The Tablet and Facebook

Recently Damian Thompson has attempted to be rather cruel to the Tablet journal (like he usually is), by suggesting that its Facebook appreciation society has not been a rip roaring success with only 5 members. The implications are of that of course that they have not attracted interest among the largely young people who patronise Facebook. Then all of a sudden due to the publicity he has generated, he has caused membership to soar with such unlikely figures such as our Fr. Tim as well as Damian Rhodes and Dr. Thomas Pink.

I for my part take a view that the fact the Tablet has not created great interest among the Facebook cognoscenti to be largely in their favour. I myself have tried out Facebook's delights, to find that the pleasures it offered were counteracted by the fact that it got one involved in a lot of undesirable business. By its very nature it gives one's personal details to all and sundry, and those who use it have a tendency to be rather indiscreet. Indiscreet to the point where I have seen people on it upload videos of personal acts I would hate to describe in public. Hence I am no longer on it.

If however the Bitter Pill should achieve a little more success on Facebook and the web at large, it may way be that it will be the means whereby it will be brought back into line with the teachings of the Catholic faith and the church's magisterium, of which it was supposed to promote in the first place. For they will find that they are in a truly democratic open forum, where they are not protected in a liberal elite academic cocoon, and will have to answer to blunt criticisms of ordinary believing Catholics like ourselves.