Jesuits want to spread the Good News to Second Life’s debauched netizens, says rebecca newman |
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F our years after it launched, the virtual world Second Life offers a fascinating glimpse into what people really want to get up to in Utopia.
Mostly, it is to gamble and get laid.
So debauched have SL residents become that the Jesuits, who follow an evangelical branch of Catholicism, have decided it is now time they sent missionaries to tend to the 8m lost souls living in the fantasy realm.
In Civilita Cattolica, a Rome-based publication approved by the Vatican Secretariat of State, Father Antonio Spadaro writes:
"The best way to understand this phenomenon is to live inside it, to recognise its dangers. Deep down, the digital world can be considered mission territory: behind an avatar (or online persona), there is a man perhaps searching for God and faith, perhaps with very strong spiritual needs." Sagely, he adds: "The erotic dimension is very present."
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| ‘Deep down, the digital world can be considered mission territory,’ writes Father Spadaro |
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The Jesuits will join a growing religious presence on Second Life. There is already a motley assortment of churches, synagogues, mosques, and inter-faith temples. Oklahoma-based megachurch LiveChurch.tv broadcasts its weekly sermon to 11 real world churches, and one on SL.
With prayer, there has also come schism. Troublemakers, known as 'griefers', have been offending worshippers. Incidents of harassment include naked avatars sitting on the Koran and the painting of swastikas on synagogues.
SL resident Taras Balderdash has gone as far as founding Avatars of Change, an order unique to the metaverse. It is a multi-faith group 'united by the Avatarian Way' - i.e. doing good works and meditating.
Recently Taras sparked controversy by suggesting that "Islam is not a faith that is tolerant of other faiths and therefore cannot be Avatarian".
With real, fervent religious sentiment mingling with strange new cyber-practise, How long before SL hosts the first virtual jihad? 
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 1, 2007
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