The Church’s Christ-given mission to announce the “Good News to all peoples” is taking a new meaning with the emerging media available to us today.

Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley’s blog from Rome has received worldwide attention and praise. It has been correctly perceived as a pioneering effort by a prince of the Church to use new technology to communicate with his flock and for that matter with the whole world.

What’s more, we are pleased to report that The Pilot has launched it’s own, revamped Web site, www.TheBostonPilot.com, to better serve our current readers and to reach out to new audiences interested in the news with Catholic perspective.

Younger generations -- including Catholics--turn to the Internet for their news. They are not only making use of the Web site of traditional media outlets but also the “blogosphere”--an intricate net of personal online journals that often mix news with the writer’s personal views.

Though the means of communication may be new, people’s hunger for information and perspective remains unchanged.

Moreover, every new generation questions their own existence and meaning, and seeks answers to the deep, existential questions of life and death. What is the meaning of my life? Who is God? Does He love me? Is there a “truth” that can be known and followed as a secure path to live a happy and meaningful life?”

The cardinal’s blog has offered a surprisingly fresh and casual approach to some of those deeper questions.

The need to build new channels to communicate with Catholics in the 21st century is clear.

Society is rapidly becoming secularized and less cognizant of the role that faith plays in leavening civic life. Many secular media outlets embrace that secularist view speeding the erosion of the foundations of the Christian culture that permeated this country since its inception.

The Catholic approach to the news, instead, intertwines faith and reason. It brings its readers not only the facts of the news but also the moral implications of those facts.

In this new post-Christian context, the Church has a prophetic role to fulfill. It is called to proclaim the liberating message of the Gospel to all humankind “in season and out of season.”

The Church believes that “right reason” is capable of grasping the basic truths God has put in the heart of every person. Helping people to form their consciences is an integral part of the call to a new evangelization.

The internet is yet another means to make that message known.