The Catholic Internet

The Catholic Internet: A Big Niche
When I made a search at a leading search engine for the keyphrase "catholic internet", the search engine gives a result of 8,670,000 webpages as of December 18, 2004. This is a big niche for the Catholic faith in relation to the internet medium. The niche of which the PCentral Online webnetwork I manage works through is "catholic internet mission". When you use this keyphrase in a leading search engine, as of today also, the search engine gives a result of 1,720,000 webpages. This is a smaller niche because of the keyword "mission" added to the keyphrase "catholic internet". The keyword "mission" gives a further distinction and specification to the bigger niche of the keyphrase "catholic internet". The biggest niche in relation to the Catholic faith is of course to be found in the keyword "catholic". Today, it is 29,100,000 webpages big. For our specific concerns, we shall dwell more on the first two niches: "catholic internet" and "catholic internet mission". Both niches is important in our study of how we can lead these niches in a way that truly is descriptive of the term "Catholic".

Growing the Niches: Quantity or Quality?
For the purposes of making the Catholic faith more visible in the Internet, quantity is important. However, quality is just as important when it comes to providing the Internet readers with content that not only gives them information but also provides an avenue for reflection, deeper thinking and the possibility of gaining wise spiritual insights. So the question is really not a matter of whether quantity or quality should be foremost but rather both must be employed in order to maximize the visibility of the Catholic faith in the Internet world. Both must work together in such a way as to give greater impact to those readers who are already Catholic and much more to those who are not yet Catholic. To increase the quantity of Catholic webpages, all that needs to be done is to create more Catholic webpages without duplicating its contents. To increase the quality of Catholic webpages, this needs a special technique called search engine optimization - a technique that helps the Catholic webauthor gain a high ranking in the leading search engines of the Internet.

Analyzing the Niches Growth
If those who follow Catholic Internet Mission would increase their webpages in terms of quantity and quality, then it is likely that this niche would grow and in so doing will eventually also grow the "catholic internet" and "catholic" niches. It thus depends on the missionary spirit of the Catholic Internet Mission webauthors to make the vision of making "the face of Christ seen" and "the voice of Christ heard" on the Internet (see Vatican Document on Internet) realizable. And this missionary spirit must be rooted in the Catholic webauthor's relationship with Christ through the Church and also through Scriptures and the 36th World Communications Day Message given by the Vatican through our Holy Father last May 12, 2002.

The Catholic Internet: A Hope for the Catholic Faith
Now that the Catholic faith is continually expanding herself through many missionary ventures into Asia, Africa and the other parts of the world that have not yet been Christianized, those of us in the Internet media can target the information-rich sectors of world society who are often highly literate indeed in the Internet but needing more input in terms of spiritual information and guidelines. The niche "catholic internet" can be a very good source of hope for people in the world who have lost contact with their Catholic roots and would want to learn how to come back to the Church and the celebration of the sacraments. Indeed "catholic internet" is a source of hope for the Catholic mission in the Internet. This is what Catholic Internet Mission hopes to achieve: to increase the quantity and quality of Catholic webpages in the niche "catholic internet mission" and in doing so would eventually expand the niche of "catholic internet". May the Lord bless us all who work for this aim.

Dennis-Emmanuel Cabrera
December 18, 2004