Oh Pope, What Were You Thinking?

The Montreal Gazette reports that the Pope is afraid that new technology will confuse people.

"New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality," the pope said. 

"The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual word, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards real life," he said.

He said the use of new technologies should set off "an alarm bell."

I'm not sure how this lines up with his previous comments in support of priests using digital communication to share the gospel. It seems like an about-face to me.

What really frustrates me is the logic here. Somehow our brains will shut down and be unable to process the difference between what's real and what's not. This is the same logic used when movies were invented, or television, or just about any new technology. Our brains are fantastic at adapting and learning the rules of the new media. We'll be fine, Mr. Pope, we'll be fine.

See, the Pope gets it, I don't know why everyone else doesn't

In his address for World Communication Day (I guess that's a thing now) the Pope encouraged priests to use social media and the internet to spread the gospel.

"Priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel,” the Pope said. Toward that end, he added, priests and seminarians should be trained “to use these technologies in a competent and appropriate way.”

Ok, let me spell this out for you. The Pope (the 82 year old leader of the Roman Catholic Church) is encouraging priests to use the internet to spread the good news. What excuse could you possibly have to not get online?

I think one of the most important things he said was that people need to have internet skills that are "competent and appropriate." Too often people get their hands on the technology and just start using it because they can instead of learning about it first. Even the Pope realizes that people need to learn how to use this technology before starting to use it.

What's your excuse for not learning how to use technology well?