Pope Francis recently appointed Msgr. Paul Tighe of Dublin, Ireland, a bishop. Msgr. Tighe, a genial, affable priest, has worked for the Vatican for 10 years and was very certain that he was going to be returning to his home diocese. His office, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, was going to be merged with another office, the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Instead, Msgr. Tighe received the news that he was appointed a bishop and that he was going to serve as the assistant secretary of this newly formed Pontifical Council.
Bishop-Elect Tighe, it should be noted, is one of the Catholic Church’s experts in social communication, especially in terms of the digital age. It was he who helped spearhead the pope on Twitter, the Pope App and many other projects.
The appointment of Bishop Tighe is a recognition by the Holy Father that culture (and by that term, we do not only mean the world of the arts, but indeed, the environment in which we live) and the digital age are intrinsically tied. The Church desperately needs, not just for the sake of relevancy, but for the sake of the Gospel, to communicate wisely and well in the digital age.
The Diocese of Brooklyn is at the cutting edge of the Church’s media evangelization process with its DeSales Media Group. Publishing not only The Tablet, but also producing NET-TV and pioneering many web and social media projects, we in Brooklyn and Queens know that the way to dialogue, the way to evangelization, begins with meeting people where they are and helping to bring them to where they should be. Where the majority of people in the world do their communication is on the Internet and in social media. And this is where the Church needs to be.
The evangelists of our age are men and women like Bishop Robert Barron, Sister Helena Burns, F.S.P., Deacon Greg Kandra, Elizabeth Scalia and so many others who present the teachings of the Church in this modern areopagus that is the internet.
Pray for them and for all of us that we as a Church can continue to use – and will continue to understand – the Internet as a means of evangelization of our culture.
