Use tips below when surfing for spirituality

A recent study of the Web made the following stunning claim: twenty five percent of all Web sites are oriented primarily toward religious material. This remarkable statistic tells us that a plethora of information on spiritual and theological topics is just a few keystrokes away.

Diving headfirst into this pool of websites, however, can be both overwhelming and risky. Overwhelming, in that it is difficult to know where to find the sites that are most helpful. Risky, as many sites disseminate poor theology or inadequate spirituality, even if they label themselves “Catholic.”

Spiritual Resources
Some of the strongest resources for faith development on the Web are to be found in relation to spirituality. Each site below offers exceptional material on prayer.
This might be the best catholic university Website in terms of what it offers in the area of spirituality. If you clink on the On-Line Ministries icon on Creighton’s home page, you too will be impressed by this site’s rich bouquet of offerings. The cornerstone of this site is a self-guided retreat (press Online Retreat in Everyday Life.) Geared toward busy people who want to experience a retreat by setting aside a short period each day to pray, it consists of a number of reflections on the main themes and prayer practices of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.

By the end of the retreat, which takes about nine months to complete using his method, the retreatant has journeyed through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection by contemplating Scripture and becoming familiar with Ignatius’ methods of discernment, examination of consciousness, and “application of the senses.”

In addition, this site offers some great prayer tips (press Tips button). Topics such as “Prayer as Relationship, Using Ritual Every Day,” “Praying in times of Crisis,” and “To whom do I pray?” are discussed. This site also provides Scripture reflections, written by Creighton University faculty and staff members, on the daily and Sunday Mass readings for the week.

There are meditations on the Stations of the Cross, material on the Jubilee Year and rather thorough discussions on the situation of injustice in El Salvador (see the buttons labeled Romero and Tenth Anniversary). Although the Campus Ministry’s Faith Development button is primarily meant for the undergraduate students, even this part of the Web sit has some helpful elements, such as its Faith Chat forum. Finally, this site has a wonderful annotated Links page, Creighton’s site can function quite competently as your main portal thorough which you can confidently access the valid and valuable Catholic theological and spiritual resources on the Web.