After doing some online research, I found out that lots of parishes are struggling with Social Media and their proper use. On Catholic Tech Talk I found a suggestion about creating a Parish Social Media Policy. I honestly never considered doing that. First, because I don’t like red tape and creating all kinds of manuals people never read and second because I was naive enough to assume young people were smart enough to figure out how to use the new tools they were using in their personal lives already.

If you are a parish and you think about getting a website and social media accounts, ask yourself the question why you need that. Sometimes it seems that parishes get blogs and Twitter accounts because everybody has them. In those cases it’s only natural that they won’t be used because nobody has a clear idea what to do with them. Or, people who use a social media account may start to think they ‘own’ it because they have the login credentials.
In our case, when the person using our twitter account with all it followers became inactive, it meant that nobody had access to that account anymore. We got no response after asking the login credentials and had to give up the account. We ended up creating a new one, but in doing so we lost all followers from the old account. This made me realise that a social media policy is very important to have for parishes, if only for the sake of continuity.

When setting up blogs, social media accounts and even e-mail addresses, it’s important that those using it are fully aware of the fact that it’s not theirs, that personal opinions cannot be shared on that account and that administrators are able to log in and see what is being written. This also applies to e-mail. I would encourage people using an official parish e-mail address to only use that for parish-related affairs and keep personal correspondence in their private account.

In the upcoming weeks I will try to write a digital communication policy for our parish. In the meanwhile I’m curious to other people’s experiences with the use (and abuse) of digital communication in their parishes or dioceses.

First I don’t want to bother my visitors to sign up for yet another service. I know I am reluctant myself to go through a whole sign-up procedure for a site just to get a question answered. My guess is that most of my visitors are like me. Instead, I rather go to social platforms they already use and create a presence there. Whenever they want to take part in a conversation, they can do so without any sign-up procedures. If they like my content, they can choose to follow me on Twitter or like me on Facebook.

The second reason why we did not want to host a social platform (like BuddyPress) ourselves is the amount of extra work for it creates for site administrators. There’s extra software to update, more content to moderate and more spammers to ban from your site. Our ministry has a lot of work already and not enough people for all the existing work.

With both of these arguments in the back of my mind I started our social media presence. I use both Facebook (as a page, not as an account, read here why) and Twitter. Twitter allows you to post tweets to your organisation’s Facebook page. There are good reasons to do it, and there are also good reasons NOT to do this. When you create a Facebook page and let Twitter copy updates, the page will show the visitor that it is a tweet from Twitter. You won’t appear in a news feed’s highlights and you will suggest that your page is inactive, since you are not posting directly to it. Twitter and Facebook are used in different way by different audiences. Keep this in mind when using them.

I use Facebook for all kinds of interactions, most importantly for sharing ‘events’. It is hidden, but in the back side of your page there is a section called ‘apps’. ‘Event’ is one of them. What it does is creating a calendar entry where you can announce an activity, give a brief description what it is. Before posting to your profile, you can invite a number of followers who can opt to RSVP. This way you will get an idea how many people you can expect and you won’t need to hassle with sign-up forms. Your followers will also be able to share your invitation with their friends, giving the activity exposure to people who aren’t even following you!

Right now, our Facebook page is quickly becoming our social hub, where people can ask questions, share their pictures taken on one of our events, point us to links they find interesting and take polls on what they want us to organise. It is becoming a quick way for them to find out what is going on and for us it is a great way to find out what they are passionate about.

Towns and villages have put up Christmas decorations and garlands made of pine branches which are covered with little white lights. Christmas songs are playing in the stores and the only thing that’s lacking is snow. These are days where I like to bundle up with a hot drink and when I really yearn for comfort food. Today I made snert, which is typical Dutch food for these type of days. I want to share the recipe with you, but I don’t know if all ingredients are available overseas, too.

Ingredients

• 350 grams (1 1/2 cup) split peas
• 300 grams pork chops (a little bit under 1 lb.)
• 100 gram diced smoked bacon (about 1/4 of a pound)
• 500 grams (1.1 lb.) of vegetables for split pea soup: leek, carrot, celeriac, celeriac leaves. Be careful with the celeriac as it can be quite overpowering, usually I do 40% leek, 50% carrot, 10% celeriac + leaves.
• 1 big potato, peeled and diced.
• 1 bay leaf
• Dutch smoked sausage (‘rookworst’)

Directions

Use a strainer to wash the split peas, they will have a lot of dust in it. Wash until the water that comes off the strainer is clear. Take a big pot and add the peas, pork chops (whole), smoked bacon, 1.75 liters of water (that’s about two quarts, a bit less) , a bay leaf and a pinch of salt. Wait until it boils, turn down the heat and let it cook for about 30 minutes.

