Blogging+-+What+Does+the+Church+Have+to+Say+About+Blogging?

Assignment # 2

Expected time to complete reading and the written assignment: 15 - 45 minutes

Your assignment for this segment is to post a SHORT reflection about what you learned from the [|RomeReports.com]video. Review the list of [|150 bloggers]invited to the blogger's summit in Rome. The posts would be made in May 2011. Notice the varied languages of the blogs. Pick a blog and look for posts that these bloggers added to their blogs regarding the conference.

What are you learning about the Vatican's first-ever conference in Rome for bloggers from the blogger perspective? From the RomeReport.com perspective?

Post your response to the question below using the following format:

Question: What are you learning about the Vatican first-ever conference in Rome from each perspective?

Mitchell || allows for a variety of opinions to be shared. Did notice a large percentage of the voices were male. Lynn, I too, found no posts concerning Romereports, frustrating, I went back to Feb on one post never mentioned anything. What may be happening is the posts may no longer exist. This event happened over a year ago and sometime posts are automatically deleted after a certain period of time. || Will open up new avenues to connect with people around the world. || Liwski || I have just spent a frustrating 11/2 hours searching all the English sites for some comment about the conference. Found one picture of blogger with three nuns he met at the conference. That's it! || It's great that the Vatican is so involved in the social media - recognizing it's importance world wide. ||
 * YOUR NAME || BLOGGER PERSPECTIVE || ROMEREPORT.COM PERSPECTIVE ||
 * Susan Ajoc || Opportunity from a grassroots level to share non-traditional (non-institutional) perspective on faith || Could __#|help__ to provide the connection between the institution of Church and faithful; looking to bridge the communication gap ||
 * Mary Miller || Opportunity for the Vatican to appreciate the variety of approaches, interests, concerns from the "bottom up" as opposed to "from the top down". || Opportunity to dialogue with and affirm those who are "out there" in __#|social media__ to ensure the Catholic Christian presence the Church desires. ||
 * Sherry Foecking || An unequalled chance for Catholics of all backgrounds to share views in a contemporary way. || Communication with the Faithful (and not so Faithful) as never before possible as well as providing guidelines to maintain the Catholic presence. ||
 * Rachele Deering || This happens to be a once in a life experience where you can communicate and express your feedback with the Vatican regarding spreading God's word in any language. || This is an exciting way to spread the word with believers and non-believers in a forum that will allow the bloggers to express their point of view. ||
 * Janet
 * Janet
 * Lynn E || I must be doing something wrong because I searched 3 of the participants blogs for a considerable amount of time and could not find **one** post that had anyting to do with the Romereports. || global outreach to the young. ||
 * Dale B. || I'm with Janet. It appears that there may be more male bloggers. many look to be quite young as well. But good to see religious grabbing the technology. One blogger spoke of two categories: professional journalists and enthusiastic amateurs, and how questions about __#|accreditation__ and copyright was of more concern to the professionals. || Opportunity to reach large numbers of the people who are already using the __#|technology__. ||
 * Kevin H || Bloggers that I reviewed saw this as a wonderful opportunity to meet each other and interact with the Vatican and the Church. There was amazement at the level of committment the Vatican has toward embracing the digital world and how the church can use technology. || Will enable communication the massive number of bloggers as well provide avenues for growth as the number of bloggers increase. Also it is apparent in the second session that the Vatican would like __#|to insure__ Catholic Teachings are accurate and facilitate a means for them to be part. ||
 * sue s. || Like Lynn, I didn't find posts from the bloggers re: the conference specifically. I did however enjoy their blogs. The abundance of great resources is both exciting and overwhelming, just reading one blogger takes a good bit of time! We've become so efficient and global that our circles are ever increasing making it very hard to keep up. || How fun is that? The conference in Rome was grand, but it's one more example of how very behind we are, I can't believe this just happened in April of 11! ||
 * Nina
 * Sybil Steuart || Anna Arco a writer for the Catholic Herald had a long article on the conference. She feels that it's a starting point and is hopeful about its possibiilities. she questioned the absence of African participants. Does this mean the 3rd World church would be left out of blogging? || The Church never moves in a hurry, that's for sure. what have they done since 4-11 I would also be interested in knowing if there are any Catholic Asian bloggers since none seemed to be evident on the list of invitees. ||
 * Barbara ErettI || It was difficult to find among the list those who took the time to blog about the conference after returning....I think that has to do with the down time that is required after attending a conference that fills you with much knowledge..it takes time to process how to use the information and where i fit into the bigger picture.... I did notice many of the bloggers were men.... I am sure the women bloggers would have written a lot more about what they got out of the conference || As far as Asia is concerned...I cam agross this news source.... among the invitees of bloggers...it is a blog about asias news source..... It was quite interesting.....[[image:http://www.ucanews.com/wp-content/themes/layers/images/header_icon.gif caption="Catholic Church News" link="http://www.ucanews.com/"]] ||
 * K.M. Kirkpatrick || Quite frankly I got tired of looking for comments about the conference but I did find a very interesting blog by a young Irish womanTHE PATH LESS TAKEN http://thepathlesstaken7.blogspot.com/ I bookmarked this blog. I intend to return to read when I'm not rushed to complete assignments. || The report stated that blogging is the way to communicate with young people and to communicate among themselves ||
 * Ruth E Manlandro || I found a blog from a family in Delaware. The mother home schools the children and uses the blog as a means of communication.l like that the Vatican is realizing that Blogging is a meaningful means of communication in today's world. || The Vatican is realizing that social media is here to stay. The best way to communicate with people is using the means of communication that is popular. I wish that Parishes and Dioceses would realize this and get on the bandwagon. ||

