Bishop hails potential of the internet

By Antoine Lokongo
A SENIOR English bishop claimed this week that the internet will be an important means of evangelisation in the new millennium.
Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, a keen user of the new medium, told The Catholic Herald that the Church needed to seize the benefits of the internet.
"A good quality presence on the internet will increase awareness of the Church and of the Gospel," the bishop said in an e-mail.
However, he echoed the Archbishop of Canterbury's Easter warning that Britain was in danger of making a fetish of the internet.
"There are obvious dangers in the creation of 'virtual reality'," he said, "and in particular that people get so hooked onto their computer and that it begins to take over their life. Surfing the net can seriously damage your health. It can become a drug, blotting out reality — as addictive and as escapist as any other drug.
"This shouldn't, however, hide the potential for good of this valuable tool. We have to learn to use it well. All of us, and the Church as a whole, have a responsibility to develop a sufficient understanding of the medium so as to be able to develop an appropriate teaching about it."
Bishop Konstant encouraged Catholics to produce high quality sites with good, accurate, up-to-date content. "Sonic groups are very fundamentalist in their approach," he said. "An official Catholic site should he able to provide suitable balance. A poor use of the available. technology (and it is changing all the time) will put people off. This implies, also, that we must be prepared to resource websites adequately."
Bishop Konstant said the bishops of England and Wales may follow the lead of the United States' bishops who became the first in the world last year to issue guidance on the use of the internet in Catholic families.
"It is right to point to the dangers, but it would be unfortunate if that was all that was said," he commented. "We must be able to see what is good and valuable in the use of this modern tool."
At their Low Week meeting earlier this month the English and Welsh bishops called for every diocese to have its own official internet site by the end of the year.
They also called for every bishop and parish to have an email address and for each diocese to appoint a contact with responsibility for developing internet policy and liaising with the internet working group of the bishops' committee for communications.
The website of the Diocese of Leeds can be viewed at www.leeds-diocese.org.uk