Aliens in This World

The Jesuits are an order with a great history, but which is currently rather… challenged… by some of its members with… unique… viewpoints on Christianity. (Bless their lil’ hearts.)

So I like to be able to report good stuff. Via the good folk at Der Spiegel magazine in Germany (who provide some brief summary), the Polish Jesuit magazine Tygodnik Powszechny reports on its new mission in Second Life! (I can’t read Polish, but check out the cool picture!) This issue features several other fairly long articles about this cool new thing they’re up to.

Interview with the Polish Catholic Church’s Internet chief. (He probably wouldn’t want to be called “czar”.) Includes computer picture of some guy in white, with a huge cross and picture of Christ behind him — possibly a scene from a virtual church.

Article about Second Life and theology. Includes picture of some sort of virtual chapel, with pictures of Our Lady.

Article about the new “Second Tygodnik” office. Includes a picture of some wise guy with an angel avatar.

Yes, obviously there are a hundred ways that this could be a thousand times lame or misleading to people. But it is proactive, and it is going to people where they are, and it does seem quite congruent with the traditional Jesuit use of art, pop culture, and technology to evangelize and educate. So yay!

I’m leaving a message about this over at Karen Hall’s Some Have Hats, in a blatant attempt to cheer her up (and the hope she knows somebody who knows Polish, as Babelfish doesn’t).

Btw, all this is apparently part of an initiative signaled by an article the other week in the Italian Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica, urging evangelization of the virtual worlds as a real “mission territory”. (Here’s a good roundup.) So there may be more of this sort of thing going on.

UPDATE: The “guy in white” picture is apparently from a less well-thought-out lay initiative back in 2004 by some American Second Life denizen calling himself “Father Zapata”. You can read the well-intentioned details here and see pictures. The guy does actually seem to have avoided sacrilege, and didn’t conceal the fact that he was not a real priest celebrating a real Mass. Also, he does seem to have gotten people interested. (But it still makes my head all hurty….) No doubt this is what happens when you don’t let little boys play Mass out in the backyard.