Disseminating the Word of God : online Evangelisation

Abstract

In the emerging digital culture, the Catholic Church has been struggling to concretize its vision for a “new evangelisation”. Within this context, as the Church in its several pronouncements on the New Evangelisation has stated, the use of the new media has an important role to play in order to reach every person with the message of salvation. This dissertation explores how this message of salvation can reach all “the ends of the earth” as all people encounter Christ through new media. Divided in three parts, the dissertation begins by portraying the history of appropriating effective means for evangelisation in the Church. The Church always adopted new forms of communication as they became available to bring the Good News to the world and its challenge is to do the same in our times. The second chapter explains what are the new media, the new culture they are creating, and the Church’s response to them as it can be gleaned through its documents on social communication. The last chapter suggests concrete ways how the Church can continue implementing its mission to “go out” and “find the lost sheep” in the digital age. It presents this pastoral strategy in seven key steps that can be adopted by Christian communities, such as parish communities, to evangelise effectively in a digital world.