A few random observations on Catholic life, not right or left wing, just orthodox Catholicism, loyal to the Magisterium. Tuesday, 13 November 2012 "Facebook is the new parish hall" A meeting between the US Bishops and Catholic bloggers has produced some interesting results so far. One statistic that has been bandied around is that, in the USA, less than 5% of Catholics read Catholic blogs. Hmm...that figure seems depressingly small....except that, in the US you have something like 77 million Catholics which means over 3.8 million of them read the blogs....can that be right? Apply that to the UK with 5 million Catholics and you have 250,000 blog readers. Well, all I can say is that they have not found their way to this blog. But this meeting of minds with reference to the new communications technologies is incredibly, vitally important. Firstly, a gold star to the US Bishops who went along with this meeting and, secondly another "well done" for coming to terms with what is undoubtedly going to be the new means of evangelisation. Imagine for one nano second that you are back in the 15th century and that you are witnessing the first book rolling off William Caxton's press - mass production of the written word, a new world of learning opening up for millions. Well, multiply that impression by, say, several hundred millions and you have a crude idea of the enormity of the social media and how it may be used as a force for