The Catholic Church may refuse to join the 21st century when it comes to gender recognition, have less children and Gays are human beings issues but has embraced social networking, Twitter to be precise, in an act that can only be described as a coup that even touchy-feely Jesus may not have thought of.
The Catholic Church has a system of 'granted indulgences' whereby allocations are given to people who show remorse over their sinful selves to lessen the time they will have to spend in purgatory. Indulgences are mainly 'granted' (a verb that the Church seems to use)to believers who do things like climb the Sacred Steps in Rome. The updated version of 'granted' ( I don't know if this verb can be conjugated as in 'he grants', they grant' so I am going to stick to 'granted') will apply to the Catholic World Youth Day being held in Rio next week. Those who cannot attend in person for whatever reason (e.g a Catholic family with many children to feed that even a trip to the airport for the children to gawp at planes taking off and landing would be too expensive) and who follow the proceedings live on Twitter will be 'granted' (that word again) an indulgence. The only requirement is that people must pray with 'requisite devotion' while following the live stream.
What I want to know is how the Church will police the 'requisite devotion' part and how much time allowance will be granted? Will it work like the Big Society Time Banks (many of which have folded and there is a lesson there) where people exchanged favours for favours? How will this time be recorded and transmitted to hell so Satan knows when to turn the furnace off? Perhaps there are no furnaces in purgatory. I am getting my theology mixed up in an attempt to understand this confused act of the Vatican which embraces modernity in a way that only makes sense to non-questioning followers.
That's pretty harsh.
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