INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) — Digital media offers the Catholic Church another opportunity to spread the good news of the Gospel, which is what faith calls Catholics to do, Vermont Bishop Christopher J. Coyne recently told a national gathering of young adults in Indianapolis, Ind.

“The church has done this from the beginning, using whatever means of communications that we could, from the letters of (St.) Paul to the printing press, to radio to television, and now to the Internet and digital media,” he told nearly 300 young adults.

“The church has seen these things as tools to spread the good news.”

Bishop Coyne heads the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, and is chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Communications.

He was a keynote speaker at the National Catholic Collegiate Conference, which is open to people ages 18-25 and held simultaneously with the National Catholic Youth Conference. The collegiate conference was cosponsored by the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and the National Federation for Youth Ministry.

In his talk, titled “Sharing the Good News: Using Social Media and Other Forms to Evangelize,” Bishop Coyne, a former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, called digital media a “neutral tool. It’s the content that makes things different.”

That content, he continued, is more than just the Internet, it’s social media, websites and videos, blogs, podcasts, images and text.

When asked why the Catholic Church needs to be present in digital media, he said, “It’s where Catholics and potential Catholics can be found.”