This is an interesting topic that melds faithful Catholic with uber-geek.  ICANN, the international regulatory agency that handles the registration and governance of internet domain names is considering creating religious-based top-level domains. Top-level domains (TLDs) are that last part of any domain name – .com, .net, .org, and so on.  So, the religious TLDs would be things like .catholic, .anglican, .muslim, etc.  The Holy Father himself weighed in on the issue:

could find itself having to decide who gets to represent an entire religion on the internet, His Holiness pointed out, in a letter from Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani.

Religion-themed domains could provoke “bitter disputes” that would force ICANN into “recognizing to a particular group or to a specific organization the legitimacy to represent a given religious tradition,” Polvani told outgoing ICANN chief Paul Twomey.

Fortunately, ICANN has tabled it for at least several months…but The Curt Jester has his own thoughts on the matter:

The National Catholic Reporter could go from natcath.com to natcath.heretic – now that would be a good TLD. Or how about nyt.bias? Though if there was a .catholic TLD the only way I would like to see it is if the Vatican had control of it. It would be way cool as a kind of web site imprimatur.

Dreaming, I would like to see the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith be the body to review requests for a .Catholic TLD. Even better I would love to be the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Website Inquisition. Whenever I go to a new Catholic site I already check it for obedience and orthodoxy. I could call article writers/bloggers to Rome to have them explain to me how their post was in conformity to Catholic truth. Though I guess I would need a pretty big team for such a task and I would surely nominate Dale Price, Thomas Peters, and the Archbold brothers at Catholic Minority Report along with others. I would also need a good team of theologians. I can usually tell when something is hinky, I would just need major help on explaining why it is hinky.

I wouldn’t mind helping out with that endeavor!