As discussed in previous blog posts, the Catholic Church utilizes media like the internet to help spread the gospel and Catholic teachings both to believers and non-believers. The internet is a great tool for achieving these goals because over the last few decades, the internet has become readily available and relatively affordable worldwide. When examining Catholic internet use, an example is www.catholic.com, also known as Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers was founded in 1979 by Karl Keating. It began as a P.O. Box and eventually became the website seen today. According to the website’s About Page,
“Catholic Answers is a media ministry that serves Christ by explaining and defending the Catholic faith...Our goal is to be the most trusted and accessible source for sharing, explaining, and defending the Catholic faith through as many media as possible: from personal contact to the most innovative means of mass communication.”
As exemplified in the quote above, Catholic Answers strives to defend the Catholic faith, it’s beliefs, traditions, and doctrines and thus, frames the Church in a very positive light as they hope to “help Catholics grow in their faith...bring former Catholics home...lead non-Catholics into the fullness of the truth”. Catholic Answers correlates to Dr. Heidi Campbell’s guest lecture “Catholic Digital Creatives as Emerging Religious Authorities in Digital Culture” on April 18, 2019 at the University of Perugia through the classification of the site’s creator, Karl Keating, as an Identity Curator. As defined in Dr. Campbell’s lecture, Identity Curators “focus on making traditional message and beliefs of church clear, simple, and public-friendly digital goals adapting to the online world.” Because Keating founded Catholic Answers as a way to educate both believers and non-believers through straightforward and colloquial question and answer format, he exemplifies this idea of being an Identity Curator.