely use- and worthless. The only practical use it has on reddit is removing a rate-timer for posts in subreddits in which you got a specific amount of karma (you can post faster), and for wiki pages if the mods set a subreddit-karma limit. There are several sites that provide karma statistics like karmawhores.net
MIC - More In Comments.
Mod - Moderator of a subreddit. They have the power to remove comments and posts, among other things.
NSFW – Not Safe For Work – Usually a warning of a link to a sexual image/video or gory content. People can also tag their posts to be nsfw by clicking "nsfw->yes" below the posted link.
NSFL – Not Safe For Life – Usually a warning of a link to extreme gore.
OP - Original Poster. The person who made the submission that is now being commented upon.
Orangered - The color of the envelope icon when a you have a unread reply/message. To have an orangered is to have unread messages waiting.
RTFA - Read the f…..ing article.
SJW - Social Justice Warrior. Almost always an insult. What it refers to exactly ranges from "crazy person who takes everything as a personal insult and uses the rhetoric of social justice to bully people" to "person whose politics are left of mine".
Sub - An individual subreddit.
TIL - Today, I learned...
TL;DR - Too Long; Didn't Read - After a wall of text a commenter may include a shorter description of what they wrote about, sometimes humourously. Also sometimes inserted by another commentator to explain an article or previous comment.
Whoooosh. - Indicates that a joke has gone over someone's head.
WIP - Work in progress.
X-post - Indicates something that has been posted in multiple subreddits.
 
References:
https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-reddit  viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Reddit   viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/reddit-guide/#ok    viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/wiki/glossary   viewed 5/Sep 2020
 
Blog-post last updated 21 Sep 2020

During the month of August, a lot of good, thought provoking content came my way. It was my intention to complete a blog-post about one of them, but that’s still in process. So instead I will share the rest of the thought provoking content with you now.

If you haven’t read many of Pope Francis’ recent speeches and homilies, you have been missing out. I went searching through them for excerpts suitable for meditating on the Joyful and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary, and found some gold. You can find those edited excerpts on the Resources – Prayer 2 page, about half-way down.

Then there was the discovery of ‘The Letter’ produced as the fruit of the 2016 Synod from the archdiocese of Detroit. Please read it: https://www.unleashthegospel.org/the-letter/
Truly it is everything I ever hoped our Plenary Council would produce. Do you want a road map for the new evangelization? Well, this is about as close and as clear as you are going to get.
(#PlenaryCouncil)

Related to that is a small article by Fr Stephen Pullis of the same archdiocese on practical and doable pathways of evangelization for people in the pews. https://www.unleashthegospel.org/2020/08/three-key-ways-to-be-missionary-at-your-parish/

After that, recommended to me was Bishop Barron’s presentation to the 2019 USCCB’s Conference on Reaching Out to the Religiously Unaffiliated, available on YouTube. It is 1 hour 24 mins in length, but the beginning is a video presentation, then Bishop Barron speaks and following that the Q and A session is sufficiently interesting. https://youtu.be/bUmg-DLBa1E

