The Catholic church and the internet are not typically associated immediately with one another. However, in today’s popular culture, the internet plays a significant role almost anywhere throughout the world, thus including the Catholic church. In fact, the Catholic church has developed a significantly positive attitude towards the internet as the community has realized the benefits the Internet provides. Thus, through the examination of a Catholic website and a recent speech, the engagement of Catholic community with the internet is used to portray the church in a positive light.
On April 18, 2019, Dr. Heidi Campbell lectured at the University of Perugia and discussed the different categories of religious digital creatives (RDCs). RDCs makes up categories that have influence or status among religious populations from their use of new media. Furthermore, RDCs are categorized into three roles: digital spokespersons, digital strategists, and digital entrepreneurs. Digital spokespersons are described as identity creators who bridge the offline and online. Digital strategists or missional prosumers blend the two contexts of offline and online. Lastly, digital entrepreneurs are pioneering creators who blur these two spaces of offline and online. This examination of these three roles are helpful when investigating the Catholic church’s engagement with the internet because they all seek to use media among the Catholic church though among different levels.
Among the search through several Catholic websites, Aleteia was included in the most popular sources. Aleteia is an online publication website where a collection of Catholics publishes discussions and topics for their millions of viewers. Immediately upon accessing the website, a positive attitude can be observed from the lack of scandalous stories usually popular among similar news media. Additionally, there is a notable categorization of articles and reports discussing a variety of religious content. One popular general category is ‘Lifestyle’ containing advice for Catholics. This includes stories similar to “7 Classics you should read to your children before they are seven” or “10 Good Friday traditions from around the world.” These articles demonstrate the Catholic church as a helpful and caring community to anyone around the world. Another category included ‘News’ examining current events around the world. This category additionally portrays the Catholic church in a positive light despite unfavorable subjects like, “The Notre Dame fire: what was saved and what was lost.” Aleteia is a source that grants the Catholic church better access to spread current events accurately to a greater audience because the Internet is more assessable. Throughout this online publication source, it is evident that the Catholic church uses the internet to emphasize the complimentary aspects of their community.
In conclusion, both the Catholic church’s use of internet through websites like Aleteia and Dr. Campbell’s three categories of RDCs exhibit a goal to reach out to a worldwide audience using media to portray the Catholic church in a favorable way. Finally, if Aleteia were to be analyzed using Dr. Campbell’s concepts, the website would most likely be characteristic of a digital spokesperson of the church because Aleteia functions as a representative group of identity creators.