My eye was caught by a brief article in an American journal suggesting that Christians, and more especially Catholics, see the internet as mission territory. Quite apart from the fact that that's the premiss most of us have been working on for years, I was fascinated by some of the concerns the author raised (no names, no pack drill). Like many, he has understood that the internet has changed the way people read. We have become used to gathering information in small chunks, flitting from page to page, link to link, at speed. Debate has become as ill-mannered and sometimes ill-informed as ever it was in the eighteenth century because so much of the comment we find on the web is anonymous. With all this I can agree. When people come to the monastery, one of the first things we have to teach is how to slow down, especially when reading. The art of lectio divina, prayerful reading, requires time: you cannot rush the Holy Spirit. Good manners, concern for the other, are at base, Christian values and have to be deliberately cultivated. As Chesterton remarked, "The grace of God is in courtesy".

So far so good. Where I take issue with the author, however, is with his view that the internet is hostile to prayer. On the contrary, Sir, I think the internet is a great way of fostering prayer. Yes, we can just "waste time", we can be superficial and self-indulgent (the figures for porn-watching are staggering) but we can also be alert to people and events in a way that would not otherwise be possible. It all depends how we integrate our engagement with the internet into our life of prayer. Here we have the custom of praying before we switch on the computer, praying before we respond to anything that drops into our inbox or before engaging in comment or debate (which, to be fair, we do not often do as there are others better qualified than we are), praying when we close down; none of this interferes with or displaces our "times of prayer", because that's where our hearts are, where our treasure is to be found.

It is precisely because of that hidden life of prayer that we engage with the internet at all. I am sure that it is similar for others. In the past missionaries traversed huge tracts of unexplored and often hostile territory to bring the gospel to those who had not heard it. Today we must accept the challenge of the internet and become digital missionaries. I see no contradiction between that and being, for instance, a contemplative nun. Thérèse of Lisieux never stepped outside her Carmel but the Church regards her as one of the greatest missionaries of all time. There's clearly hope for us all. I know it's a bad pun, but perhaps today General Booth would be urging us not to let the devil have all the best iTunes.