Virtual Communion. Katherine G. Schmidt
approaches to the pastoral uses of media, Inter Mirifica moved toward a more integrated view of the relationship between the church and media.39
Once again, the implication is that media are neither neutral tools nor essentially evil spaces into which the church must interject itself. Instead, Inter Mirifica and the earlier papal encyclicals present a view of these media as constitutive of both creation and of human activity. This is an immensely important assumption for any theologically informed commentary on modern media and technology. Theologians and pastors would do well to remember the church’s position here, developing steadily in these documents from Vigilanti Cura onward.
While Inter Mirifica is important for establishing the terms for the ecclesial discussion of social communications, the discussion is taken up more fully by the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications’ Pastoral Instruction, Communio et Progressio in 1971. This document details the various topics introduced by Inter Mirifica, specifically public opinion, freedom of information, and the relationship between and roles of “communicators” and “recipients.” In some ways, public opinion foregrounds the entire discussion of social communications in Communio et Progressio. The document understands “the means of social communications” as “a public forum where every man may exchange ideas.”40 Public opinion is a reflection of the exercise of various freedoms, including freedom of speech and freedom of information. One cannot form an opinion without access to accurate and timely information: “Freedom of opinion and the right to be informed go hand in hand.”41 This right carries the duty of being well-informed. According to the text, a person “can freely choose whatever means best suit his needs both personal and social.”42 Such freedoms, however, are not “limitless” and must be seen in the context of other rights, namely “the right of truth,” “the right of privacy,” and “the right of secrecy which obtains if necessity or professional duty or the common good itself requires it.”43 Consequently, the various actors within the means of social communications have particular freedoms and duties associated with their roles, be they “communicators” or “recipients.”
If any aspect of these two documents is problematic for the application of ecclesial sources to the contemporary technological moment, it is these categories of “communicators” and “recipients.” They are particularly illustrative of a view of media that understands them as the conduits of products (news pieces, programs, texts, etc.) by one group of people (communicators) to be consumed or received by the other (recipients). Such is the standard understanding of “mass media”: media that is intended for and distributed to large masses of people. The concept of “social communications” provided by Inter Mirifica and expanded by Communio et Progressio is somewhat able to capture the dynamism of communications technologies beyond mass media. The communicator/recipient binary, however, is less helpful given the fluidity of such roles in the internet age. User behavior online does not fall neatly into either of these categories. At one moment, I am a communicator, and the next, I am a recipient. Even more complicated is the fact that in one act, I can be both. Commenting on an online article is difficult to classify along the communicator/recipient binary. I am a communicator because I am producing text to be read by others, yet by commenting, I am displaying an interaction with the original article, performing my role as recipient. The inherent interactivity of online life, especially with the advent and growth of “social media,” betrays a problem with these categories as we move beyond “mass media.” A choice presents itself: do we simply apply the duties and responsibilities of both categories to all internet users? Or are these categories too beholden to a perspective of media technologies as part of what we call “mass media”?
In addition to understanding media as primarily “mass media,” another important assumption of the ecclesial perspectives comes to light in Communio et Progressio. The latter half of the document outlines the responsibilities of the “civil authorities,” as well as Catholics and other religious people who find themselves in a position to affect media. Coupled with the earlier discussion of “public opinion,” the implication here is that the spheres of the church and the civil authority meet each other in a public space capable of negotiating the interests and values of each party. The insistence on public opinion is particularly telling. What good is a well-informed opinion if there is no place to express that opinion? Such expression seems reserved for an as yet undefined “public.” This comes to light when the Commission describes the role of the so-called recipients:
Recipients can be described as active when they know how to interpret communications accurately and so can judge them in the light of their origin, background and total context. They will be active when they make their selection judiciously and critically, when they fill out incomplete information that comes their way with more news which they themselves have obtained from other sources, and finally, when they are ready to make their view heard in public, whether they agree, or partly agree or totally disagree.44
What exactly defines the social space in which these recipients are “to make their view heard in public”? In addition to complicating the communicator/recipient binary, the internet has also complicated the public/private binary on which so much of the ecclesial commentary on society and culture has relied. Communio et Progressio is often considered one of the most optimistic ecclesial perspectives on communications technology. It is also idealistic when it comes to the structure of society, specifically because of its perception of a neutral “public” or “civil” space in which the church can express its position toward the various media of concern.
Communio et Progressio is a detailed discussion of social communications which flows from not only Inter Mirifica but also from “Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.” The document takes its primary task from Inter Mirifica, attempting to provide theological and ecclesial commentary on topics related to social communications that are only briefly introduced at the Council through Inter Mirifica. In at least two ways, however, Communio et Progressio is also a product of the church-world relationship envisioned by Gaudium et Spes. According to the Council fathers as expressed in the Pastoral Constitution, the church “must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its expectations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics.”45 Gaudium et Spes addresses many aspects of the modern world, and in so doing, provides an example for subsequent ecclesial texts of creative engagement with the “dramatic characteristics” of the modern world. When the Pontifical Commission drafts Communio et Progressio in 1971, then, they do so in the shadow of both Inter Mirifica and Gaudium et Spes. The effect of the latter is to encourage and even demand of the Pontifical Commission a perspective on this important aspect of culture and human history—the media—that is well informed on its lived realities, both positive and negative.
Communio et Progressio insists that social communications be employed for furthering the common good, specifically through education and informing the public opinion. When read as a particular application of the theological project of Gaudium et Spes, the eschatological implications of the ecclesial perspective on social communications from this period come to light. Chapter 3 of Gaudium et Spes, “Man’s Activity Throughout the World,” argues for the place of all of this “feverish activity” of humanity in salvation history. This section of the document is theologically rich and pertinent to the current project:
[F]ar from thinking that works produced by man’s own talent and energy are in opposition to God’s power, and that the rational creature exists as a kind of rival to the Creator, Christians are convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God’s greatness and the flowering of his own mysterious design. For the greater man’s power becomes, the farther his individual and community responsibility extends.46
This perspective applies to any number of human activities; Gaudium et Spes is not referring just to art or labor or technology, but appears to put the entirety of human activity within the “realization in history of the divine plan.”47 When taking on the specific activity of social communications, then, Communio et Progressio applies this perspective to the various and increasing number of media in the twentieth century. In addition to the relative optimism of Gaudium et Spes, Communio et Progressio also adopts the language of rights and responsibilities, a persistent theme in Catholic social thought since Rerum Novarum.