c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) America’s Roman Catholic bishops have earned reputations as aging men willing to defend traditional viewpoints, no matter how unpopular they might be in a rapidly changing world.

Now, however, these old-guard heavyweights are looking to don a new, much less familiar moniker: pioneers of the new media age.

From Los Angeles to Boston, bishops who grew up with typewriters and rotary telephones are cutting their teeth on cutting-edge electronic media. Consider a few examples:

_ During Lent this year, Philadelphia’s softspoken Cardinal Justin Rigali started what have become regular Gospel reflections on YouTube.com, a video Web site better known as a launching pad for piano-playing cats and dorm room hijinks.

_ Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley gets an average 30,000 hits per week on his eight-month-old Weblog, which he uses for such varied purposes as denouncing a federal raid on immigrant workers and chronicling, with photos, an adventurous recent trip to rural Paraguay.

_ In March, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony hosted his fourth live Internet “chat” with Catholic school children.

_ Bishops from Detroit and Los Angeles have appeared on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Catholic Channel, which launched in December 2006 and includes a weekly call-in show with New York’s intellectual archbishop, Cardinal Edward Egan.

Though the church always wants to use a variety of communication tools, it hasn’t always succeeded in quickly embracing new ones, according to Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York. He pointed to cable television, where Catholic programming arrived late and has struggled at times to build a broad audience.

“For a change, the church is in on the ground floor of a medium on the rise,” Zwilling says of satellite radio’s Catholic Channel, which is sponsored by the New York Archdiocese.

In the trend, church officials see a low-cost avenue to disseminate their message widely while retaining full control over its content. Observers, meanwhile, say that even though bishops may score points for effort, they’re exposing themselves to a new set of risks in the court of public opinion.

“They’re trying to reach people where they are and make the church seem relevant in terms of the media that they use,” says David Gibson, author of “The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism.” “The problem is whether it’s going to come off as your grandfather trying to be hip and with it. … Does it end up emphasizing just how out-of-it (the bishops) are?”

Rigali and his staff hesitated before plunging into YouTube, according to spokeswoman Donna Farrell, though not because they feared the cardinal would run the risk of being mocked. They wondered if the church’s message might be devalued by placing it alongside so much “objectionable content.” But after some deliberation, they decided to go forward.

“I looked at it like a library,” Farrell says. “Of course there will be books there that one might take issue with, but we certainly would still want the Bible on the shelf as well. And maybe someone will go onto YouTube, and instead of looking for some questionable content, find a message such as Cardinal Rigali’s.”

For some, it’s already worked.

“Your Eminence, thank you for spreading the Gospel here on YouTube,” commented one viewer known as “Melody.” “… Not a few people sadly will turn to Google in dark and lonely hours to seek some form of informative guidance (and) at least some form of escape. It is wonderful then that there are things like these videos available.”

Others, however, regard the bishops’ foray into new media as a calculated gamble that the church _ still reeling from the fallout of a five-year-old clergy sex abuse scandal _ needs to take.

“The church has kind of lost its exalted stature and, in this culture at least, is perceived as one more voice among many,” says the Rev. Paul Soukup, a Jesuit priest and professor of communications at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif.

But Soukup also notes that young people tend to remember leaders _ such as the late Pope John Paul II _ for their visible gestures rather than for anything they said.

“People are going to remember that Cardinal Rigali was out there on YouTube. They won’t remember what he said,” Soukup said. “You’ve got to give this guy credit. He’s trying to do his job. I want to see a pastor out there with the people.”

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Today’s bishops continue to expand their new media repertoire. The Archdiocese of New York aims eventually to follow in Philadelphia’s footsteps by transmitting masses via streaming video through its Web site. Bishops in the Philippines have also begun posting messages on YouTube.

Observers caution not to over-emphasize what new media can do. Adults in the church still must reach out to youth in person and cultivate strong relationships over time, according to Chris Smith, a University of Notre Dame sociologist and author of “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.”

“It’s a mistake to pin too much hope” on the usage of new communication tools, Smith says. “These are probably a good set of pieces in a larger strategy (to connect with young people) but if anybody thinks this is going to be the magic bullet, forget it.”

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Photos of Egan (in radio studio) and Rigali (on YouTube) are available via https://religionnews.com.