Comments on: Benedict and Vatican Culture

By: Mike Walsh, MM

Mike Walsh, MM — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:17:06 +0000

Warren writes: “At every level, from the parish priest up, the government of the Church must be taken back by those under holy vows, from those who are not, & never were nor will be.” I’m not sure what he means by this. If the problem is the eurotrash occupants of Church bureaucracy, or the broader Gramscian march through her institutions, these both involve people under holy vows, however faithfully observed. And maybe the photo-op is simply a way of backtracking from a misinterpreted statement about “reliance” on technological gadgetry. Nothing in the Faith proscribes the ipad, after all, where I, for example, have read more than one work by Joseph Ratzinger.

By: Maureen Mullarkey

Maureen Mullarkey — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 03:30:44 +0000

Sinister is not the word, Paul. Contradictory might be better. The announcement of
Benedict’s Twitter presence came within a few short weeks of his broadcast warning
against reliance on technological gadgetry.

By: Wolf Paul

Wolf Paul — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:14:29 +0000

(please merge with previous comment)
… fads; it is likely twitter and social media were discussed and their use in evangelism etc evaluates. Then someone offers to show the Pope the new gadget lots of people use for this … I see nothing sinister in that, nor in the fact that he does not seem familiar with the iPad.

By: Wolf Paul

Wolf Paul — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:10:16 +0000

Without wishing to refute or contradict either David Warren’s or Maureen Mullarkey’s suspicions about the Vatican bureaucracy I think that too much is being read into this photograph.

Nobody suggested, to my knowledge, that the decision to set up a twitter account was entirely and exclusively the Pope’s idea, nor that he decided on his own to use an iPad for this.

With a workload like his, and considering his age and background, I don’t suppose B16 keeps up with technological

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:42:56 +0000

Guide. Demonstrate. Call it what you like. The point remains that the pope appears here as the passive recipient of instruction on a iPad. It seems out of sync with a scholar’s need to engage in discourse—not just tweet.

By: TCM

TCM — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:47:36 +0000

I don’t see his hand being “guided”. It looks to me like he has two hands on the tablet margins and whoever that is, is showing him something.

By: Sue M

Sue M — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:12:31 +0000

Perhaps “expontiff” would be a more appropriate Twitter handle.