The hip new Pope declared today what the rest of us who are well-versed in the art of Google-stalking have known for years— the Internet is a gift bestowed to us mortals not from Al Gore, but from The Big Celestial Being in the Sky.
In a message to his followers this morning, Pope Francis announced that the World Wide Web is "something truly good, a gift from God" that can help facilitate dialogue. "To [have a] dialogue means to believe that the 'other' has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective," Francis wrote in the 1,200 word message. "Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the pretense that they alone are valid and absolute."
But history's hippest Holy Father warns that we should be using the Internet for good and not evil. And for the love of God, cool it with the subtweets: "The speed with which information is communicated exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgment, and this does not make for more balanced and proper forms of self-expression," he said. "We need, for example, to recover a certain sense of deliberateness and calm. This calls for time and the ability to be silent and to listen."
What are the chances we can get @Pontifex on Reddit for a little AMA action?
