CorpComms Magazine

Roman Catholic priests in North America should go forth and tweet or risk becoming irrelevant, a church leader told the country's general assembly meeting of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop Ronald Herzog likened social media to 'a new digital universe' that is just waiting to be evangelised.

He added: 'Anybody can create a blog. Everybody's opinion is valid. And if a question or contradiction is posted, the digital natives (bloggers) expect a response and something resembling a conversation.

'We can choose not to enter into that cultural mindset, but we do so at great peril to the church's credibility and approachability in the minds of natives, those who are growing up in this new culture.'

Bishop Herzog said that social media is 'causing as fundamental a shift in communications patterns and behaviour as the printing press did 500 years ago', adding: 'I don't think I have to remind you what happened when the Catholic Church was slow to adapt to that new technology.'

The printing press was a driving force behind the Reformation, which led to a schism in the Catholic Church and the establishment of Protestantism as a branch of Christianity.

Bishop Herzog is not the first ordained Catholic minister to embrace social media. Pope Benedict has a Facebook page, Twitter account and even an iPhone app, Pope2You, while in Australia, a nun tweets on behalf saint-in-waiting Mary MacKillop.

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