Depending on your age and your schooling, you may have a clear idea or absolutely no clue as to what the phrase ‘cave canum’ means. You might have a chuckle to yourself and remember your Latin classes when you see those words written as it seems every Latin student learnt them.

What is interesting is that for years, Latin has been called a dead language. This is due largely to the decline in its usage in everyday modern life. The exception to this rule is, of course, the Vatican, where Latin is one of the official languages. However, nowadays, not much Latin is known by the Faithful – except for the odd ‘Ave Maria’, most young Catholics may not have even heard any Latin spoken.

So it’s really only in the Vatican’s official documents and the Latin Mass where one can find Latin today. Oh, and on the internet. That’s no typo – there are plenty of websites dedicated to keeping the Latin language alive. There are dictionaries and teaching sites, Facebook groups devoted to the language and even sites providing Latin bumper stickers (‘Balaenae nobis conservandae sunt’ = ‘Save the whales’). You can even have Google in Latin.

Both the BBC and the CNN have had articles talking about the role the Internet has been playing in reviving the Latin language, and this bodes well for those of us who didn’t learn it in school, and therefore don’t speak or understand it very well. With the Pope recognising the Latin Mass as a valid extraordinary form, maybe you might like to brush up on how to say the Our Father in Latin (Pater Noster)? With a bit of searching, you might even be able to get to the stage when you can say ‘vero, Latine loqui non est difficilissimum’. Maybe?

With the advent of social networking, photo and video sites, and podcasting, the internet is becoming a better and better place to help share and spread the word of God. This week, we’ll look at how you can use all these to tie together an event and use the internet to help reach more people!

Step 1 – planning your event. Here, social networking sites like Facebook work brilliantly for creating your church group in the online space and make it easy to invite all your members with the click of a button. The advantage of this, aside from the convenience, is the ability to reach many more people – if you want, friends of the people you invite can see your event and join in themselves, and you can even make it public for all to see.

Step 2 – sharing your event. At the event, you can set up a laptop with a webcam attached, and simply broadcast your event to the world. This is a great way to involve people who can’t make it to your event. Check out www.ustream.com for a great option.

Step 3 – life after the event. Finally, after the event, sites like Flickr, and Youtube are a great way to share your experiences with everyone else. Create a Flickr group or a Youtube channel and upload your memories – others can upload them too. If you have a recording of your event (say for example a talk), make sure it’s available to everyone by uploading it as a podcast. Sites like www.podbean.com, www.podomatic.com and www.ourmedia.org provide free hosting for podcasts.

With these tips you can help lift your event to a new level – 2.0!

Is there anything you’re doing that we’ve missed? Share your tips and tricks with everyone in the comments below…