He was the odd man out in the company of bloggers and Podcasters: he had a dog collar. As I studied theology/philosophy at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans (La.) years ago from 1966 till 1970, I was very interested to hear what priest Roderick Vonhögen had to say at Blogonomics 06.He started out comparing operating systems to beliefs. In hardware you belief in PCs and Macs an in software in Windows or OS X and in Western religious circles you believe in Catholicism and Protestantism. One of his statements was stunning: the world is my parish. And of course his iPod is the virtual pulpit. With his podcasts he attracts 15.000 listeners, which is much more than the parishioners he sees during the week.
Vonhögen runs the podcast Catholic Insider, a podcast on the Roman Catholic Church. It started all with death of Pope John Paul last year April and the election of pope Benedict. While many broadcast companies were sending their reports from Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, Vonhögen was reporting events on the burial and election of the new pope, explaining procedures and interviewing people.His philosophy is rather simple. The Roman Catholic Church is a global community. Using an IPod he can reach many members of this community, in fact more than his usual parishioners. He shares his personal experience and does not have to worry about time and place.
In the meantime he has started a daily breakfast show, a light program about Roman Catholicism, culture, books, movies and mythology. He tries to establish a dialogue with the audience. Presently Vonhögen is developing the tool Castblaster together with Mark Versteeg; this software reduces the time for editing a podcast.
Tags: blog
Blog posting number: 367
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