Monday, March 18, AD 2024 11:58pm

Technology and Faith 1

In the “ways that tech can help us” meaning, since there’s no shortage of “technology can hurt you horribly and is probably evil” type posts, articles and borderline verbal ticks.  And this is going to be a tiny post, which I hope to have future “good tools” to add to, thus the 1.

“Inspired” to write it because I spent the last hour or two trying to find…basically the free calendar we have from the local Catholic mortuary, but that I can import to my skydrive.  (I failed.)

I’ll sort them by platform; PC, MP3 player and Smartphone.

Personal Computer

Obviously, a major resource for your faith is sites like this one; you can find community in the Church no matter how physically isolated you are, and even get some really good conversations to chew over– plus get resources you could never afford, if you could even find them, before.

There’s the big boys that almost everyone knows about, like Catholic Answers, Crisis Magazine, EWTN  (also on YouTube!), Catholics Come Home, CNA News and of course the Holy See’s website, Vatican.va.  There are more middle-of-the-road or big-little sites, which are frequently located in clusters of somewhat likeminded folks.  Jimmy Akin‘s, CMR and Human Exceptionalism for example. (Alright, from memory he’s actually Orthodox, but he argues from reason and shares our assumptions about humans not being meat puppets.)  And then there are more club-like gems like the B Movie Catechism, Medieval Otaku, The Catholic Geeks and, of course, this very site.  A much bigger list by subject rather than vague audience size can be found on the  side bar to your right.

Some update daily, some weekly, and some go silent and then come back.

There are also pages to pray the rosary– alone or with others-– and even facebook groups for the cause of sainthood.  (Sheen, Chesterton and Tolkien, for example; probably several for each.)

MP3 Player

Between walks and driving– any car with a radio can become an MP3 player, if you use one of the little FM adaptors– there is lots of time to listen, so you can get podcasts from Catholic Answers, EWTN or SQPN for Catholic topics, or you can download rosary podcasts to try to sooth your commute. (I like the Scriptural Rosary from Rosary Army; focusing on the Mystery can be a big problem for me…especially with Seattle traffic.)  If you look around for a little while, you can even find Bishop Fulton Sheen’s old radio show– man, could that man talk.

There are also a large number of audiobooks around for whatever topics seem interesting to you; I’m sure someone will share some in the comments.

Smartphone

All those books I mentioned?  You can get them– and a lot of them are free, or nicely edited for a very low price.  GK Chesterton has been almost eerily up to date for the entire decade or so I’ve been trying to pick at reading him, and the Father Brown mysteries are awesome.  Yay, Kindle app!

Speaking of apps, I’ve also got a couple for the Rosary; when I’m trying to puzzle through Latin, I can get prayers; and when I’m stuck in the crying room without that day’s readings for the hundredth time, I can follow along on my phone. (Although it doesn’t fix the speakers, sad to say.)  You’ve probably seen some of the pictures of brothers in a holy order using a similar program while praying.

That One Cousin who is an expert on the Bible, so long as no Bible is around?  Here’s a Catholic study Bible.  (Most annotation extra.)

You’ll notice if you go to the Amazon page for each of those that there are a lot of other programs, for all sorts of uses. I linked the ones I’ve actually used a bit.

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Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, February 2, AD 2016 7:40am

Christians are credited with one of the most important innovations in the history of information technology: the codex or hinged book.
This made possible the table of contents, the index, the concordance and much else that we regard as the indispensible tools of exact scholarship and ready-reference.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Wednesday, February 3, AD 2016 2:43pm

… when I’m stuck in the crying room…
–Foxfier

Come out, come out where ever you are!

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