The Catholic Church has developed a positive relationship with the Internet in an attempt to cultivate a clear understanding of the religion with the public. They have engineered a system of transparency and accessibility to draw believers in and educate those who have no prior experience with the Church.
Digital media and the Church, despite popular opinion, are mutually inclusive in an era of technological evolution. Pope John Paul II famously began this crusade to integrate the Catholic Church into the digital world, and his successors have continued this relationship with the internet and the faith. In her lecture (Catholic Digital Creatives as Emerging Religious Authorities in Digital Culture) at the University of Perugia, Dr. Heidi Campbell spoke of the Church’s “digital entrepreneurs” and “identity curators” who lead the Church’s movement in “adapting to the online world,” (Campbell 2019). Sites such as catholic.org and vaticannews.va have appeared as guides of the Church and its involvement in current events to increase the accessibility to knowledge for anyone with access to Google. Now, it is possible to research the core beliefs of the religion, analyze the actions of the Church in the news, or even view a Catholic mass from a laptop in your living room. While digitizing an entire faith heavily rooted in tradition may not be an ideal to encourage the active participation in community that is so significant to Catholicism, it is a step that the Church has chosen to foster a clear and simple base of understanding for the mass public.
Catholicism is one of the leading religions in internet engagement. The Church’s dedication to a promotion of knowledge and accessibility has led to a digital religious movement within one of the oldest and largest faiths in the world.
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