#Fathers4Daughters, praying for @PPact

As much as I tell teens that it’s important not to say things on the internet you wouldn’t say in person, sometimes I forget this myself.  Especially these last few weeks-- feelings about abortion, the HHS Mandate, Planned Parenthood, even Susan G. Komen and Nikki Minaj—have been very strong.  

Like many, I follow Planned Parenthood’s twitter-- @PPact—to stay up to date on what they’re up to, and as a sort of evangelizing, I occasionally tag them in tweets when I want to respond to something they’ve said.  It’s the beauty of social media, that everyone has a chance to speak up.  

Yesterday, as I was responding to yet another tweet that I disagreed with, it occurred to me that @PPact is one of the few accounts I frequently tag that I don’t actually know in person.  And then, I began to think that it’s not Planned Parenthood tweeting, per se.  It’s a person.  Well, probably a team of people, but a person nonetheless.  

I started thinking about this.  Wondered about them.  I’m friends with a lot of people—both on twitter and in real life—who I don’t agree with.  I wondered if I met the @PPact tweeter, if we’d get along.  If we could make small talk about shoes and movies, outside of this huge issue that is at the forefront of our disagreements on twitter.  Anne Marie Cribbin and I even invited them to meet up with us for happy hour.  

After reading Unplanned by Abby Johnson, we’re all more aware of the importance of prayer in bringing about a culture of life.  In the middle of 40 days for life, let’s recognize the social media workers behind @PPact and pray for them, specifically.  Not as a nameless organization, but the tweeters, specifically.  They’re just as passionate as we are.  They do their job with a great deal of tenacity.  Their role in promoting Planned Parenthood is critical.  They need our love and prayers. 

There is a great presence of priests and fathers in social media.  Anne Marie Cribbin and Joia Farmer had the great idea to ask priests and fathers to specifically pray for the women behind @PPact.  Priests, who have the special privilege of celebrating mass, are asked to offer masses for @PPact… and announce it on twitter!  Use the hashtag #Fathers4Daughters—stating the truth in love—that God the Father has a plan for each and every life.  That fathers matter.  That spiritual and biological fatherhood changes lives in an earthly and heavenly way.   That the women of @PPact are known, loved and awaited by God.  

I’m praying, specifically, that the women of @PPact encounter the love of God the Father in a real way.  I’m praying that as I continue to speak up in my own little way, protesting what Planned Parenthood does and says, that I do it in charity—with a desire not to win arguments but souls.  

And, I’m praying that that happy hour happens.  Why not?  It’s Lent.  Go big or go home.  

Will you commit to pray for @PPact?  You don't have to follow them, but tweet them when you do.  Remember, love wins.

Confessions of a Reluctant Virtual Pilgrim

I admit, when I first started reading about making this past week a “virtual pilgrimage” with Pope Benedict XVI while he was at World Youth Day, I scoffed.  I was a “left behind Catholic”.  While the cool kids were sipping sangria and eating tapas, I was meeting students at Starbucks and finalizing the fall schedule.  So when @madrid11_en, @BustedHalo , #CindyWithB16 and @CatholicNewsSvc, @JackieFrancois and the whole bunch from @LifeTeen invited me to “follow them to Spain” I’m not going to lie, my reaction was less than Christian.

My tweets reflected as I schlepped through my Monday, stateside, saying things like, “going to Mass.  Just like all of you in Madrid.  #youarenotthatspecial”.  I don’t have EWTN and wasn’t watching the videos that were being uploaded, but as the week progressed, the candid 140 character updates of both friends and strangers made me start pray about, wonder and appreciate what Team Catholic in Madrid was up to. 

At the risk of over-sentimentalizing a profound reality of our faith, we are the Body of Christ and despite my best efforts to ignore the graces overflowing from Madrid out of jealousy that I wasn’t experiencing it first-hand, I found the updates from the pilgrims about their encounters with each other, the Holy Father and, ultimately Christ to be quite moving.  By Friday, when #ViaCrucis was a world-wide trending topic, I was hooked and proud to know that my brothers and sisters in Christ—most of whom I would not meet until heaven—were, for a few moments, reminding the world what was really important.

Social Media has been blamed for a lot of problems—compromising people’s privacy, a skyrocketing in bullying, a shallowness in relationships based on 140 character spurts in communication—but this past week I begrudgingly admit that I was grateful for those who made my unexpected “virtual pilgrimage” possible, tweeting pictures, stories and quotes from Madrid.   This morning I was genuinely saddened to read all the “adios, Madrid” and “Gracias, B16” in my newsfeed, feeling that although I wasn’t drenched from the rain on Saturday or waking up for mass in a field this morning, social media had given a new dimension to World Youth Day and allowed me to be a prayerful observer across the Atlantic.  As if 1.5 million youth gathering to celebrate being Catholic wasn’t powerful enough, social media allowed so many more to follow and be inspired by their individual experiences.

I’m sure the apostles had no idea that Christ’s command to “make disciples of all nations” would include a digital component in 2011, but I this week, I think social media—especially Twitter—gave us a deeper appreciation for our Catholic—Universal—Church.