Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/05/20/catholic_2/

Vatican declares 'the internet is blessed'

As Scots Bish says online relationships 'Profoundly sad'

By Joe Fay

Posted in Bootnotes, 20th May 2009 12:31 GMT

The Catholic Church could be headed for a virtual schism as the Vatican embraces Web 2.0 and declares "the internet is blessed", while a Scottish Bishop warns his flock against the "inane chatter" found online.

Father Fredrico Lombardi, SJ, the Vatican's head of communications, marked the Church's upcoming Communications Day with a lengthy speech. In it, he embraced the possibilities of the internet as a force for unity, and for reaching out to the poor and marginalised as well as the wealthy world.

At the same time, Lombardi recognised the "risks and the ambiguities that attend this stage, the enormous potential for manipulation and moral corruption that are nested in the modern social communications." He detailed these in wonderfully Vaticanesque language - see below.

The Vatican has been on the web for some time, and recently jumped onto YouTube.

Lombardi said "The impressive development of social networks, of content and information exchange, of the desire to comment on and intervene in every discussion of every topic, tells us that the internet has given rise to an omni-directional flow of transversal and personal communications, the scope of which was unimaginable until very recently."

He argued that the Church had to have a coherent response if it wanted to interact with the faithful, and presumably not faithful: "We need to develop a structural capacity to respond clearly and competently to the questions that arise – and that takes manpower, time and money."

While some in the Church and other denominations will happily condemn the net - along with radio, TV, printing etc. - as instruments of the Devil, Lombardi concluded his speech by recalling Pope John Paul II's joy at being able to connect with Catholic Youth celebrations by TV, and declaring that "television is blessed".

Now, Lombardi said, "I shall have to work more – all of us shall have to work even harder, so that every day it will be more and more true, to say, and so that we might be able to say with greater and greater conviction: the internet is truly blessed!"

Lombardi might want to work first in Scotland, where the Bishop of Paisley has decided to mark Communications Day by warning against the danger of social networking replacing real relationships.

According to The Daily Telegraph, The Right Reverend Philip Tartaglia is using a very old school form of social networking - a pastoral letter to be read out by priests at Sunday's service - to acknowledge the benefits of the net, but also to put right anyone who thinks virtual relationships can meaningful substitute for real world ones.

"In dialogue with others we need to be wary of the inane chatter that can go on in the digital world which does nothing to promote growth in understanding and tolerance," he thundered.

"We should avoid an obsessive need for virtual connectedness and develop primary relationships," he said. Replacing real world relationships with online ones is "profoundly sad", he concluded. ®

Six Deadly Sins on the Internet?

Lombardi has helpfully provided a run-down of the "faces of evil" in online comms. Perhaps these could provide the basis for Vatican approved social networking. Sadly, there are only six, so presumably the traditional deadly sins still apply in the real world.

"A few weeks ago, a journalist asked me to share my thoughts on good and evil in communications. In particular, he asked me to identify the principal faces of evil in our work and in the flow of communications.

It is easy to paint the big picture. The hard part is recognizing the real, concrete, individual cases and situations, and then to put people on their guard – especially those most susceptible to the blandishments or tricks of evil.

There is the classical face of falsehood, more or less explicit, and often mixed with half-truths, motivated by interests of different kinds – it always aims to deceive.

There is the face of pride, of self-referencing self-centeredness that despises his fellows and refuses to listen to other positions, but seeks always and only the absolute affirmation of the superiority of his own position.

There is the face of oppression and injustice, that would deny his fellows’ freedom to gather information and give expression – the face of injustice that denies the voice of his fellows and so denies their basic human dignity and their rightful place in society.

There is the face of debauched sensuality that seeks to use and possess, and has respect neither for the body nor for the image of the other; this face expresses the materialistic hedonism that turns persons into brutes.

There is the face of escapism, which, seeking refuge in imaginary or virtual worlds, completely subverts the purpose of the new communications technologies, making them a source of isolation and slavery.

There is the face of division, that seeks to demolish dialogue, to undermine all efforts at mutual understanding among people of different creeds and cultures, and to set them against one another rather than to help them come together in genuine appreciation. This face becomes the face of conflict and war.

We need to learn to recognise these faces of evil for what they are, in order to make communications able freely to serve the good, that is, to further the construction of a culture of respect, of dialogue and friendship, and to place the immense potential of contemporary communications in the service of communion in the Church and of the unity of the whole human family."