A Match Made in Heaven?

Is the use of social media by those in the Catholic Church a match made in heaven...or hell? We'll discuss this question and more with Professor Eugene Gan of Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Professor Gan is the author of the first-of-its-kind Catholic roadmap for the digital age: Infinite Bandwidth: Encountering Christ in the Media in which he navigates the reader faithfully through the digital world, encouraging frustrated parents not to throw out cell phones, ban the Internet, chuck computers, or pitch portable media devices. That would be a mistake and would be going against more than seven decades of Catholic teaching. From Church documents on social communications, Gan extracts seven principles or “media keys” of how to approach and use media.

Cardinal John Patrick Foley says, “Frankly, I wish that such a book had existed when I was president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications as a text which I could have recommended..."

He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and graduated in 1994 with a BS in electrical and computer engineering. He earned his MA in Duquesne’s multimedia technology program and taught courses at Duquesne University’s graduate school. Dr. Gan received his doctorate in education, instructional technology from Duquesne University. He currently is an associate professor of interactive media, communications at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and helped launch the University’s multimedia concentration. An expert on many aspects of new media technology, Dr. Gan has written, produced, and designed multimedia productions for numerous clients.He has also written articles for the Pontifical Council of Social Communication and the Pontifical Council for Culture.