I got a call from a reporter for the Chicago Daily Herald (a large suburban newspaper here in Chicago) last week and he said he had discovered Matty’s blog on the Internet and wanted to do a story about Matty and his web site. The youth office in Kansas City had given him my name as a possible contact. I spoke briefly with the reporter on the phone last Friday and just saw that the story ran in the Sunday paper. The article is very nicely done and is a wonderful tribute to Matty and the community of people he gathered around himself, even via the Internet.

Note: The Daily Herald web site has removed the article so I have pasted it here:

Date: September 25, 2005
Section: News
Edition: Lake,Cook,F1,F2,McHenry,F3
Page: 3

Web site serves as living memorial to seminarian
Mike Riopell Daily Herald Staff Writer

An online journal kept by one of the seminarians killed in a Mundelein car crash has received more than 100 messages from friends and acquaintances trying to cope with his death.

Matthew Molnar, 28, of Overland Park, Kan., kept a journal online through the free Web site Xanga.com, on which he wrote about issues ranging from Hurricane Katrina to his religious philosophies, and posted photos of himself and friends.

One showed Molnar with friend Jared Cheek, who also died in the Mundelein crash. Both died when the car they were riding in hit a tree early Sept. 15 on the University of St. Mary’s of the Lake seminary campus.

And now his last post, a rant about the misgivings of the “What would Jesus do?” slogan, has drawn responses from people Molnar may have never met, expressing grief in the public forum.

“He had a way of bringing people together,” said Shawn Tunink, a seminarian and friend of Molnar’s in Mundelein.

Molnar introduced Tunink to blogs and established a ring of online diaries among seminarians in Mundelein.

Tunink said Molnar’s blog was a way for all the people he had met through being a youth counselor in Kansas and traveling to foreign countries to keep up with the young seminarian.

“Matty’s sphere of influence was worldwide,” said friend Jason Osterhaus, of Overland Park, Kan.

So when Molnar and Cheek died suddenly, the same group poured support through the same medium.

“This is a chance for all the community that Matty created to come together and mourn,” Tunink said.

“A lot of them never met Matty. It’s becoming a memorial.”

Trends suggest people are beginning to feel more comfortable with the Internet as an intimate medium, not the informal communication tool for occasional e-mails.

Patrick O’Sullivan, a professor at Illinois State University who studies the use of technology in relationships, said consistent communication over the Web can lead people to feel close to each other.

“Individuals increasingly find the Internet to be a place they can express their most intimate thoughts with an essentially unseen audience,” he said.

That practice was new to Tunink until Molnar came along. The two became friends shortly after beginning classes at the seminary two years ago.

Tunink said he had planned to go out the night of the accident with Molnar and the others, but a choir meeting held him up.

Classes weren’t scheduled at the seminary Sept. 15 because they were set to run a fund-raising golf tournament. And meetings for the new school year had consumed all the seminarians’ free nights, leaving Sept. 14 as the first chance to go out.

Osterhaus said sometimes clergymen get busy and people don’t understand their true personalities.

“Most people see the priest on Sunday,” he said. “But people don’t see that personal side.”

For people who knew that side, whether in person or over the Internet, the grieving process will continue.

“That’s just a human thing people experience,” Osterhaus said. “Catholic or not.”