About a year ago, I had never heard of Fr. Robert Barron. Now it seems that every time I turn around online, he is there! And this is a good thing, as Fr. Barron is a wonderful explicator of the Catholic Faith today. Fellow blogger Brandon Vogt recently interviewed Fr. Barron on Catholics in the New Media and other topics. I thought the answer to Brandon’s first question was spot on:

Through “Word on Fire”, your podcasts, blogs, writings, and ambitious documentary, “The Catholicism Project”, you are reaching a multitude of people around the world. As someone using New Media to evangelize the globe, what advice would you give Christians on using these technologies in service of the Gospel, and what dangers lurk within their use?

Fr. Barron: My advice to those who would venture into the new media is to prepare yourself by immersing one’s self into the depths of the Catholic tradition. The great danger of the new media is that it seems to relish the superficial. There has been an ethos within the Church for many years to pursue an accommodationist strategy in regards to the culture, and this has resulted in a public presentation of the Faith that is often nebulous or “dumbed down.” Presenting the Faith as intelligible does not mean that we have to compromise the profundity of our great Tradition. We are the bearers of a Faith that inspired one of the most interesting civilizations that the world has ever known. The faithful are the route of access to this culture and its patrimony which is expressed in art, architecture, literature and theological reflection. The world needs to know all this, but we have to be sure that we know it ourselves before we can even begin to share the Faith with others.

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