Corporations and ordinary businesses certainly took notice. The day after the election, they were swooping in to hire these digital magicians for commercial, not political, purposes.

I can’t help but wonder whether the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or any of the dioceses that face declining Sunday Mass attendance and empty seats in Catholic schools are asking if there is a lesson waiting to be learned by a church that is not doing well at all in the numbers game.

Introduction of the so-called “social media” into the national political campaign made a world of difference. “Once all the votes are counted,” reported Bloomberg Business Week in November, “about 1.25 million more young people will have supported Obama in 2012 than in 2008, when his ability to turn out 18- to- 24-year-olds was hailed as revolutionary.”

The success of the Catholic Church with that same age group is anything but impressive. It is time for managers of diocesan and parish affairs to be talking to the techies in search of answers to the question of how to reach not only the young but also the not-so-young who are no longer showing up on Sundays. This is a crisis that must be met in new and creative ways.

Is anyone thinking about setting up data centers in seminaries where computer-savvy young men are receiving classical preparation to serve congregations that may or may not be there by the time today’s seminarians are ordained? Are computer-literate young laymen and laywomen being encouraged to bring the new media into chancery offices and pastoral centers?

This all points to something distinctively new that might be incorporated into the new evangelization that is struggling to emerge during this Year of Faith.

My faith is in God, of course, but also in the young who, I believe, God would want us to welcome into diocesan decision-making circles. They can bring to the table knowledge of social media and suggestions as to how those tools can be put to work for the revitalization of the Catholic faith community.

Businesses are doing this right now. This is another page that the church should be lifting from the business playbook.

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Jesuit Father William J. Byron is university professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. Email: wbyron@sju.edu.