I mean, seriously, this thing is as much a dinosaur, a dumping-ground of technological relics, a static, disorganized, unfriendly, and anti-human entity as the worst pre-Vatican II churches.
Vatican.va needs a council--an aggiornamento of the official Web site of the Church that Christ founded. The Web site needs to practice some nouvelle technologie, some resourcement. Somebody over in Rome needs to remember what the Church is about, and what the Web is about, and they need to throw open the windows and let in the fresh air of PHP, proofread documents, uniform and efficient site structure, and for goodness sake let sfondo.jpg be anathema sit.
Let us condemn also the gnosticism of the hidden knowledge of where the front-page buttons go, until you move the mouse over them. Let us condemn the grammatical indifferentism that allows childish typos to remain for decades in the official online copy of Nostra Aetate. Let us condemn the modernism of a Web site that has illegitimately prioritized experience and feelings as the goals of its design and function. And let us condemn the Protestantism that has allowed multiple and redundant versions of documents to split off from the originals and float without purpose in a chaotic directory tree.
Let us reform the rampant corruption that has creeped into vatican.va; let us strip away the layers of paint and the accretions of age, to return to the noble simplicity of the early Web, focused on efficient data retrieval and communication.
Let us re-establish the importance of inter-Web site dialogue, and finally acknowledge that Web sites other than vatican.va exist, and that we ignore them at our peril. Without surrendering the unsurpassability of the Vatican database, let us reestablish lines of communication with our separated bretheren, the .coms and the .orgs, for the purpose of mutual understanding and enrichment, and the pursuit of common goals.
Let us call a council, and pray that we might be visited by the Spirit of vatican.va 2.0.
2 comments:
Is this a long standing concern among the more academically adept and philosophically astute of us Roman Catholics?
Or is this all yours?
The only reason I ask is because I wholeheartedly agree with you. And I was wondering if you would commit something to paper to pass before your colleagues thereby creating a unanimous concern that the bishop could relay to Pope Benedict XVI?
Is there anything being done currently to form a council to this end? Because I believe you possess the prowess to impel the Church toward the creation of a council.
The link to the background made me laugh. I knew you were being quasi-facetious.
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