Peel the potato if you haven’t done so already and dice it up, add the diced potato and the vegetables to the soup. Continue cooking for another 30 minutes and stir from time to time.

Remove the sausage from the package and add it to the soup. Cook for another 10 minutes. Then, take a fork and fish the sausage, the pork chops and the bay leaf out of the soup and cut it into small pieces on a chopping board, remove all the bones from the pork chops and put the minced meat back in the soup. Make sure everything is warm and add salt and pepper to taste. Some people like to serve the soup as it is, others want to make it look smooth using an immersion blender to blend it. Personally I like it to stay the way it is.

Serve the soup together with rye bread topped with real butter and bacon. The type of bacon we eat on rye bread is called ‘katenspek’, after the houses of poor workers which would eat this type of meat because they couldn’t afford to buy more expensive kinds of meat.

I started playing the game because I am on the “Secrets of Middle-earth” panel. We have listeners from all over the world, from all time zones. This is why we play on the Elendilmir server, the unofficial Oceanic server. We even have our own kinship on there. Playing on this server has the advantage that there are no real quiet hours, but for me the disadvantage is that everybody seems to be focused on playing and leveling. My kin leader and I are the only European players around at this moment, which limits what you can do. We usually end up questing together, but have to skip anything that is meant for a full group of six.When you hit level cap and are almost at level cap with another character playing the same solo and small fellowship content, life gets boring after a while. I needed a change.

I heard lots of great stories about the unofficial role-playing server, Landroval, which made me create a captain over there, not a lore master. The idea behind this was that I was going to role play as my main activity over there, and a lore-master didn’t fit in my story. I also liked the idea to start a blogging series about the adventures of this character written in prose from her point of view.

Soon after I started playing this woman captain called Saelthil, I discovered how great the captain class is. It has a lot of similarities with the lore-master, but it’s also very different at the same time. You also have a pet, called a herald, which has the same user interface as the lore-master pet, but it’s more simple. Every kind of herald has the same skills whereas a lore-master’s animal friend has specific skills which are useful in specific situations. A lore-master has a vast range of tactical skills, whereas most of the captain’s skills are melee skills or shouts/cries. Finally, a captain wears heavy plated armor which is a contrast with the lore-master who only wears light armor robes.

These differences make that I have to rethink how I engage my enemies. At first I would get a heart attack if I would be mobbed by three monsters, but I know now I probably will survive a situation like that. Also, playing in a group is vastly different. I don’t hang in the back putting monsters asleep to keep them from fighting or rooting them to the ground, but I stand in the front line, often right next to the tank. I kill the weaker mobs to unlock my defeat responses. Every time an enemy dies, I have the option to do a group heal, a group buff or debuff (demoralize) the enemy. My herald fights at my side holding a banner that gives the group a certain buff, like extra morale or in-combat power regeneration. I can summon various heralds which will have various buffs. If I don’t like the idea of having a pet running around I can plant a banner on the ground which has the same buffs, but the downside is that a banner isn’t as mobile as a pet holding it.

So here I am, running group content, skirmishes and instances with a full fellowship, completing quests I skipped before because I couldn’t find a group for it. It is like I am playing a different version of the same game, it is so different and so much more fun! I haven’t done a lot of role playing yet, but I know that I have a new favorite server and a favorite class right now. I still like the lore master, but she has serious competition from my captain now.

Do you play “The Lord of the Rings Online”? What is your favorite race and class? What server are you on?

I am amazed that the woman didn’t keel over. That was what I would have done. The “What’s the matter, mommy” is priceless. And the “It’s like a snowman puked all over my living room.”

Somehow they found us by searching the Internet for a Catholic Church. Our student parish website ranks high in the Google Search results, so that’s how they ended up at my house enjoying a great meal and Catholic Bible Study with peers. I know for a fact that our parish website is not unique. Most of our neighboring parishes have a website, even the local Catholic parish in this person’s home town has one. So why did our website turn up in search instead of those others? The short and simple answer is that our parish website is a blog.

The Catholic Media Guild showcased a while ago why a parish website should be a blog. I don’t want to repeat all the good advise given there, but I want to reflect a bit about the deeper relevance of having a digital presence, especially when you are a campus ministry.

Most prospective students (and parishioners) are young people. Young people of this day live on the internet. They are always connected in one way or another. If they want to know anything, they look it up on line. This means you need to be there where people are looking for you, giving information relevant to them instead of hiding yourself.  When you are exactly there where people expect you to be, it probably means you understand them, that there is a common ground. Otherwise the two of you would not bump into each other in the same place.

