does God understand social media?

bible_mouse

While being a life-long (mostly always) practicing Catholic, I try not to get into too many religious discussions here because that’s not the point of this blog. My beliefs are mine, your beliefs are yours and I’ve always been of the mind that there’s nothing wrong with that (what’s right for me is right for ME).

But what I will write here now will touch on Catholicism and you’ll get the context no matter your beliefs. I think it will, however, make you wonder no matter your belief system. Or maybe you’ll care not a smidge.

Wednesday, I was trying to look up the phone number of the very famous (Father Nelson Baker, known as the “Apostle of Charity” created it) and beautiful (please take a tour) Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna, NY as I have some pending marketing business there. Being a web guy, I tried to do a quick Google search to find the phone number (because the phone book is so last century).

While searching, up came this article from the Buffalo News about Catholics not going to confession much today. The pastor at OLV was featured in the article which is why it came up in the search. I hadn’t seen the article and so I read it.

Now a brief primer on Catholic confession for the unfamiliar: considered an important Sacrament in the faith, Catholics meet with a priest in a room called the confessional to privately confess their mortal (gravely wrong desires, thoughts, words and actions performed with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will) sins and venial ( not grave, not committed with knowledge nor was it deliberate) sins. After discussion with the priest about the sins, there is usually absolution bestowed upon the confessor by the priest. (NOTE: there’s way more to confession than this – but this is a blog post, not a seminary class).

Back to my point, if you haven’t already changed channels, being that in this April, 2009 newspaper article on confession there was a wonderful quote from Rev. Richard Husted, pastor of St. Bonaventure Church in Allegany, who said about confession: “If you were sitting down having a cup of coffee with the Lord, what would he want to talk about?”

That struck a chord with me and I thought I would throw it out there on the net because I thought it would be thoughtful for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. I figured I’d throw some perspective in there for folks etc.

So I paste the quote “If you were sitting down having a cup of coffee with the Lord, what would he want to talk about?” into my ping account and I look to see it was exactly 140 characters. Not 139, not 141 but 140 on the nose which is the maximum character count you can use on Twitter. I could offer no perspective, no color commentary because there wasn’t room….just the quote. So maybe I was not supposed to comment. I was just supposed to post it and see what happened

So I did.

<em>audio'connell Twitter post, 7/8/09</em>

audio'connell Twitter post, 7/8/09

I got some comments back and I specifically shut up, I didn’t respond. I decided that my job was just to expand the concept of the quote to a wider audience and let the conversation begin, good-bad-indifferent.

I just cannot get past the fact that the quote was kind in nature, thoughtful in content and exactly 140 characters in length.

Does God understand Social Media? I think I know the answer but I would be interested in your thoughts.

3 Responses to “does God understand social media?”

  1. […] post: does God understand social media? Tagged as: always-been, beliefs, der, here-because, market-online, nothing-wrong, other-half, past, […]

  2. Pretty cool, Peter!
    And Yes, I do believe she does. 😉

    And the answer to: “If you were sitting down having a cup of coffee with the Lord, what would he want to talk about?”

    You.

    Meaning the person sitting in front of him, and what you can do to better the world.

  3. Hi Liz,

    Wouldn’t it be great if that were the conversation.

    But I think if he was talking to me, he start his review in my high school years and maybe stop yelling by the time we reviewed my forties….MAYBE!

    Best always,
    – Peter