Virtual Communion. Katherine G. Schmidt
1. The technologically adept will be quick to point out that it is possible to discover someone’s identity through IP addresses or extensive research.
2. See Hua Qian and Craig R. Scott, “Anonymity and Self-Disclosure On Weblogs,” Journal of Computer Mediated-Communication 12, no. 4 (July 2007): 1428–1451; Erin E. Hollenbaugh and Marcia K. Everett, “The Effects of Anonymity On Self-Disclosure in Blogs: An Application of the Online Disinhibition Effect,” Journal of Computer Mediated-Communication 18, no. 3 (April 2013): 283–302.
3. Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 8.
4. Here one could point to alarming accounts of “virtual” rape through avatars in games, for example.
5. Quoted in Jana Marguerite Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? Doing Theology in an Internet Age (New York: T & T Clark, 2012), 57.
6. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web?
7. George Randels, “Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of the Virtual,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2008): 165.
8. Randels, “Cyberspace and Christian Ethics,” 167.
9. Ibid., 169.
10. Ibid.
11. Rob Haskell, “eVangelism: The Gospel and the World of the Internet,” Evangelical Review of Theology 34, no. 3 (2010): 280.
12. The sacredness of God’s name in the Jewish tradition contributes to this desire for namefulness as well. The God of Israel is particular and personal, although in Christ, the ineffable God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—described in terms of the people whom He has chosen—takes on a name so as to take on humanity. The veil of the sanctuary rips in two, no longer dividing those who can speak God’s name and those who cannot.
13. Adam Copeland, “The Ten Commandments 2.0,” Word & World 32, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 218.
14. Copeland, “The Ten Commandments 2.0,” 220.
15. National Public Radio has become the latest organization to struggle with online comments. In 2016, they published an article with the following statement: “After much experimentation and discussion, we’ve concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users.” Scott Montgomery, “Beyond Comments: Finding Better Ways To Connect With You,” NPR.org (August 17, 2016).
16. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 145.
17. Ibid., 71.
18. Ibid., 147.
19. Ibid., 151.
20. I return to the issue of vitriol when discussing Pope Francis’ 2017 and 2018 Communications Day addresses.
21. Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The New E-Magisterium,” America 182, no. 16 (May 6, 2000): 9.
22. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge, 1983), 151–152.
23. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 153.
24. Although the Reformation provides a clear example of the role of media in the church, earlier examples exist. Even as early as 325 CE, the positions of Arius at the Council of Nicaea and others involved in the Christological controversies were mediated by means of sermons, a kind of early “mass medium.”
25. Anthony Godzieba, “Quaestio Disputata: The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today’s Church, ed. Richard Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 140. Godzieba’s worries here could easily be placed under “Access” below as well. At the heart of his concern, however, are the ways in which the internet affects perceptions of authority.
26. Ibid., 143–144.
27. Ibid., 146.
28. Ibid., 147.
29. Ibid. There are related concerns in other ecclesial contexts over communities or individuals online who are promulgating noncanonical texts as Sacred Scripture. Michael Legaspi argues that the shift from understanding the Bible as Scripture to understanding it as “text” can be understood as a shift to “opacity.” The reformers “contributed to what I have called scriptural opacity, with the authority, meaning, and location of the Bible all becoming contested questions” (Legaspi 25). The fixed type of the printing press is clearly an important factor in this opacity reliant on the fixity of the text. In the digital age, however, text has, in some ways, regained its transparency. Text can be altered with a few key strokes, ideas, and images deleted and added at will. It should come as no surprise, then, that there is a small but real consideration of the canon from communities who have been established on the very opacity of the text itself. Our interactions with technology may have affected our views of text itself, including the central text of Christian communities.
30. Vincent Miller, “When Mediating Structures Change: The Magisterium, the Media, and the Culture Wars,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today’s Church, ed. Richard Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 157.
31. Miller, “When Mediating Structures Change.”
32. Ibid., 159.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 162.
35. Ibid.
36. Vincent Miller, “Media Constructions of Space, the Disciplining of Religious Traditions, and the Hidden Threat of the Post-Secular,” in At the Limits of the Secular: Reflections on Faith and Public Life, ed. William A. Barbieri, Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 178–179.
37. Miller, “When Mediating Structures Intervene,” 164.
38. Ibid., 165.
39. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 47.
40. Ibid., 103.
41. Col. 1:16–17.
42. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 105.
43. As George Randels writes, “This technology may require the church to reinterpret itself and its sources, re-emphasize or de-emphasize parts of its tradition, or adopt new points of view, even as the church also influences the use of computer technology.”
44. Pippa Norris, Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet in the Democratic Societies (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4.
45. Norris, Digital Divide? 5. Theologians have begun to deal with the first two kinds of divide, but have been largely silent on the third.
46. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 18.
47. Ibid.
48. Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2013), 15.
49. Detweiler, iGods.
50. Ibid., 115.
51. Ibid.
52. Phillip M. Thompson, Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton’s Wisdom for a Technological World (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2012), xx.
53. Thompson, Returning to Reality, 36.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 39.
56. Ibid., 46.
57. Access in this way also applies to the various unsavory aspects of the internet, such as pornography or erotic literature.
58. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 105.
59. Detweiler, iGods, 89.
60. Ibid., 92.
61. Thompson, Returning to Reality, 48.
62. Ibid., 50.
63.