Bishops, Bloggers To Dialogue In ‘Encounter With Social Media’

WASHINGTON—U.S. bishops will address the changing world of social media and its implications for the Church in a discussion with bloggers and other social media users in Baltimore, November 11. "An Encounter With Social Media: Bishops and Bloggers Dialogue" will precede the annual Fall General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

"We hope this event yields fruitful discussion and a deeper understanding of how social media and the Church can enrich one another," said Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Communications and moderator of the event.

The encounter will feature a new study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), "Catholic New Media Use in the United States, 2012," and responses to the study by a panel. Panelists include Bishop Christopher Coyne, auxiliary bishop and apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis; Rocco Palmo, author of the blog Whispers in the Loggia; Mary DeTurris Poust, a Catholic journalist, author and blogger; and Terry Mattingly, author of the syndicated column On Religion and the blog Get Religion.

"Bishops and Bloggers" continues the discussion begun at the Vatican's April 2011 conference for bloggers, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Pontifical Council for Culture. The USCCB Department of Communications and the Catholic Communication Campaign are sponsors of the November 11 event.

The public sessions of the bishops' Fall General Assembly, November 12-13, will be live streamed at www.usccb.org/about/leadership/usccb-general-assembly/. Speeches and other documentation will also be available. Live updates of the meeting will appear on Facebook (www.facebook.com/USCCB) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/USCCBLive).

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Keywords: bishops, bloggers, dialogue, "An Encounter with Social Media," social media, blogs, new media, CARA, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Bishop John Wester, Bishop Christopher Coyne, Rocco Palmo, Mary DeTurris Poust, Terry Mattingly, Whispers in the Loggia, Get Religion, USCCB, November meeting, Catholic Communication Campaign

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