Notes from the CEEM congress
Short report from a visit to the CEEM congress in Vatican
Wikimedia Italia (www.wikimedia.it)
Last week the Council of European Bishop Conferences held a conference in Vatican on the theme “The Internet culture and the Church communication”.. Thanks to an invitation and to the assistance of the friends of Wikimedia Italia I was able to attend part of the sessions of Friday, Nov 13th. In what I saw I found confirmations of the wish of all participants to understand what the risks and opportunities of the new digital technologies really are.
During the day, I was pleased to hear somebody noting that “with these new media, if you want to increase penetration you have to give up some control”, that is the acknowledgment that today there are huge possibilities of communication and evangelization for Catholics, if they accept to use (of course with all the due prudence and without following any fad) also Internet channels that are less “unidirectionals” than traditional ones.
We also had some moments during which it was possible for all the participants to chat about the subject of the Congress. In one of those moments I ended up mentioning the need to pay attention and not create (unwillingly, of course) new divides through digital media, like for example (cfr the Eleutheros Manifesto) websites usable only with very fast (that is, expensive) Internet connections or publishing digital content which is only accessible with office software which is very expensive and/or only runs on the most recent, that is most expensive, computers.
The schedule for Friday 13th also included a really interesting session for all the members of Eleutheros and for anybody else who is interested in the maximum diffusion of the Bible and any Catholic document: the problem of copyright, both in Europe and, specifically, for the Church. Unfortunately this session took place at a moment when I really couldn’t be present, but I have asked the speakers more information (even in the future) about this specific topic.
Filed under: News — Author: Marco Fioretti — Date: 16 November 2009