In our case, our most important target audience doesn’t go to church out of their own accord, so you won’t get the opportunity to tell them in person why you think they can have a great time at your activities. Also, a church and a parish full of people can be extremely intimidating to people who just want to dip their toes in the water. When you are able to hand out samples of parish life on your web site, chances are people will actually show up for more if what they sampled was good.

In other words, I think a parish website should be a reflection of parish life. People who visit your site should get a feel of what you are like. When it’s clear who you are, what you are doing and what you believe, people who will search for a local parish will be more inclined to check your parish out in person than when they see a static hand-coded page which not only looks outdated but in fact is because it does not show any upcoming events. For me as a young person, it also means that those in charge of the parish aren’t invested in internet technology and therefore probably also not really in tune with young people, who, after all, LIVE on the internet.

Having had this conversation with this new Bible Study Group member made me realize how important it is to have a good, up-to-date website with relevant information as a parish. It also encourages me to work with renewed enthusiasm to improve our existing site, because it really makes a difference.

Do you have a parish site? What are your experiences with your parish’s internet presence?

We have been struggling for years to build bridges. It is a lot of investment and the return is low. It’s very hard to cut through college students’ apathy. Currently we are trying a community approach. Our target audience may not want to go to Mass and other religious activities because it is not part of their lifestyle, but they may want to get in touch with other students from all over the world making new friends. One of the first things Jesus did was creating a community. He was perfectly capable to wander around alone and preach the Gospel that way, but he chose the community approach.

One of our main events is the International Bring and Share Meal, a potluck dinner. It’s attached to the International Mass in English, which draws a lot of foreign students and young professionals. Before Mass starts, attendees bring food of their local cuisine to the church so we can share after Mass has ended. It’s a great way to learn about world food and cultures.

Before we start eating, we ask attendees to come forward and tell about what they made and where it’s from. Most people will cook something from their native cuisine and you can tell they put a lot of work in it and are really radiating pride of their country when they stand their explaining what is. During the meal there’s lots of walking around and interaction. The turnout is always huge: English Mass draws between 100 and 150 attendees every week, our last Bring and Share Meal on 5 November had about 60 people attending.

We usually plug our other activities as well during this event and we notice people are really interested and the sense of community is growing. It now gets the feel of one big family, it feels safe and I think this is a good start to make new people feel at home, even when they are fallen away Catholics.

What do you do in your parish to encourage fallen away Catholics?

Ingredients

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Milk
• Butter
• Sugar
• Black pepper

Directions

Peel potatoes and cut the onions and carrots in a 50/50 mix. The total of this mix should be equal to the amount of potatoes you are using.

Put everything in one pot with enough water and cook until the potatoes are done. Use a masher to mash everything, add some milk until you have a firm mixture. Make sure it doesn’t get to wet! Add some butter, sugar and pepper to taste.

Serve with a ‘rookworst‘ or meat balls.

Eet smakelijk! (Dutch for: have a nice meal!)

Five New Instances

As I predicted earlier, most of the instances will be concentrated around Isengard’s Orthanc tower. In an interview featured on the Ten Ton Hammer website, executive communications director Aaron Campbell says, “We have three 3-person instances, a 6-person and a 12-person raid, and all of those are centered very much around Orthanc, and around Saruman himself“. This is a major lore issue and it will be a matter of time before the outrage over this starts. The issue is that the instances involve a kind of an assault on Orthanc, getting face-to-face with Saruman. But in the books, Saruman was never really challenged, and the fight with Gandalf was relatively small. In Turbine’s defense you could argue that LOTRO is an MMO and every expansion needs instances and raids. I do understand why they did it, but I can’t help wonder where this will lead us to.

Epic storyline continues

With the update, epic story arc Volume III, Book 5 will be released. The story so far was okay, it’s understandable that we need to depart from the Rangers at some time and this seems a good moment to do it. However, I hope that the quest rewards will be more in line with the rewards we got for book one to three than with book 4. I was very disappointed in the rewards. At first we got purple gear which wasn’t really better than the end-game level 65 gear most people were wearing and later on we got samples from the LOTRO store. Towards the end the rewards got better, but I still don’t know what to do with the silly prisoner uniform cosmetics I got there. Here is hoping that the new quest rewards will be of an epic quality again, just like before.

Interface improvements

Update 5 will introduce an Instance Finder, which is a tool which seems to be similar to the ‘ Looking for fellowship’ flag we have now. If I understand correctly, we can sign up for a particular instance and also add which role we would like to play: healer, tank, DPS or support. It would make the LFF channel obsolete. I think this may be very useful. Personally I usually have kin and fellowship chat open and miss most of the LFF stuff in the general tab.

