Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston has a new blog. It’s an experiment and the initial impetus is a travelogue of his trip to Rome over the next 10 days. He will be writing daily reports about his trip, which include him taking possession of his titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria. There’s not much there yet, except a few photos, but his first post is expected today.
According to the Boston Globe, O’Malley will write his own entries, but a staffer will post it for him and add photographs. An expert quoted by the Globe wonders whether it will be a true blog—O’Malley’s candid expression of his thoughts in a conversation with readers—or if it will just be a series of press release-style statements similar to what you could hear at a news conference.
I think it’s a refreshing change, something I think more bishops should be doing. As it is now, most Catholics receive communications from their bishops filtered through the news media. Sure, there are diocesan newspapers, but readership is declining and, in Boston at least, skews heavily toward a much older demographic. Blogging can put a bishop in direct contact with a much younger and higher tech audience.
It’s pretty certain that O’Malley is the first blogging cardinal. I know that some bishops in the Philippines have been blogging for some time now, but does anybody know about any other blogging American bishops?
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By the prose style, you can tell that the text isn’t being screened by an editor. That makes it, um, very authentic.
Now, why didn’t they call Jeff to do the webpage design? It would have been much better.