The Surfin’ Pope

I hereby acknowledge I am a Jew and thus am using up some of the precious world supply of chutzpah in responding to a communication from the Pope.

The Vatican has put out a message today. The heart of the message is this:

The Internet is certainly a new “forum” understood in the ancient Roman sense of that public space where politics and business were transacted, where religious duties were fulfilled where much of the social life of the city took place, and where the best and the worst of human nature was on display. It was a crowded and bustling urban space, which both reflected the surrounding culture and created a culture of its own. This is no less true of cyberspace, which is as it were a new frontier opening up at the beginning of this new millennium. Like the new frontiers of other times, this one too is full of the interplay of danger and promise, and not without the sense of adventure which marked other great periods of change. For the Church the new world of cyberspace is a summons to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the Gospel message. This challenge is at the heart of what it means at the beginning of the millennium to follow the Lord’s command to “put out into the deep”: Duc in altum! (Lk 5:4).

The Pope is way ahead of many others, including Leading Businesses, in seeing the Net as a new public place — actually, a new place for a new public — rather than as a lower-cost broadcast medium. And yet the broadcast model of evangelism still holds sway: the Church is in the business of propagating a “message,” albeit put quite beautifully (“out into the deep”) That explains why the Pope sees the Internet primarily as a way of making initial contact: “How does the Church lead from the kind of contact made possible by the Internet to the deeper communication demanded by Christian proclamation?” There is not much recognition that the Net needs to become not just the knock on the door but also part of the continuing faithful relationships we humans have with one another. Nor is there any hint that the Internet threatens the hierarchical organization so evident in certain religions we could name, naturally favoring a more rabbinic approach in which seekers congregate around those who demonstrate learning and wisdom and faith.

While the Pope concludes by urging “the whole Church bravely to cross this new threshold, to put out into the deep of the Net,” he does so in the context of the Internet as something that “causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet.” The implication ultimately seems to be that the Church needs to deliver the right content, metaphorically replacing pictures of Anna Kournikova with images of Jesus.

The fact that the Net allows conversations as well as the delivery of content shows up as a danger:

The Internet offers extensive knowledge, but it does not teach values…Moreover, as a forum in which practically everything is acceptable and almost nothing is lasting, the Internet favours a relativistic way of thinking and sometimes feeds the flight from personal responsibility and commitment.

Relativism need not be what we learn from our encounters with others. Respect and open-mindedness are more likely given the fact that the Internet as a technology teaches us one value more deeply than any other: the joy of being connected … which in some parlances is more accurately termed love.

The Vatican’s enthusiasm for the Internet as a tool for world peace and evangelical outreach is impressive. But this papal communication is oddly mute about the implications of connecting each of us — even, eventually, the meekest and humblest — one to another, unmediated and direct. To me — someone outside of the Catholic church and thus unreliable as a commentator — it feels like an important moment of denial in an otherwise surprisingly warm embrace.

Happy World Communication Day.

[Thanks to Peter Kaminski for pointing me to the Pope’s communication today.]

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