Mexican Catholicism is many-faceted, many-splendored, maddeningly obtuse and incredibly progressive. It can unite communities for good and for ill. It can be a force of love, or bitterly harsh. It can be completed and comfortably melded with the indigenous beliefs of tiny communities or as papist as the church in Rome.It can be and do all these things, or some of them, or none of them, depending on where you are and whom you are talking with. It is embedded in the being of most Mexicans. Sometimes things Catholic in Mexico can move me to tears, as standing in the Iglesia de Maria Magdalena did in Xico last weekend.
Today the Conference of Mexican Bishops announced that it was "launching an interactive projective for cell telephones through which they would download interactive materials like prayers and rosaries to attract the faithful and to capture new followers."
According to the article in El Universal by Noemí Gutiérrez, "This effort is going to be part of the use of new technologies as part of the campaign called, 'Family, I know what you are' which will begin this Sunday on a national level. The program will not judge who makes up the families.
"Oscar Sotelo [Church spokesman] said that it is a social reality that families have changed and all kinds of different kinds can be found which are headed by a grandmother, an uncle or s0me other family member....
"When asked how the church and program would support families in which the members are homosexuals, he made clear that the catholic Church does not discriminate nor reject. 'We will not judge those who make up the family.'
"Sotelo and Cardona recognized that the Catholic Church arrived late in the era of technology and now there are few dioceses which have multimedia equipment like the archdocese of Mexico which has its own internet page (Siamae) and a weekly information newsletter, "From the Faith."
"Father Omar Sotelo further said that during the next meeting of the CEM in November,....a proposal to create an Episcopal Pastoral commission of Information to promote the use of these technolgies.
"At the beginning, he explained, they would use networks like Twitter and Facebook in the short term, and they envision the prompt creation of a network for the church itself."
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So you can check out promotional announcements of the program here or here if you are curious to learn more.