Pope Tweets, Some don't get it

When the Phar­isees heard that he had silenced the Sad­ducees, they gath­ered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking,

“Teacher, which com­mand­ment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great­est and the first commandment.

The sec­ond is like it: You shall love your neigh­bor as your­self. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:34 – 40

There was quite a bit of fuss when the Pope Bene­dict XVI got an actual twit­ter account where he would tweet directly to the faith­ful. Actu­ally 7 accounts in lan­guages from Ger­man to Ara­bic) with a low of 8070 fol­low­ers in Ara­bic to 728083 in Eng­lish, a com­bined on 1m124301 fol­low­ers as of 7:41 AM EST on Wednesday.

Today the Holy Father sent out his first highly antic­i­pated tweets in fact he sent three, here they are:

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twit­ter. Thank you for your gen­er­ous response. I bless all of you from my heart.

— Bene­dict XVI (@Pontifex) Decem­ber 12, 2012

OK start­ing with a basic greet­ing to all, makes sense, but now here comes…the MESSAGE:

How can we cel­e­brate the Year of Faith bet­ter in our daily lives?

— Bene­dict XVI (@Pontifex) Decem­ber 12, 2012

This being the newly declared litur­gi­cal year of faith…here it comes.…

By speak­ing with Jesus in prayer, lis­ten­ing to what he tells you in the Gospel and look­ing for him in those in need

— Bene­dict XVI (@Pontifex) Decem­ber 12, 2012

A sim­ple clear and suc­cinct way of describ­ing what to do as a Christian.

The mes­sage (in Eng­lish) received over 5000 re-​tweets in the first hour and good responses from the faith­ful, there are some who were not impressed.

Meet Stephan Faris

Here is his twit­ter profile

My first intro­duc­tion to Mr. Faris was this tweet in response to the Pope today that was re-​tweeted by some­one I follow:

Let no one say that @pon­tifex doesn’t know how to deliver an anticlimax

— Stephan Faris (@stephanfaris) Decem­ber 12, 2012

Anti-​Climax? It seemed to me as the vicar of Christ the Pope was deliv­er­ing the basic mes­sage that he is charged with deliv­er­ing: How to fol­low Christ. So I asked Mr. Faris what he expected and he answered:

@dat­e­chguy­blog @blake­houn­shell @pon­tifex An answer to more than one ques­tion. And some­thing I couldn’t have writ­ten myself.

— Stephan Faris (@stephanfaris) Decem­ber 12, 2012

And THAT tweet says an awful lot.

For­get­ting for a moment the con­fines of 140 char­ac­ters per tweet. Mr. Faris objects to the sim­ple mes­sage that “he could have writ­ten him­self”. I ask: how often have you writ­ten it? How often have you thought about that sim­ple mes­sage in terms of your own life?

There are a lot of peo­ple today who don’t under­stand faith, who don’t under­stand the Church and only see Chris­tian­ity in gen­eral and the Catholic Church in par­tic­u­lar through the sec­u­lar pro­gres­sive lens. Their only expo­sure to the Church is the NYT edi­to­r­ial page or from those who dis­sent from out­side or from within.

To such peo­ple the con­cept that peo­ple might actu­ally fol­low the Church and be Chris­t­ian because they believe it to be true (which is the only rea­son to be a Chris­t­ian in gen­eral and a Catholic in par­tic­u­lar) is totally for­eign to them. To them Chris­tian­ity and the divin­ity of Christ is just a con, believ­ers are rubes and the pur­pose of the Chris­tian­ity is to keep them that way.

So to these enlight­ened elites, the con­cept of using a plat­form reach­ing over a mil­lion peo­ple instantly to rein­force the con­sis­tent mes­sage of Christ and the Gospel, love of God and love of your fel­low man, is totally beyond their ken.

In real­ity help­ing peo­ple find Christ IS the pri­mary job of the Pope and all Priests from the hum­blest friar to the most cel­e­brated Car­di­nal. This is the mes­sage and pur­pose of the Church for 20 centuries.

The mes­sage of Christ, like the ten com­mand­ments, is sim­ple, but because it is sim­ple it’s very hard to fol­low, and needs to be rein­forced when­ever possible.

Most twit­ter accounts are about the peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tion who have them, the pur­pose of my account is to pro­mote me, keep me in touch and aid me in mak­ing my liv­ing. That’s not what the Pope is shoot­ing for. His pur­pose is not for his own aggran­dize­ment but to spread the good news of Christ for the sal­va­tion of any who hear it.

I expect most of the Pope’s tweets to be along sim­i­lar lines, and I also sus­pect they will pro­duce the same con­fu­sion and dis­ap­point­ment among our sec­u­lar media friends as this mes­sage did, I’d be sur­prised if it gen­er­ates much else.

But I’m sure the Holy Father thinks and prays oth­er­wise. His faith is much stronger than mine.

Update: And here is why it mat­ters so much