Seeking the face of God in new technology

By Russell Pollitt SJ

Working with students I often find that I am competing with SMSs, Mixit, MySpace, Facebook and various other gadgets the “techno-world” offers. Communication is of utmost importance. The inability to communicate is an obstactle to economic, social, political and religious opportunities. What is communicated to us directs our thoughts, actions and lives. Communications technologies dramatically alter and direct our worldview. We are being formed and shaped (obviously and subtly) by electronic and digital media which have brought about the biggest communications revolution.
The Church, from the time of Jesus, has had as her foremost task communication: proclaiming the Gospel. St Paul says that it is his obligation to communicate the Gospel: “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

The contents of this proclamation have not changed, but the mode of proclamation has—from oral transmission to print and now hi-tech data lines. The way our society understands itself has dramatically shifted as communications technologies shape a “new world”. It is into this “new world” that the Gospel must be proclaimed and, hopefully, through this technology.

The Church is no stranger to the world of media. One of the biggest contributing factors to the Protestant Reformation was the development of technology: the printing press. The printing press “…provided the ‘stroke of magic’ by which an obscure theologian in Wittenberg managed to shake Saint Peter’s throne”, as Elizabeth L Eisenstein put it in her history of the printing press.

Although the battle was primarily theological to begin with, it was not fought in theological institutes but in the printed word. Eloquent sermons did not do the trick—the power of persuasion in the press provided the gateway through which a much wider audience was reached and, as we know, shook Western Christendom.

The electronic media re-directs history again. This is unparalleled because of its ability to reach many around the globe in seconds at any one time. Something happens in an obscure village in Africa, and seconds later it’s possible for someone in California, through a satellite connection, to hear of it in the comfort of an armchair while sipping gin. As technology develops a change takes place in the very fabric of our lives and society—perhaps more subtly and pervasively than we realise.

Communications Sunday is an opportunity for the Church to reflect on the world of communications and, the role and use of communications in the Church. The Vatican established a commission to deal with issues relating to communication only in 1948.
In 1963 the Second Vatican Council promulgated its decree on social communications, Inter Mirifica. This was significant as the Council dedicated special and far-seeing attention to communications in the Church. The same year Pope Paul VI—the son of a journalist—elevated the existing council to the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. This commission was responsible for dealing with all issues related to cinema, radio, television, and the daily press in relation to the Church.

In 1989 the commission became a Pontifical Council, an office in the Roman curia in its own right. The Internet was rapidly developing by this time, and had been since the 1960s. The philosopher Bernard Lonergan once remarked that the Church always has a predisposition to arrive “breathless and a little late”. In documents issued by the Church since Vatican II we encounter an enthusiasm for engaging with and using the media. Inter Mirifica, Communio et Progressio (1971) and Aetatis Novae (1992) all assert that the new world of mass media shouldn’t be avoided but embraced and used. The Church recognises that mass media have serious implications for the proclamation of the Gospel.

A number of recommendations are made in the area of forming people for communications work (both lay and clergy) as well as setting up local communications offices. Unfortunately, unlike the enthusiasm of the documents, little seems to have been translated into praxis. Bishops, pastors and religious for the most part are unsure of what to do about the media, they struggle to engage, do it badly or just withdraw from it.

There are, for example, no dioceses in South Africa that have a full time media office or officer. Little is done to prepare Church personnel for media work; seminaries and houses of formation offer a little training but no serious study and ongoing media formation (theoretical or practical) is done. The American media specialist Fr Robert White SJ claims that there is evidence that the quality of homiletics or other communication training has actually declined since Vatican II.

Technology is at the service of the Church for proclaiming the Gospel. It is important that the Church, in the broadest sense, reflects seriously, and critically, on how best to use the communications media. This will require an openness and willingness to adapt the modus operandi to better speak to people today in a language they can identify with.
All dimensions of Church life are influenced by technology and not to engage with our hi-tech age, I think, would simply mean the Church will be left behind. Often, as in the Enlightenment, the Church seems to adopt a “siege mentality” in which it is cautious, even suspicious of, and discourages new developments.

While discernment is required and not every new development is good, there is still much which can be used and learnt in the important task of proclaiming the reign of God. A more rigorous engagement in and commitment to media work does not only mean using the technology on hand for communicating salvation but also informing and shaping the malleable technologies at our disposal with the values of Christ.

At the heart of Karl Rahner’s theology is the conviction that God can be experienced, however dimly and incompletely. God’s self-disclosure continues in human experience and will not be finished until God is all in all. God, surely, is at work in our technological world. By seeking the face of God in technology we give God another avenue to disclose himself to us, and us another place to experience God however dimly and incompletely.
Are we really serious about prioritising and committing to the most powerful agent of persuasion and change in our midst?

Fr Pollitt is a Jesuit priest based in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.