Become Web Missionaries Now

by Letters Editor · June 12, 2017

From Monica Rohlwink, Cape Town – The hurt, hate, fear, frustration, bitterness, racism, anxiety, provocation and unbridled insults expressed on some news websites on the Internet are enough to make one want to give up on the future of this country and its rainbow nation.

At the same time there are many readers who try very hard to make their voice of reason, reconciliation, hope and constructive interaction heard. Unfortunately, there are not enough of them, and the war-mongers will take every opportunity to turn the most innocent discussion into an attack based on racial divides.

All well-meaning Christian and Catholic South Africans who are intent on helping this country and its society survive and prosper should join these websites and make their voices heard.

Words can heal as much as they can hurt, and, at the moment, there is an avalanche of hateful, destructive communication on these public forums which will lead only to more polarisation and alienation in our society.

Furthermore, the vicious and positively evil attacks on God and his salvation plan for this world are almost unendurable. The moment an article that touches on religious matters is posted, or a Christian dares bring religion into an online discussion, it is as if a screeching flock of demented spirits descends on these website.

The notion of God is attacked, believers of any kind or denomination are ridiculed and made out to be gullible imbeciles, and the Catholic Church is vilified, its members and clergy verbally attacked, and all information about the Church completely distorted and exaggerated.

May I plead with individuals who have the necessary technological infrastructure at home, who have the biblical and theological knowledge necessary to engage in constructive discussions, and the wisdom and patience to do this in a loving manner, and who have enough time on their hands, to start a mission of their own, right here and now.

This would link up perfectly with Fr Anthony Egan’s Hope&Joy article of October 26 in which he wrote: Now the [the laity] too had their own mission, even if they could not go off to far-off places: bearing witness to Christ as laypeople in their own societies (often secular and increasingly in need of what John Paul II would call the new evangelisation) in the public realm (politics and business) and through their witness to Christian values in their private lives. Updated from 2011