The bit that interests me the most starts about 12.5 mins in,
and here is a basic transcription of it:
‘Young people, the people that we are interested in reaching, they have so many questions that have remained answered for them, I hear from many of them every single day in my internet work: What’s religion? It’s stupid, it’s irrational, it’s pre-scientific nonsense, it’s bronze age mythology, they use all the phrases of the new atheists. Of course, it breaks your heart. Yes, we have a beautiful tradition, but we have a very smart tradition, but we have not it seems to me communicated that effectively to our young people. And it leaves a lot of their questions unanswered, which is causing them enormous difficulty. You know, I use the language of (Pope) Francis again here, to my mind this is simply one of the key ways that we accompany young people. Anyone who accompanies young people know that they are filled with questions. I hear them every day in my work. I’ll give you a recent example, I think last June I mentioned this to you, Reddit is a very popular website, one of the most popular in the world. And it is a forum for the exchange of ideas. So think of like Hyde Park corner, or the Areopagus, now updated to the internet. So you can exchange views. It is a very popular website. There’s something on it called the Reddit A.M.A., which means Ask Me Anything, so it is like a quodlibetal question from the middle ages. It’s just, here I am, ask me anything. So I did one about a year ago, and I just did a second one a few months ago. My first one was the third most popular Reddit AMA of the previous year, this last one was number two. I was just after Beto O’Rourke and ahead of Bernie Sanders. Now I say that not to say, O aren’t I famous, because I’m sure 98% of the people on it had no idea of who I was, but you announce yourself, I did it this way, I am a Catholic bishop who loves dialoguing with atheists, agnostics and non-believers, well 15,000 questions later, that’s in about 2 hours, 15,000 questions came through. And it’s very interesting, to go on Reddit you need galoshes and rubber gloves, I mean it’s a pretty messy space, you have to get through a lot of silliness and obscenity and all that, but once you’re past that, some very clear patterns emerge, and I’ve seen it in my own work, but, Who is God? How do you know there’s a God? Can you possibly prove there’s a God? Doesn’t science disprove God? I mean, just thousands of questions along those lines. Secondly, to no one’s surprise, the problem of evil, how can there be a God is there’s suffering in the world? Third, typolitic of our time, How do you know your religion is right? Aren’t there a thousand different religions, how could you get up and say yours is right? Fourth issue, sexuality, especially homosexuality and trans-genderism. So I mean, 15,000 questions, and you can discern very clear patterns. Well, we’ve got a smart tradition, and I think providing good answers to honest questions is a major part of accompaniment. Something we brought up a lot at the Youth Synod last year was the Emmaus image. So here’s Jesus walking with the disciples, and doing all these wonderful things like walking with them, even as they walk in the wrong direction, listening to them, yes indeed, what are you talking about as you go on the way?, non-judgmental accompaniment, all those wonderful things and then at a key moment Jesus teaches and then their hearts caught on fire. Were not our hearts burning within us as He explained the scriptures to us on the way? So to my mind, that’s all just part of a process of accompaniment and presenting a smart version of Catholicism is key to it.’

I highly recommend that you watch the whole presentation.

Which leads to https://www.reddit.com/. If there are young people out there asking honest questions, the least we can do is go and have a look see. So I spent about a week lurking, and then bit the bullet and joined. After about a week in the trenches I can confirm that there are indeed many young people asking good questions, and not enough well-educated-in-the-Catholic-faith people around answering them. The sub-reddits r/Catholicism and r/Christianity are good places to start.
Consider yourself challenged to do likewise.

If you are intrigued enough to investigate Reddit, here is a guide for beginners.

Bear with me while I twist a few strands of thought from wildly different places into hopefully a coherent whole.

The first strand of thought comes from artist Nicholas Wilton (@art2life_world) and the series of three videos on design, value and colour. In them he demonstrated quite effectively that it is the differences, and relative differences of shape, contrast and saturation that make an artwork interesting enough to obtain that elusive 'Sold' sticker.

The second strand of thought comes from the natural world, designed by God. In His universe there is infinite variety, even in the world of flowers. Even when we think of gardens, the image that comes to mind isn't of neat rows of the same flower, but the riotous mix of flowers in an English country garden.

The third strand of thought comes from Pope Francis, and his latest apostolic exhortation, 'Chrisus vivit', written to all the Church but especially to young people.

181. Think about it: if someone tells young people to ignore their history, to reject the experiences of their elders, to look down on the past and to look forward to a future that he holds out, doesn’t it then become easy to draw them along so that they only do what he tells them? He needs the young to be shallow, uprooted and distrustful, so that they can trust only in his promises and act according to his plans. That is how various ideologies operate: they destroy (or deconstruct) all differences so that they can reign unopposed. To do so, however, they need young people who have no use for history, who spurn the spiritual and human riches inherited from past generations, and are ignorant of everything that came before them.

185. In this regard, I would note that “many Synod Fathers coming from non-Western contexts pointed out that in their countries globalization is bringing with it forms of cultural colonization that sever young people from their cultural and religious roots. The Church needs to make a commitment to accompanying these young people, so that in the process they do not lose sight of the most precious features of their identity”.

186. Today, in fact, we see a tendency to “homogenize” young people, blurring what is distinctive about their origins and backgrounds, and turning them into a new line of malleable goods. This produces a cultural devastation that is just as serious as the disappearance of species of animals and plants. For this reason, in addressing young indigenous people gathered in Panama, I encouraged them to “care for your roots, because from the roots comes the strength that is going to make you grow, flourish and bear fruit”.

Our differences matter, in fact they seem to be clearly willed by God.

