When I launched 40 Days of Catholic Media, I mentioned that Mondays would be for discussions on spiritual reading of interest to people using new media to spread the Gospel. On January 24, Pope Benedict XVI released his message for the 45th World Communications Day, 2011 – Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age. World Communications day has was instituted in Vatican II as a way for the church to reflect specifically on how the church can effectively use forms of mass communication.
Last year, I began, (but did not follow through) on a series of articles for Glorify-God.com reflecting upon the World Communications Day Letters through the years. My first article, Did the concept of “Social Media” originate in the Catholic Church? I discussed the origins of World Communication Day and how the church has been interested in the social implications of mass communication long before the Internet as we know it was developed.
There has already been some great discussion online about this year’s World Communications Day Letter. Lisa Hendey has been keeping a directory of links and discussion about Truth, Proclamation And Authenticity Of Life In The Digital Age over at CatholicMom.com. This is a great starting place for digging into the letter.
Before I share some of my thoughts about the letter itself, I want to discuss some of the tools I used to help me digest the letter. Whenever a new (and often complex) message comes from the vatican, I run it through worldle.net. This produces a word cloud in which the most frequently used words are largest. This allows me to discern some of the common themes running through the document. The word cloud for Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age is at the top of this post.
Next I cut and pasted the document into Google docs and I highlighted and annotated the document using different colors and font sizes. A neat feature of Google Docs is that I can embed these notes right here in the blog page by clicking on the prominent ‘Share’ button at the top right of the Google Docs page and selecting ‘Publish to Web’. This gives me a number of options including a handy embed code for the document.
Here is my version of the letter after I had marked it up.
Finally just a few of my observations on the Holy Father’s letter.
1) Once again the Holy Father is calling on Catholics to reach out on what he calls ‘the Digital Continent’.
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. This means of spreading information and knowledge is giving birth to a new way of learning and thinking, with unprecedented opportunities for establishing relationships and building fellowship.
…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.
2) He also points out some of the pitfalls of online communication: That they may distract us from our face-to face physical relationships, and that there is a danger of creating online personas which our not authentic representations of our true selves.
He concludes the message saying,
I would like then to invite Christians, confidently and with an informed and responsible creativity, to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible. This is not simply to satisfy the desire to be present, but because this network is an integral part of human life.
Here is another perspective:
Now it’s your turn.
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What are some of the insights you have drawn from this letter?
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Has it changed how you approach using new media and particularly social media?
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What are some questions you have for others about the message of this letter?
P.S. Tomorrow is
Catholic Media Promotion Day, an ideal spearheaded by Greg Willits to get online Catholics together to promote Catholic Media through blog comments, itunes reviews and even amazon reviews. I had hoped to use Tech Tuesdays and Community Wednesdays during lent to discuss ways to use new media tools in novel ways to help foster community, online and off. But here we go– Dive in and participate. Tomorrow’s post will focus on the different ways we use technology tools to support each other online. If you have an existing post on the topic, or you want to add your two bits to the main post to start off the discussion, let me know at catholicroundup@gmail.com.
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