Scottish Catholic Observer

GERALD BONNER, Strathclyde University: We need to remember both that shoddy use of a given medium of communication can hinder reception of even the best message, and that even the best use of modern technology cannot make a vague message fruitful. Medium and message, though of course the former must be at the service of the latter. The Gospel deserves the very best ‘vessels’ we can provide to carry it.

On a more specific note, the internet gives us an amazing ability to share resources universally and we need to exploit this more. High quality resources do take a lot of effort—and sometimes money—to produce, so the wider the benefit that can be derived, the better. Therefore such resources should be made widely available.

Good examples of this approach have come from the Church Music Association of America, and related groups/individuals, who have put lots of resources online. These are of very high quality, and most of them are free of charge and free of copying restrictions, thus encouraging widespread use and hopefully giving the flexibility that will help other grassroots initiatives to build on/adapt these resources to specific needs. (More locally, the Choir of St Columba’s in Glasgow has started a blog which has a repository of links to these resources.) This example is about music, but I think the same principles could apply to the sharing of many types of resources, and the Catholic Church should be well placed to take advantage of the ‘universality’ of modern telecommunications.

EMERSON STEVENS, St Andrews University: Although there’s always room for improvement, I would say that in this regard the Church is actually doing quite well. Since Pope Pius XI asked Marconi to create a radio station in the Vatican—only four days after the signing of the Lateran Treaty, thereby making it one of the first official actions of the Vatican City state—the Church has always been on the cutting edge of technology and specifically communication.

A simple Google-search reveals literally thousands of blogs, information-pages, message boards, news sites, videos and more, about every aspect of Catholicism, designed to help and inform everyone from the hostile to the curious to the most devout among us. About.com lists 560 iPhone and 270 iPad apps pertaining to Catholicism—though that was compiled a few weeks ago so those numbers have almost certainly increased in the meantime. The reason for this, I think, is precisely what Gerald said previously; the ease of the ‘message.’ One doesn’t need to ‘sell’ Catholicism, and there’s a demonstrable market for it in terms of people searching for God—or some deeper meaning to their own existence. In my opinion, the best way for the Church to utilise digital media is that which gets the message of Christ to the largest number of people possible.

DAVID LUNDIE, Glasgow University: Helen Nissenbaum talks about the ways systems design can create bias—one of these is emergent bias, where a search engine creates a trend by ranking it. There is no way of telling whether a link is popular because people love it or because they hate it—think of the Rebecca Black song Friday.

Unfortunately, that creates the situation that much of what floats to the top in social media is controversial. Someone who posts controversy will be heard much more loudly than someone who posts certainty, this accounts for the large online presence of Sedevacantists, anti-Catholic fundamentalist Protestants, and other groups which are small to negligible in their impact in the real world.

To counter this requires systemic approaches as well as careful content management. Some web communities have developed algorithms that allow for better search facilities, differentiating content which is desired from content which is merely ‘hot.’ Unfortunately, I don’t see much of that in the way many Catholic and Christian web sites, blogs and forums are run.

A human solution which goes some way to remedy this is to hold to St Ignatius’ maxim that we should always interpret one another’s words in a way that suggests they were intended in charity and orthodoxy, unless it is impossible to do so. Unfortunately, without also attending to structures, this will only lead to our charitable discussions being quiet and obscure, not prominent and counter-cultural.

Panel: It is what you do, and the way that you do it

AS Pope Benedict XVI himself has said: “The new technologies are not only changing the way we communicate, but communication itself, so much so that it could be said that we are living through a period of vast cultural transformation.”

Much of the Church’s presence in digital media comes through lay Catholics acting on their own initiative in setting up blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels and so on. Arguably, this is rightly so. Most aspects of digital media involve personal interaction to such an extent that they are much more similar to the everyday encounters of life than to any sort of official teaching.

All Catholics present on social networks, for example, should be witnessing to the Gospel, both through the direct proclamation of the Faith and through living out Christian charity and actions in this digital world. Our Faith must be enacted and proclaimed in its entirety without seeking to dilute it for the sake of popularity. In witnessing to the Gospel in their everyday dealings with digital media, individual Catholics play a vital part in the Church’s digital apostolate.

Nevertheless, there is a great role to be played by the hierarchy and structures of the Church, and it is perhaps in this area that the most work needs to be done. Part of it is simply a matter of presentation. Parishes pay for gardening, signboards and other aspects of the material presentation of the parish, but do not commit in the same way to the presentation of the parish in the digital world. A poorly designed or managed website can be a significant discouragement to someone making their first tentative approach towards the parish.

We also need to learn how to use digital media most effectively: simply posting a bulletin online, although a good start, does not take into account the changes in communication itself that the Pope talks about. In this respect, it is fairly clear that some sort of systematic approach is also required, at least so as to promote best-practice and to bring together those with the know-how and those with the message. The effective use of digital media requires a significant input of time, skill and, of course, money and so it is vital that resources be combined.

But the Christian use of digital media extends beyond the message, and so as we consider how to put all these ideas into practice, it is worth bearing in mind these words of Pope Benedict, from his message the 45th World Communications Day: “When people exchange information, they are already sharing themselves, their view of the world, their hopes, their ideals. It follows that there exists a Christian way of being present in the digital world: this takes the form of a communication which is honest and open, responsible and respectful of others. To proclaim the Gospel through the new media means not only to insert expressly religious content into different media platforms, but also to witness consistently, in one’s own digital profile and in the way one communicates choices, preferences and judgements that are fully consistent with the Gospel, even when it is not spoken of specifically.”

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