Our differences do not prevent unity.
Our differences help us come up with better answers to life's problems, answers that last the test of time and transcend regional cultures.

This is why bubbles are a problem.

The national plebiscite in late 2017 brought home to me how easy it is for us to get into bubbles of social media where the only views that come across our screens are those that we agree with. Partly this is due to the social media algorithms, yet my own choices of what to like, who to follow and who (and why) to unfollow are very significant. When you are in a bubble you get a very big shock to discover that the majority of the world disagrees with you.

In the wake of the recent federal election I read of a young woman who was shocked to discover that the climate change eco-friendly militantly feminist world view she shared with many others from inner city suburbs as a 'no-brainer' package of values was definitely not shared by the rest of the country. Sadly she now seems to be on a quest to put the rest of the country in touch with these values that she assumes will be embraced by everyone who comes across them. I fear she is in for more unwelcome shocks.

It is so easy to get into a bubble without noticing it happening.
It is far easier to see where other people are in bubbles that to see where we ourselves are in them.

We live in tension between the God who infinitely values differences (no two snowflakes, finger prints and animal pelts are the same) and humanity who wants things safe, predictable and the same.

Differences make us richer, uniformity makes us poorer.

The challenge is to fight against the forces that want uniformity, and to keep our hearts and social media accounts open to those who think in ways alien to our world views.

Definitely this is not an easy task,
but it is crucial to determining the kind of future we are building for generations to come.

May the Holy Spirit help and guide us. Amen.

It has been a little over 2.5 years since I wrote the blog-post 'Towards a Diocesan Social Media Policy'. In that time it has continued to be the most read post of this blog. Perhaps it tapped into a need, and perhaps it needs a bit of an update.

What you may not have known is that the aforementioned blog-post started out as a communication to my then bishop 3.5 years ago. Did I get any response? I think it may have been passed on to someone in the curia who still has it in an in-box somewhere.

But I knew that this wasn't just a local diocesan issue, so I scrubbed the communication of local identifiers and that's how the blog-post came to be.

Given that the blog-post has been read so often, and that there haven't been any comments or private messages about it, in all likelihood it has been read by frustrated social media apostles like myself and not by any movers-and-shakers at diocesan level.

So for you, dear fellow social media apostle in the trenches, this update is for you. I'll go through the original blog-post and update it, and then at various points I'll do the controversial thing and point you to examples of people doing a really good job of soft evangelisation via social media.
……………………………………………………..

I continue to believe that it is time that something was done to promote what I call 'soft evangelisation' at a diocesan level, as well as at local parish level.

'Soft evangelism' is using social media to provide reminders of God to the unchurched. The aim is to get trickles of good Catholic content into the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and RSS feeds of people who live in the diocese; so that among the Aunt Acid jokes, pet pictures and holiday snaps would be an article about the Pope's latest homily, an image of the mother of Jesus, and a photo from a local parish event. Things that people can easily flick through, and opt in for a read if they wish, but which even for that very brief moment are reminders that God exists.

Soft evangelisation has the capacity to plant seeds of faith that one-to-one evangelisation or parish evangelisation can later reap.

Current Situation

By and large our social media reach is very poor. It doesn't help that the majority of people in the pews don't have a social media account. However it goes a long way to explaining the disconnect between those who actively practice their faith and those far out on the fringe of 'spiritual but not religious' or 'practical atheism' because they aren't rubbing shoulders together either physically or in cyber space.

Many parishes and dioceses have improved their websites over the last 2.5 years to make them more user-friendly for mobile devices, adding in Twitter feeds from Pope Francis (@Pontifex) and uploading parish bulletins, and including a page for new parishioners/visitors/inquirers. Mostly these necessary improvements are happening in urban areas, and sadly there are still many rural and outback parishes without websites.

Yet when it comes to Facebook, very few parishes have a presence, and much fewer parishes have an active presence.

However just about all the schools do have an active Facebook presence because it is such an effective means to get information about changes to routine into the hands of parents, teachers and students ( eg. the school excursion bus for Year 4 is running 30 minutes late; the Reds vs Greens soccer match for under 15s has been cancelled due to wet weather.) The good news is that the necessary expertise is available very close to just about every parish.

As I think Brandon Vogt once said, 'If St Paul was alive today, where would he consider to be the modern Areopagus?' Considering the global possible outreach for minimal effort, social media would be the answer.

