I’ve heard some concerns about Facebook and frankly this concerns me. In a time of worldly humanism there is no stopping society’s demise into frenetic self-love. This we all agree. But to boycott Facebook because it promotes abortion, and other evil sins, seems a little ‘one sided’.
Allow me to explain: If we are convinced to boycott Facebook, then we should consider boycotting Youtube for pornography and the entire internet for that matter! Throw out the computers! Does that sound reasonable?
Extremism today is a slippery slope. We are all struggling to keep the world out of our lives. Struggling to keep our family’s safe and Catholic. Struggling to keep our children pure. Granted, we must be careful. I can’t stress this enough. We all know ever since the internet came out, it was a way for the sick people of the world to get out their sick information. Pornography and more is available on the internet. I dare you to put in just one word in google that could bring up everything you’ve been worried about. Please don’t do it. I’ve been on the internet for some 12 or more years. I have to say I have never had truly sick images appear before my mind all on their own. I have always used the internet for researching the Catholic faith, shopping for the Catholic faith, shopping for books or curriculm and similar searches. These have never got me into trouble. Your searches are what keep you safe. The ads you see pop up come from google keeping track of your searches and showing back to you what you just seen.
We once had concerns about the internet. But today we all use it. Today we are concerned about Facebook. But, Facebook doesn’t have to be as scary as some might think. Facebook is a closed group; where you can only allow those you know on your page. Yes, of course, there are nasty people on Facebook. But, just as there are nasty things on Youtube, they are in their corner and you are in yours. Once you sign up, you set your privacy settings to private so you can keep everyone out. There is even settings now that you can set up groups on Facebook just like yahoogroups, where you have to join and only those who are members are included. So, Facebook is just an updated version of yahoogroups where we have had our OLLMPC modesty group for ages. It really is just another online tool.
Granted some people spend all their time posting pictures about themselves, but that is a personal choice. It doesn’t have to be this way. I visit with plenty of good Catholics on Facebook. You can post your prayer requests on your group for others to pray for. You can post Novena reminders. You can ask others to join you in a Rosary Novena, the ideas are endless really. Others I’ve seen post religious pictures and post religious quotes. I learned about my Aunt Irene dying this past Christmas through Facebook and sent my condolences this way. Why can’t we take back these tools that are out there and use them for God’s purposes? Just like guns can’t be banned because criminals use them, it doesn’t make sense to boycott Facebook because of the bad people out there that use it. But we must be wise and clever as serpents too.
Granted Facebook is not for everyone and I perfectly understand people wanting to stay out of it. I’m sure some families reading this may have even been burned by the internet. My heart goes out to you! In no way will I stop my emails only to use Facebook. Some of you expressed concern of that. But it is just another tool we are using to reach out to Catholics on there. Just another way we can open up our life a little and share a bit more of our day to day here. Everything we do online today, we must be careful. We must monitor our children on the internet absolutely! Just like we are careful what we put on the TV’s in our house. Today we must find ways to use technology, but not let our family get burned in the process. It is truly a trying time to live. But as adults, if we are careful we can find many gems of Catholic places online that are safe. Catholic forums, Catholic businesses, Catholic movies and more. We must be the light in this dark world so that faithful Catholics can stay connected in our online catacombs. All that is needed for evil to grow, is for good people to do nothing.
What do you think ? Leave me your thoughts here.
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