Almost Not Catholic: Brandon Vogt

Showing posts with label Brandon Vogt. Show all posts

February 5, 2013

August 9, 2012

Besides being a new media guru, did you know that Brandon Vogt is a godfather? That's right! That's his crew next to mine. We figured out we lived close to each other about two years ago and developed an on-ground friendship. Brandon and Kathleen both are great people, and we are confident they will be prayerful support for Luke's journey to heaven.

August 2, 2011

Book Review: Church and the New Media

The web moves at a break-neck pace and the language of the new media can seem daunting. You might be asking, "Do I twit? How do I blast my RSS feed? If I retwit something will it go on my facebook like page? Even worse, what happens if I go in a combox and can't get out?"

If those questions make sense to you, buy the book. If you laughed at those questions, buy the book. If you are suspicious, a new media user, and not sure "why, I need a book about new media since I have blog, an iPhone, blah, blah, blah?", here's why you need to buy the book.

The Church and the New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists and Bishops who Tweet is part hand-book, part memoir, part inspiration and is coming to a online store near you. Just in terms of who is writing in this book, its a solid purchase--a kind of 10-for-1 deal.

If you want to get good at something, learn from people who are good at it, and that's exactly what this book offers-- New Media aficionados showing you the way, the truth, and the terabyte. My favorite chapter? Taylor Marshall's reminds every author that when talking about God, our opinions will do others about as much good as our nose will. Enough. Here's my review:

Brandon Vogt-Author

"The Church and the New Media is the first-to-press of its kind that--in a book--explores both the how, what, why and what's next in what it means to evangelize on that thing called the Internet. Brandon has orchestrated bringing together a new media all-star cast but doesn't fade away in their shadows by any stretch of the imagination. From media mogul priests to chaos managers, this book will catch you up on all the possibilities of new media and maybe even give you the courage to start in the conversation. Brandon does an exquisite job of both prefacing the path of digital resistance and closing the book with thoughts worth downloading."

Buy the kindle e-version here or the paperback here. By the way, proceeds will help kids in Kenya gain basic computer literacy skills. That's what I call a win-win.

[Disclaimer: I am friends with the guy whose name is on the front cover of the book]

July 8, 2011

July 4, 2011

Who Cares About Health Care?

My First Daughter-Leah Elaine
Winner of...Life

A month ago, my friend Brandon Vogt wrote a great article on his blog discussing how the Visitation is a type of Social Justice cure-all. I might be overstating his aim with the phrase "cure-all"; nevertheless, I tried to post a comment but somehow I pushed a button I didn't mean to and--presto--my comment was gone.

Mucho frustrato...

So, I'm going to try it again here. In his article he distinguished between 3 types of Catholics:

The 'Spiritualist' Catholics - Those with little to no concern for justice, compassion, and peace. According to this group, religion shouldn't mettle with politics, charity, or 'good works.'

The 'Peace and Justice' Catholics - Those typically concerned with poverty, war, torture, care for creation, and systemic injustice.

The 'Pro-Life' Catholics - Those typically concerned with abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, and other 'life' issues. (Note: I use the 'Pro-Life' label for this group not because the other two groups are anti-life but because this term is most commonly used to describe this set of Catholics.)

My comments here are not to detract from Brandon's wonderful insights. Instead, I want to bring to bear what I think is germane in this discussion.

The fundamental issue in this debate is life. If one does not value life at its book ends (conception and natural end), then what does is it matter how you treat the in-between? Who cares about health care if life isn't valuable. Life as such is like a book without a cover--the pages are bound to fly around everywhere. To put it more forcefully, if one does not value life at it's conception, he or she has no principled ground to value it at any other time, or at best that decision is ad hoc and therefore grounded not in the mystery of life itself, but in the subjective conscience. It turns the human being into a Warhol. It is precisely this movement that leads to the subjectification of the value of life and necessarily devolves into "camps" of social justice--one group chooses to disregard foreign life, another unborn life and another geriatric life. Yet, all of these groups will choose to fight for a particular kind of life under the auspices of patriotism, humanism or something of the sort. The good news is that we all get it, at least tacitly, that life is valuable. However, what stalls the health care debate or any debate concerning our care for life isn't that we don't know it's important, but that we all don't know why its important.

[spoiler alert]

I recently watched the documentary, Waiting for Superman, and there was a forward-thinking teacher who started an amazing school in Harlem who made the profound observation that our children today recognize that they are getting the short-end of the stick. His observation, of course, came within the context of education, but I think it applies more broadly. The movie climaxes with a telling example of a group of children who *lose* a drawing to get into charter schools and are thereby relegated to attend their poor performing schools.

[spoiler end]

The sad reality is that children today have the cards stacked against them from inception. To lose anything in this life is to win simply because you had the chance to lose at all. We should take stock in the experiences of wanting to do more, to get it right, to help each other. In those moments, we are all closer than we were before in realizing what is fundamental to each of us--existence.

But to deprive another person of that most fundmental value--life--is to make enemies of everyone. If I can't develop empathy for the weakest and most defenseless among us, how can I develop proper empathy for anyone at all? Who cares that you can't get the heart-transplant you need, my TiVo isn't working. As bastardly as that sounds, everyday children are slaughtered at the altar of a better, more entertained, fun and exciting life. The movie gets it almost right. Just look at the decline in down syndrome in our society. We haven't developed in utero gene therapy, we've just learned how to give kids no stick at all.

So who cares about health care?

We all do.

Why?

We all don't know, and that is the problem. Until we can agree why life is important, justice tribalism will prevail and you can expect that prescription drug to continue to cost a little bit more every year.

May 26, 2011

New Media and the Irony of the (2,000 year old) Catholic Church

First, I think it is rather funny (ironic) that since becoming Catholic I've become so aware of the fabulous media produced by this 2,000 year old institution that can move like, well, Noah's Arc at times. It's like Noah's Arc with flatscreens. And by the way, if you aren't Catholic and reading this, don't be hating, start participating...

Just check out this video:

Or this website:
http://www.johnpaulii.va/en/

All that said, it gets me really excited about my new friend Brandon Vogt's soon to be released book, The Church and New Media. What's fantastic about the book is that it is stereotype defeating. Of course for all us internet savvy, blogging Catholic types, it may not be as paradigm changing. Yet, even for us, I think the book portends a fabulous resource of inspiration, clarity and focus. We are indebted to the new media pioneers, many of whom are contributors in the book. Brandon leads the way in this IP tell all.

Check it out!