This is no longer 'optional extra' stuff. In the world-scape we live in today, any entity that doesn't have an online presence does not exist. Bishops need to insist that parishes have online active presences to 'keep the digital light' on for anyone the Holy Spirit is moving along the path to conversion of heart and mind. That insistence needs to be backed up with resources; computer hardware, internet connections, people expertise, help desks, information how-to packs etc.

Some parishes have begun sending out parish bulletins by email, and this seems to be a very good innovation, as well as being very useful for building up a database of contacts for when urgent information needs to be sent out (think bush fires, road closures, rescheduling of Mass times due to emergency illness of clergy).

Why do Facebook?

Facebook is very good for getting out messages to local people. I really need you to hear that. These days it is even better than putting a press release in the local newspaper.

There are 2 ways this is true.

The first is that for a small outlay of money a parish can get Facebook to put prepared material in front of Facebook users by postcode. The average parish normally has between 1-3 postcodes within its borders. Where do the people most likely to respond to a 'Catholics Come Home' initiative or to an invitation to the next RCIA program? Yes, in those postcodes. Prepare the material well, get it proof read by a handful of unchurched people for like-ability and removal of churchy-jargon. Upload it shortly before the Saturday vigil Mass, and then invite parishioners over that weekend to find it, like it and share it.

To understand the second way you need to unpack how Facebook works. The average person on Facebook has over 200 Facebook friends. Some of these will be family, some will be friends, some will be co-workers, some will be influencers/celebrities/organisations and some will be other parishioners and people they play sport with or do hobbies with. Possibly a third of them will live within the parish postcodes or in nearby suburbs. The more people in your Facebook network who like, share or comment on the same Facebook post, the more you are likely to see it in your Facebook feed. Due to this, a single message about pre-Christmas Reconciliation times could have a large reach, especially in the target postcodes, if it was liked by even 10 parishioners; and it would get seen by well over a 1000 people who don't have access to the parish bulletin and who would never think of looking up a parish website.

Granted, many of them won’t act upon a message like that this year, but if you back it up with prayer, some will act on it next year when they see the message again, and more will act on it the year after, if you keep sending the messages, getting parishioners to like/share/comment, and backing it up with prayer. Even getting an extra five parishioners intentionally using Facebook for this kind of soft evangelisation could double the impact of that message in the parish postcode area.

Why do Twitter?

Because Twitter is where the thinkers, and the deep thinkers are. There are plenty of extremely witty people, too. Twitter is where people share well written articles that have the potential to change political policy and social opinion. If you are passionate about pro-life issues, God's plan for marriage and family, the freedom to preach and practice religion without compromise, and many other Gospel-based values, you need to be on Twitter to support those on the front lines with your likes, shares and comments.

Very early in the proceedings of the 2014 Proclaim Conference Bishop Ingham got up and shared what at the outset seemed to be an innocent ice-breaker, 'Tweet others as you would like them to Tweet you'. It was far more than that. Those words reverberated throughout the conference, and are the words people remember from that conference far more than any of the other content. Only after many months did the penny drop that the only way to do this was to actually have a Twitter account – and use it.

Apart from a great message, reliance upon team work, prayer and the Holy Spirit, what else do the Divine Renovation people from Halifax, Canada have going for them? Ministry team leaders who tweet, and who like, share and comment upon each other's tweets. It gives their ministries enormous global reach, and huge encouragement to those on the journey from maintenance to mission in our parishes and dioceses. Visit @MacLorik, @CoachRobinson1, @frsimoncc, @colautta, @ron_huntley, @FJMallon, @LauraORourke, @divreno, @Tanya_Noye, @K8Robinson and the rest of them to see what is possible if you have even 10 social media tweet-leaders in a parish.

Many urban dioceses now have a social media – photographer team that shares photos, and information about the bishop's activities (eg World Youth Day, ordinations, school openings, official statements etc). They tend to have an inward focus.

Even in social media we have to lead by example and be heading towards the right mix of inward focus and outward focus, because without outward focus we cannot be the missionary disciples we are called to be. The Archdiocese of Toronto is leading the way. @archtoronto produces very high quality infographics on topics like Lectio Divina, the seasons of Christmas, What is Advent? etc as well as simultaneously honouring deceased clergy and giving funeral details, sharing Prayers of the Faithful, announcing Days of Confessions, and all the regular stuff. They are worth studying. Consider liking and sharing their content.