Acker Mobley || I found this to be the hardest of the assignments with to much info to go through one site I read the entire thing around the time and she never even shared anything. I did read one who was concerned about what this was going to mean for the poor. Most seemed to have a good experience and it is nice to see the Vatican get with the times. || The Vatican seems to see this as a way to connect more with youth and young adults. || I also thought it interesting the Catholic News Service blog does not mention the meeting at all. || The Rome Reports video gave me the impression that blogging is a kind of media that is finally gaining the attention of Rome. Wrong impression, perhaps? It surely gave the sense that the Vatican is jumping on board with these 150 individuals (blogs) that have discovered a way to successfully reach an audience with their journeys of faith. Love that this is a method of communication that is so easy, so non-committal for non-Catholics to “come and see” so freely and namelessly. The key for any blogger then will be to move the non-Catholic blog-stalker to move from curiosity to commitment. ||
 * Amy
 * Eulogio Olivo-Rivera || I found the Padrenuestro.net. A Spanish speaking blog that informs Catholics of the latest activities or happenings in Spain, specially, the Archdiocese of Madrid. What attracted me the most is the video productions in the blog. It is like going into a TV station and looking at the prime time news in your city. This form of blog reporting is informal yet entertaining. When we speak of the youth, many in the world make a big mistake giving no agency to this group, nevertheless, this group is the future of the Church today. Tis blog alludes to this fact very clearly. || For good or for bad, the Catholic Church is going to be in the minds of millions through history, no matter what media it's wexpressed on. In this activity were meeting to gather more inside, with Church officials of the different ways the blog can help others encounter the teachings of the Mother Church. To young people, and not so young, we are all involved. It's the digital era. ||
 * Mary Jane Spirk || It is somewhat paradoxical that the Vatican is so forward thinking in taking advantage of the airways in spreading the gospel, but not so forward in applying and adapting the same gospel to the modern world. || http://kathyschiffer.com This is a very quirky blogsite written by obviously a very quirky, but loveable woman. It was interesting to see life through her point of view ||
 * Ana Munoz || Some bloggers were surprised they were invited to the meeting but happy to be there, including the author of the blog: Desperate Irish Housewife! Very cool, I think! || I think, that dividing the meeting in two parts was a very smart strategy. For the first part, they invited bloggers from different backgrounds, Catholics and non Catholics. That way they could explore first hand what is out there. And in the second part, limited to catholic bloggers, I thiwithy hey discussed ideas about blogging that they could used specifically from the catholic stand point of view. ||
 * Jen McIlveen || One blogger, Thomas Peters, American Papist, said this is a good way to improve dialog with the catholic church. || Good way to reach out to the youth, and also to spread the message of the Gospel to people who may have never heard it. Blogging and digital media, however, can not replace the sacraments. Both sides agreed that each needs the other. ||
 * Ginny Nolan || I found Jane Mossendew's blog, "Thoughts from a Catholic Oasis" to be interesting. She was skeptical before attending but found that the Vatican's intentions seemed to be genuine. She thought there was too much emphasis on social media (FB and Twitter) as blogs can be archived and revisited. She said that "the Vatican had set the blogosphere off on then next stage of its missions." || The Church seems to recognize the importance and the need to use blogging for an avenue of communication to the world. ||
 * Lori Crawford || On the blog A Reluctant Sinner the blogger makes a brief mention of the Blogging conference. Included in the May 5th post is a video from Rome Reports worth watching for more insight into the vital importance of blogging to the modern world..
 * Karen Heaphy || I did not read the comments from other digital disciples before doing this assignment. I found it frustrating that I could not find the comments on the bloggers gathering and thought that perhaps because time had lapsed I had missed out. What I found facinating about the names and locations of the blogs, it appeared that they were not all English speaking but were from around the world. Social media certainly makes the world a smaller place. || The Rome report echoed what we have been reflecting on in this program, that to be evangelizers we must use the tools that people communicate with. And in today's world that is blogging! ||
 * Kelli Bonner || I took Lori's tip, thus visited //A Reluctant Sinner// for a ceratin comment from a blogger. He was honored and thrilled to have been a part of it all. There were other goings-on for the beatification of JPII, so his experience was especially heightened by prayer and spiritual history as the bloggers stepped into the spiritual future. He even founded a guild of Catholic bloggers upon his return home. || The //Rome Report// viewed this meeting of bloggers as necessity born of th efforts to reach out globally and to the youth of all nations. ||
 * Ann Ferguson || As I'm posting this I just saw Kelly picked A Reluctant Sinner also. Great writing and he was pleased with the position the Vatican has taken in opening up to what appears to have been a healthy cross section of bloggers from around the world. Another one I look into was Sacro Profano that had an article by journalist Gianfranco Ravasi touting the need of unhindered open communication on both parts in order to have frank exchange of ideas. Lastly, I also liked Desperate Irish Housewife, possibly because of the title (also like the other two titles...)and her wit and light style made for entertaining reading. She thoroughly enjoyed being at the conference, marveling at having been invited and then reveling in our wonderful church's approach to keep up with the modality of the times. How things have changed! || The Rome Report stated a sound mission for the conference - that of connecting with those who have the expertise, the passion and interest in using this medium, committing to an open dialogue. ||