Most publications run a year-end series not unlike a “Top Posts of 2009.” Turns out that we are not above that sort of thing.  (Review #10-6 here.) 

The #5 posting of the year was published on August 6th.

Technology Procedural Recommendations

They have been a long time in development, but the Division of Youth and Young Adult Ministry in ArchBalt has finally released our Technology Procedural Recommendations.

The e-mail announcing this read:

In Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the Holy Father reminds us that “human freedom is authentic only when it responds to the fascination of technology with decisions that are the fruit of moral responsibility.”

Technology Procedural Recommendations have been developed to aid ministers and church/ school personnel and volunteers in determining appropriate boundaries in regards to their use of technology within their ministerial relationships.

You are encouraged to review them in light of any presently existing policies that your parish or school might already have in place.

Please call the attention of those adults with whom you minister to this document. 

You should free to do the same.

The topic of Technology and Ministry has been getting some interest while we were developing this. 

As recently as last Sunday, Archbishop Vincent Nichols (Westminster, England) said the sites are leading teenagers to build “transient relationships” which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse. He said the internet and mobile phones were

“dehumanising” community life.  His comments follow the death of 15-year-old schoolgirl who took a fatal overdose of painkillers last week after being bullied on Bebo, another networking site. Tim Rodgers from Granger Community Church offers a counter-argument to Archbishop Nichols here.

The Diocese of Phoenix addressed it in this event and technology and ministry have been discussed in the bloggosphere here and here, at national conferences, and even in a Catholic Review article featuring a quote from this blogger.

If you are aware of any other resources on this topic, please comment away.  Further, we would live to hear your comments on the TPR document as well.