This morning I spent a couple of hours creating an Excel spreadsheet of the names and addresses of Superintendents from the nearly 200 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses across the country. It was a tedious job, especially since I am a terrible typist, and copying from the list was challenging. But the chief difficulty was copying the email protocol for each individual diocese.
For the name I had to figure out whether it was first initial, last name; last name, first initial; first name.last name; first name-last name; or what other possible combinations they could find. Priests and Sisters make it even more complicated, as some addresses use just the name while others use the title.
But the name part of the address is nothing compared to the address itself. Here is an abbreviated list of methods used:
- @ADOM.org (Archdiocese of Miami)
- @ArchDen.org (Archdiocese of Denver)
- @rrchawaii.org (Diocese of Honolulu
- @archchicago.org
- @diobrooklyn.org
- @dioceseoftrenton.org
There are many more variations, but you get the point. There are even a couple of dioceses with .net or .com address! If I were to write an email to any diocese in the country, there is no way I could address it without a directory.
The maddening thing is that all of these emails are sent to dioceses in one church. There is no uniformity of protocol, as each diocese developed its own domain independently, and probably at different times. The USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) meets regularly and makes decisions about issues facing the national church, but there was never discussion or decision about how dioceses would identify themselves in the digital age.
Now, among the problems faced by the Church, I’m sure most would feel that this is relatively minor. Likewise given the age and background of most Bishops, it is somewhat surprising that they use email at all.
However, picture if every church building had a street address in a different form from all the others. The chaos this would cause would be obvious. And this chaos would point to a fundamental disorganization of the institution. In the digital age, the domain name is the storefront of every institution.
I understand that schools have to vary their domain names because there are so many schools with the same name. However, with the exception of the Dioceses of Portland ME and OR, and a couple of other specific cases, every diocese in the country has a unique name, and a unique protocol could have been developed.
There really is nothing that can be done at this point. A domain is so intertwined within the web that a change would be more difficulty than its worth. I’m also sure that other companies had similar problems. However, this illustrates the difficulty for large institutions to anticipate a change as it is occurring.
As always, I welcome your comments.
Image: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pinterest.com/amp/pin/350225308496495414/