Here's a list of people on Twitter who greatly impress me.
@frpatrickop He has a very good mix of story, images, articles, and video on life as a priest, with musings, blessings, encouragements, simple prayers and thanksgivings. He has hold of the kind of faith that gently attracts and doesn't forcefully proselytise.
@jkuebbing is a Catholic mother and journalist, sharing her experiences of living faith and trust in God in the midst of family life. What she writes and what she shares are always worth the time to stop and read.
@ArchbishopGomez of Los Angeles, his tweets are always worth reading
@BishopZubik of Pittsbugh is also well worth following
@Pontifex for Pope Francis's inspiring daily tweets
@DisabilityJ supporting faith and access to churches for disabled and abled alike

Why do Instagram?

Because Instagram is primarily where the young people are. If you want an insight into how young people think – you have to be there. If you want to have a hope of connecting them into your parish, deanery and diocesan activities, you need to broadcast it through Instagram as well as your other regular channels.

Instagram is also where many of the creatives are: musicians, artists, illustrators, photographers, craft-workers etc.

Instagram has advantages over Twitter because you can write a short article. It has advantages over Facebook because you can see posting history easier and there appears to be no limit for the number of hashtags you can use.

On Instagram you can post short video, multiple photographs, and text. Each post must have an image. Unlike Twitter and Facebook that work better on large screens than on small screens, Instagram is designed specifically for mobile devices. There is a growing trend of people posting on Instagram first and sending secondary versions of those postings to Twitter and Facebook.

It comes into its own particularly at World Youth Day time, when through hashtags you can follow several pilgrimage groups, and get real time coverage of major events from many different perspectives. For me World Youth Day is a major opportunity to discover new social media apostles and start 'following' and supporting them.

@archie.will (a.k.a Archbishop William Goh of Singapore) is very good, uplifting and inspiring.
@srjulia (a.k.a. Sr Julia Mary Darrrenkamp), is a wonderful example of sharing her joy in living a consecrated life and gently inviting us into how wonderful a relationship with Jesus and His mother is.
@frgoyo (Fr. Goyo from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles) shows us faith with a sense of humour, and gratitude for the ways God is acting in people's lives.
@frjasonsmith from New York is also impressive.
@ingamae is providing excellent content to help end abortion.
@litcatholicmemes for doses of humour that contain life giving truth.

Why blog?

Because that's where the longevity is. Have you ever tried to find that great tweet, meme or photo on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? Even if you can remember who posted and a relevant hashtag, they are still very hard to find, and almost impossible if it over a week old. What's blogged stays blogged and findable by the browser search-bots. Your best content needs to be blogged to give it the longest and widest reach.

These days there are several places offering free technology to set up websites, (eg Weeby, Wix) that have templates to 'choose, drag and drop' and include blog web-page options.
With Weebly, and possibly with some of the others, you can have multiple editors. For parishes and dioceses this means you can give person A responsibility for uploading parish bulletins, person B responsibility for uploading accounts of recent parish events on the blog, person C responsibility for keeping the up-coming-events news up to date etc – and you don’t have to wait for a web designer to schedule time to do it for you.

To have a glance at what's out there, http://topcatholicblogs.com/ is a good place to visit. Aim to get on, and stay on, that site. It requires 6 months minimum of blogging, with a minimum of one blog post per month, staying true to Catholic teaching, be Catholic content, and have a link somewhere back to the TopCatholicBlogs website.

The better the content, and the more frequently and regularly you post to your blog, the more chance it has of succeeding. But it takes perseverance. It takes about 50 blog posts for the browser search-bots to flag you as worthy of notice, and it takes a minimum of 2.5 years to find your style, rhythm and audience, and often a lot longer.

Go for promoting the good, the true and the beautiful. Of course it is easier to grow using controversy or click-bait titles and lists, but that doesn't do much long term good to anyone. Ranting is better done elsewhere, if at all. Take Eph 4:29 as a sure guide, 'Let your words be for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners, otherwise you will only be grieving the Holy Spirit'.

You can bet that if you write something particularly good (and this applies to all social media), the first thing you will attract is not praise but a troll. A troll is someone who lurks online for the purpose of starting an argument. It is far better to ignore a troll than to 'feed' them by engaging with them. The only exception to this rule is if you sense that they are genuinely seeking truth, in which case you take the conversation private as soon as possible (eg email).

