The Papal Prayer Machine

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http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6882/the_papal_prayer_machine/

March 6, 2013
The Papal Prayer Machine
Do Twitter devotions change the meaning of prayer?

By PETER MANSEAU




Prayer Machine II courtesy flickr user Bob Elderberry

In the days following Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement that he would resign last month, the Catholic men’s organization the Knights of Columbus offered a novel way for the faithful to take part in their Church’s transition from one leader to the next.

Following the pontiff’s request that all Catholics “continue to pray for me, for the Church, and for the future pope,” the Knights naturally asked for prayers. Breaking new ground, however, they proposed that these prayers might not merely be spoken at home, declaimed during mass, or formed in the privacy of one’s thoughts. The prayers for Benedict and his successor should, instead, be put on display in the growing global commons of the Twitterverse. According to their press release, the Knights were “encouraging people to send their prayerful support to Pope Benedict XVI directly by tweeting ‘I am praying for you’ and the hashtag #prayerforthechurch to the pope’s twitter account.”

The tweetless were not left out—one could record their pledge to pray for the pope at PrayerfortheChurch.com, or even mail in an actual paper prayer card—but they presumably would not enjoy the Twitter-specific thrill of imagining that @pontifex himself might note their devotion while scrolling through the papal mentions feed. In any case, the names of all those who pledged to recite a daily prayer written by the supreme chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, would be brought to the installation mass of the new Bishop of Rome, whomever he may be.

Requests for prayers on behalf of particular people or purposes are of course nothing new. Every week the Catholic liturgy includes the General Intercessions, also known as the Prayers of the Faithful, a call and response portion of the mass in which a lector intones specific devotional intentions for which, he or she says, “we pray to the Lord,” and the congregation answers as one, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

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