We will also get something in our radar that adds the ability to track nearby quests. I am not sure if this is going to be useful. Most of the time I’m tracking a number of things in the radar already, for example ore nodes, landmarks, fellowship members, my pet’s whereabouts and which way to go to my next quest. I hope my radar doesn’t get too crowded with this new feature.

Another unexpected announcement was about simplifying skirmish currency. Right now you get regular skirmish marks and all kinds of special campaign marks, fourth marks and what not. For me it’s plain confusing. Maybe this change will make me skirm a bit more often.

Coffee!!

Apparently lots of people have been asking for cooks to be able to craft coffee in the game. Therefore coffee will be part of the game now. I’m wondering what it will do. The recipes will be Westfold Tier: farmers will be able to grow it.

Class updates

There’s a whole section with class updates which am not going to rehash here. My main character is a lore-master and I was VERY happy to see they are fixing our level 70 skill, the now infamous ‘limrafn’ (will o’wisp). They stress it’s a Creature of Nature now. Sure. Creature of Nature, Fluffy Light Ball, I don’t care, as long as it is useful. I’m anxious to try it out.

Also there will be a new consumable for lore-masters ‘parable of the lore-master’. It says: “New Lore-master parable recipes are now available for the Scholar profession. Novice Scholar trainers sell the Journeyman recipe while higher tier versions can be found in treasure.”  What could THAT be? The lore-master equivalent of Minstrel’s sheet music (next action cannot be interrupted?). Very interesting!

Today, November 16, the servers will be brought down for an update (except for Bullroarer). They made it very clear that these release notes are for Bullroarer only and are subject to change. This makes me wonder what’s being updated tomorrow?

Dr Juliet Guichon, a bioethicist at the University of Calgary, argues contract law ought not apply to surrogacy agreements as it undermines the sanctity of human life. ‘Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt’, she said. ‘It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic’. Rather, Dr Guichon argues family law rules are more applicable, under which the biological parents may be required to take responsibility for the child.

Professor Francoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University, has also spoken out on the issue of commodifying human life. ‘The child is seen by the commissioning parents as a product’, he said, ‘in this case a substandard product because of a genetic condition’.

Both bioethicists agree that human life is different and that contract laws are not applicable on human life. Dr. Juliet Guichon says that human life is sacred. I don’t think she refers to a religious idea here, but to the idea that most people have, even when they are not religous, that human life is different and special.
You cannot treat human life like a product, where you return a product that doesn’t meet your standards to the manufacturer. I cannot agree more with this. Because what the parents seem to imply is that a child with Down’s Syndrome is ‘substandard’. In other words: people with defects, like Down’s Syndrome are not as valuable as people with no visible defects. This could lead to an idea that handicapped people aren’t supposed to be here, they should be aborted because the defect can be diagnosed before birth. This is very dangerous territory: you’re only one step away of dividing the population in “Übermenschen” and “Untermenschen”.  Unfortunately, there seem to be people leaning in this direction:

Sally Rhoads, of Surrogacy in Canada Online, said decisions pertaining to the future of a defective fetus should be made at the outset. Furthermore, she argued for the protection of the commissioning couple. ‘The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring’, she said. ‘Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair’. Ms Rhoads points to the United States where, in some states, the commissioning couple can sue the surrogate to recover costs if the surrogate continues with a pregnancy against the couple’s wishes.

I don’t know what ‘Surrogacy in Canada Online’ is, is it a commercial business? But what this woman says is disturbing. According to her a child has no rights whatsoever. Also, she seems to think that when a fetus is the biological offspring of the commissioning couple, they ‘own’ the baby, and therefore it is not fair to force them to raise a child they don’t want to have. Apparently, a child is an asset, a product after all. And how are parents being forced to raise a child they don’t want? Of course they wanted a child, how else did their DNA get into the surrogate mother’s womb? That fetus was conceived because they wanted to, but they changed their minds after they heard there might be a genetic disorder. You either make a choice to have a child via a surrogate mom or you don’t. You cannot change your mind in the middle of the process, when there’s already a third party involved: an innocent child who never wanted any of this. I cannot believe people think like this!

I already said how this is leaning toward the idea that handicapped people are not normal and not valuable and how that is only one step away from thinking like the Nazis did. I know some people will call a Godwin on me, but I make the remark anyway, because the very same reasoning and the popular ‘science’ of eugenics led to inhuman practices in Nazi clinics before and during World War II. We should learn from history, not repeat it. It seems we repeat it despite all sacrifices that were brought to end it, so we could live in freedom. Is that all so easily forgotten?

Source: Couple Requests Surrogate Mum To Abort Over Disability by Nishat Hyder.