Connections

Apart from priests and deacons, who preach the Word of God mostly within church walls, those believers who are intentionally using social media for evangelical purposes are the front line troops in the culture war and battle for souls. They deserve the name 'social media apostles'. The vast majority of them serve God in this ministry without any monetary reward at all, despite the many hours it takes to produce and prepare content to upload each posting. These are dedicated warriors and it is more than time that they are recognised as such and publicly honoured, supported and protected at parish, deanery and diocesan levels. Now is the time for co-operation to increase between the bishop's communication team and these social media apostles who can get the bishop's messages into the ears of those that the regular media channels cannot.

Many of them have been lone rangers for a very long time, and they have the skills and the experience to get a worthwhile message out very effectively. It is time that they were officially commissioned by the church for this purpose.

It isn’t difficult to do; it just takes a bit of medium range planning and good communication. (Yes, I know that is hilarious, but with God all things are possible).

A bishop and his communications team should be in regular contact with his bloggers, just like a general should be with his captains. No blogger likes to be micro-managed, but give them a vision for what the bishop wants to achieve and themes for various times of the year together with cogent reasons for that timing, and they will astound you.

For example, if you know there is a political election up ahead and there are one or two topics that are important in that context (eg funding for schools, protection for the seal of the confessional, programs to reduce the incidence of domestic violence etc), get the bishop, his theologians and researchers and the bloggers together as early as possible to brainstorm together how to raise these topics for public conversation and how to share the wisdom of Catholic teaching on those topics in fresh and creative ways. Provide background documents to read, banks of images that are open source and relevant to the topic, and lists of online content for private research. Ask for one post of content a month, on which ever topic speaks to them, until the election is held. The same goes for other things that can be seen coming, eg referendums, plebiscites, Royal Commissions, legislation on pro-life issues coming before state and federal parliaments, diocesan year of Marriage and Family, Year of the Refugee in the universal church, whatever the next Papal document or Bishop's Conference document is to be about.

The more you get to know your bloggers and other social media apostles, the better you can tailor the prepared resource material. For example: A blog that normally does book reviews is going to need good books on the planned topics to review; a blog that usually does scripture meditations is going to need scripture references relating to the planned topics; a blog that comments on quotations from Pope Francis will need references to the planned topics from the speeches and writings of Pope Francis. Of course, your bloggers and social media apostles will still do their own research too, but it sure helps to know where to look, and to have a smorgasbord of excellent content to chew through rather than having to start the research from scratch. If the resource material is very good and the topics are compelling, your bloggers will catch the fire and spread it, and possibly write a whole series on the topic.

Many dioceses have graphic designers on staff. Grant your bloggers and social media apostles 2 hours a month each of your graphic designer's time. That's brainstorming time, idea wresting time and production time. So often the content is written and then a blogger spends just as much time trying to find an image to go with it, an image they have a concept for. Give that concept to the graphic designer and you will get a quality image in a fraction of the time spent previously doing fruitless internet searches. The graphic designer gets some short term wins, and a bit more variety in his or her day, and that's a win-win scenario for everyone. Your bloggers will soon learn that if they want to get an image produced within the 2 hours, then they need to prepare very clear concepts, and any associated text to be used in the image, and allow time for the designer to suggest better solutions or adjustments that will have the same impact but require less time to produce.

Bringing your social media apostles together has other benefits too. If you know someone personally you are far more likely to naturally like, share and positively comment on each other's social media content. I cannot stress enough how crucial this mutual encouragement is. Most social media apostles get so little in the way of positive feedback, particularly on the long lonely road before their content receives widespread recognition. Lack of encouragement is why so many give up before that wonderful moment of 'traction' is reached.

The other benefit is the sharing of technological information, 'tricks of the trade', helping each other bypass common pitfalls and increasing efficiency.

Most social media apostles will welcome topic suggestions, and will definitely welcome resources, as long as they are free to spin it their way, in harmony with the authenticity of their blog.

Good resources would also include access to diocesan image banks for images upon which copyright has already been paid, and information on effective ways of producing memes to go with the text on social media channels. Attaching a relevant quality image to a social media post significantly increases the number of clicks that post receives.

