His holiness has beaten the ABC, Rowan Williams, on to Twitter. But can the infallible one learn to follow, as well as preach?
Alan Wilson of The Guardian had this take on the story:
Alleluia! The pope has won the race into digital space – well, ahead of the archbishop of Canterbury, for one. With his own fair finger the holy man not only typed in a message launching his new media agency, but hit the holy return key. Believe it.
Actually he’s not the first pope to tweet, just the first genuine pope. He already has an altar ego, @Pope_Vatican, who has told us all about his own eggs benedict and Dom Pérignon 60th jubilee in breathy confessional style – “Time for mass! Big shout out to #Prada for the vestments = fabulous! I love being #Pope watch me live on #ewtn in 5 minutes!”
If the pope is serious about this, he must be himself better than the army of impersonators out there already. If he gets others to speak for him, he will lose in authenticity anything he may hope to gain by trendiness.
He’s entering an environment he can’t control, in which any truth claims will be tested, and he’s as good as his last tweet. He’s got to learn to keep it short.
First big decision. Why is he doing this? Is it to humanise himself, by allowing us all to see the person within the role? That’s a noble aspiration but it does require a willingness to take risks, and a commitment to personal alignment.
I was asked once by a senior ecclesiastic for a bit of help because he was told his internet output made him look vain, arrogant and self-important. I sucked my pencil long and hard before suggesting a rather lame solution – “Have you thought of being less vain, arrogant and self-important?”
Next up, his holiness needs to decide who to follow. The field is currently wide open, as I see his address has issued 1,288 micro-diktats to its current 32,175 followers, but listens to nobody. No, really. It follows nobody.
This is a problem because social media are inherently interactive. If you don’t listen there’s no point turning up. Someone should tell his holiness. If they can get his ear.
The pope will need to start following people as well as expecting them to follow him. He could regard it as an opportunity to prove Isaiah Berlin’s notion that “It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right; have a magical eye which sees the truth, and that others cannot be right if they disagree”. A tall order, infallible one, but worth the effort.
Anyway, there’s a principle in the Rule of St Benedict that the wise abbot listens carefully to the whole community, taking special care to hear the youngest and most challenging. They may be mad, or the voice of God. How could you ever know if you simply suppressed it? I hope, on best Benedictine grounds, he won’t only be following the voices of those beholden to him.
So, here are one or two good follows: News people, of course, like @riazat_butt and @RuthieGledhill. Cranmer returned from the dead, @His_Grace, is not a great pope fan, but would fill him in on matters of the hour like Witney town council banning a pro-life celebration. For a real bishop, how about @nickbaines? To inspire and challenge his poetic soul, try @maggidawn. @SteveChalke will fill him in on the real world. @simonsarmiento is a good liberal Christian voice, and @PeterKerridge_ regularly tweets everything from awful jokes to newsbites from Premier Christian Radio. And not to forget the infallible source of comment, @GdnBelief.
He will of course follow @stephenfry. Everybody does. Shame he can’t follow @rowanwilliams because out there in digital space, where everybody can hear you scream, he doesn’t exist. Yet.