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"Pope On, Pope Off" John Paul II Signs On
April 22, 2004
Sign on and you too can receive the Pope's daily "Thought of the Day"
text message, but sign off to unsubscribe
and be in the uncomfortable position of having to text message
two words
that would make the Vatican cringe, "POPE OFF".
With this acknowledgement, the church has taken a giant step into our
tech savvy world. What's next? Oracle 10g??
In the April 19 issue of Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4703054/, Malcolm Beith writes,
"Pope John Paul II's offering a remedy: a daily text message
to America's most tech-savvy Roman Catholics. For 30 cents a message,
Verizon Wireless is offering subscribers a "Thought of the Day" from
the pope himself. "He's pretty dexterous," jokes Jeffrey Nelson, a
Verizon spokesman. (The messages are lifted from speeches and
homilies—no actual papal typing is involved.) The Irish, British and
Italians have been able to subscribe to the service since last year.
The question is whether young Americans—who remain slower than the
rest of the world in taking to text messages—will embrace the idea.
David Early, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is
a believer. "Why would this not work? Young people today are
tech-savvy and they are looking for a deeper relationship with their
spirituality."
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