Plan – Step 1 Find your front line troops

One way is to use social media and print media (email, Facebook, Twitter, website, diocesan newsletter etc) get the word out that the bishop wants to connect with his social media apostles. A better way would be to pay attention to who has already been liking, sharing and commenting in useful ways on the existing diocesan social media channels, and who also have existing social media channels of their own, and sending personal invitations to these people. That won't catch them all, so also do some searches using relevant hashtags too (eg name of diocese, name of bishop, recent big diocesan event/conference; #YearOfMercy etc).

Plan – Step 2 Get them together

Initially a Saturday at the diocesan offices would be best, to enable the maximum number of social media apostles to attend. On Saturdays workers are usually at leisure and Mums can find someone to look after the children. Start the day properly with Mass, after registrations, a welcome and a vision for diocesan social media have been presented. First session is on using social media to evangelise. Second session is an overview of how various social media channels work, with a maximum 10 minutes per channel (just because you are proficient in one of them doesn't mean that you know how the others work or what the possibilities are). Third session is where your social media apostles each get 2-3 minutes to introduce themselves and their blog/Twitter handle/Facebook page etc and what they are trying to achieve with it. Some will be more focussed on apologetics, others more focussed on theology, bible study, vocations or family life etc. Fourth session is where people get split up into groups based on social media channel, (bloggers and tweeters, Facebook users, Pinterest and Instagram, Podcasts and YouTube) and learn from each other. Fifth session is re-presentation of diocesan vision, presentation of the diocesan media plan for topics, distribution of free resources, blessing and commissioning. NB Only get people who are actually proficient in evangelising through the various social media channels to lead sessions, and make attendance free.
This is the baseline from which you can build.

Plan – Step 3 Do it again regularly

Aim for four times a year, and make sure you achieve three times a year. Subsequent Social Media Days should have opportunities for feedback at diocesan level and individual level about how things are going (statistics, reach, followers, comments, trends, troll management etc). Take time to pray for each other too, and for God's blessing and guidance upon the development of this apostolate and for God's grace upon the followers of the social media channels and for whatever the next 'can see it coming' media challenges are.

If you start now, and get this moving, the next time an emergency situation hits, you will have a well-trained army ready and willing to spring into action at short notice.

Consider this hypothetical scenario: the bishop of a neighbouring diocese has been called to court to answer allegations of a serious nature. The secular press is having a field day, with op-ed pieces only considering guilt and not innocence, and spinning the story as darkly as possible. If the diocese can put together evidence for the innocence side of the story, or at least context to permit the benefit of the doubt, and then get it into the hands of your social media apostles, the chances of the positive side of the story being told to the community dramatically increase. The chances, too, of a fairer trial, should it ever come to that, dramatically increase as well. However if you don't gather evidence and context, and don’t have a prepared social media army, the community will only get to hear the sensational bad stuff and act on it.

I know I need more examples of lay people to follow social media-wise – I have them, I've just run out of time to include more of them here. I may get an opportunity to add them in later.

Let's pray

Lord Jesus, You know just how urgently teams of social media apostles are needed to spread your gentle yet powerful light one ray at a time. We confess that we have collectively been dragging our feet when it comes to these new ways of spreading Your good news. Please send Your Holy Spirit to encourage Your weary social media apostles, to refresh and reinvigorate those who were doing so well but gave up, and to connect them together for the greater and far more effective plans You have for them. Touch the hearts of bishops and their advisors that they may begin to grasp Your possibilities for this apostolate, and run with it in step with You. Please raise up intercessors who will specifically pray for and spiritually defend these front line troops of Yours. We ask You to inspire Your social media apostles to write words and prepare content and images that will touch the hearts of those who read them and impart profound encounters with Your love to them.
For You. Lord Jesus, nothing is impossible. Amen.
​
St Paul, missionary apostle, pray for us
Mary, Virgin Mother of all the children of God, pray for us.
St John the Baptist, whose cries in the wilderness moved the inhabitants of Jerusalem, pray for us
St Francis de Sales, patron of both bishops and journalists, pray for us
.......................................................................
Interesting lay people on Twitter to follow or study

@VanessaComninos
@Keithhinton8
@oranparkparish
@Lorraine_McCart
@mrslbright
@VermD10
@CatholicNerdy
@margaretfelice
@suzannewalsh
@ColletteBP1

Notice how individual they are, the themes about which they post, and how well their posts can be appreciated by insiders and outsiders alike.