← The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
WOF 531: Social Media in Light & Darkness (pt. 3)
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A
Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrucik, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. For the last two episodes, evangelization and culture podcast host Todd Warner has been having a conversation with Word on Fire's founders about social media, a phenomenon that has certainly played a prominent role in the life of our own ministry. But what about its shadow side? How might faithful Catholics engage in social media? How might the church. How do we cultivate a rich spiritual life in this ever unfolding age of social media? Here to discuss this with Todd Warner and Father Steve Grunow is Bishop Robert Barron.
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B
In a 2020 interview with the National Catholic Register about the troubles with social media behavior, Bishop Robert Barron asserted, quote, the vitriol, character assassination, and just plain hatred that one comes across every day on social media is massively disheartening. Years ago, if someone wanted to complain about an opinion piece, he'd have to sit down, compose a letter, sign it, find an envelope and stamp, send his vitriolic missive to an editor who most likely would take one look at the diatribe and toss it into the trash. Today, anyone in his mom's basement can dash off a hate filled message and with one press of a button, post it on social media where it sits unedited for all the world to see. Further, the very anonymity of the process encourages the venting of the most heinous and hurtful kind of rhetoric. A particularly disturbing phenomenon in the social media era is the Twitter mob, which we call the X mob now, I guess by which I mean the awful ganging up on someone, amounting to a kind of feeding frenzy with the collective goal of totally destroying the person. And of course, extremism on one side of the ideological spectrum conduces to extremism on the other side. Close quote. So we've been talking about a lot of the aspects, the good aspects of social media, evangelizing aspects of social media, the hopes for social media. Let's talk a little bit about the dark side of social media. How can we at once spread and consume the word of God through this modern modality without jeopardizing our intentionality with our brothers and sisters and our interiority with God?
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C
Let's talk about what's wrong with it before we get into those meta details. So what we have learned now is that social media is an amplifier. It's an amplifier of certain aspects of our humanity. And we know that we have this capacity to communicate. But that communication can go very, very wrong. We can hurt people profoundly with what we say, and we know it. In other words, we can weaponize speech without social media. If I weaponize my speech and I just yell at you, it's just you and I. But if I do it online, I can form a mob. I can wreck your life. And so the thing is that, that amplification, I think, was not really appreciated when social media emerged. And then suddenly it started happening. And I don't think that we've yet figured out a way culturally to deal with it. Like take, for example, you know, three, three constants of, of human interaction, negative human reaction, gossip, reputation destruction, and social exclusion. Those things happened in, in the human experience and human culture for centuries, but they were mitigated by the ability, but by the amplification process that we had. You know, so you, you get, you get socially excluded from one community. You know, you could probably move to another state and then it's over, it's over. Gossip, you could shut it down or something like that. You could kind of move away from it. But those three things, which are forms of violence, actually, they can become very quickly forms of violence. And they're forms of also expressions of psychopathology. I mean, psychotic people use those, weaponize speech in those ways on social media. They're just accepted. It's kind of like, well, that's the cross we all bear. You know, that's just the way it is. And we can't inhibit free speech. You know, they give all the reasons for it. And also, you know, the thing is that once it starts happening, it takes on a momentum of its own, which I think is properly described as satanic. So that if you want to see how Satan works through technology, look at the darker side of social media. Because the precedence of what's going on with the mobs and things like that are in pre modern culture, they're amplified in social media. And I think that the church, which from its beginning, because it was the Lord's mission itself, which had the responsibility of casting out demons, has been kind of missing in action in terms of managing this amplification of evil that exists online. Like we don't know yet. I mean, we have our texts of exorcism for, but we don't have a plan for the way that social media manifests itself in a demonic way. So that's like a spiritual challenge. But I'd say that we haven't figured out as a human culture how to deal with this phenomena. The other thing that's really dark and demonic about it is that it's unforgiving. Like malice in the digital space is unforgiving because it never goes away. It's just there all the time. And what are we using this technology for? And that's why a lot of these social media mobs become so effective in destroying people's lives. It's like, well, I'll just say this about this person, and then that person's applying for a job, and there it is, and there could be no truth to it, but they're like, I'm not gonna hire this person. There's trouble there, or whatever that's satanic and it's unchristian because there's never any redemption. There's never any forgiveness. Now I'm identifying kind of the dark. I don't have the complete solution to it, but Christians themselves, we're supposed to be on the front lines of fighting the dark powers. And I think every Christian needs to ask themselves, in terms of this field of battle in the culture, in terms of this particular one, where are we? And you know what I'll say, most of the time, we're in the mob.
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D
Yeah.
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C
I mean, you look at a lot of the Catholic social media, gossip, reputation destruction, social exclusion, they're normative. Nobody discusses calumny. Nobody discusses rash judgment. Nobody discusses detraction. And in fact, when it is discussed, it's discussed in a way, it's like, we shouldn't use those things because it doesn't respect victims. So the thing is that we're not in the game, and we're not in the battle as Christians. And I think that's one of the things that's contributing to the fact that this demon has been unleashed in social media, and we don't have the capacity or the will or the power to really resist it. That's kind of my state of the union in terms of the darker side of social media, what the church can do about it right now. I think that that's kind of the challenge that's pressing upon the church right now. And I mean, the first thing is stop participating in it. And also, if there's gonna be some formal kind of exclusion that Christians are going to experience in the church, it's the turning away of the church from those people who practice those types of violence of gossip and reputation destruction and social exclusion via social media, why are we, in some cases, why are we Christians pumping these people up online? But we do. But we do. So in that respect, I think that the leadership has to shift in the church to better understand there is a spiritual substrator to all of reality. It's not like there's this social media universe and it's kind of just technology that's out there. No, there's spiritual powers that are animated through these things. There are spiritual powers that are animated in ourselves as a result of these things. And where are we? Where are we? Are we with the Lord whose primary ministry, One of the primary aspects of his ministry was to cast out evil, to cast out the evil spirits, or we're just missing in action?
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B
Bishop, thanks for all that, Father. I mean, it's insightful. Bishop, how would you reflect on what Father Steve just said?
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D
Well, I agree with it. I don't think we found a good solution to this. And I'm glad we talked about all the positives first, because there really are positives and culminating in all the numbers and the success of our ministry and, you know, God bless the social media. So, I mean, all that is true, but it's haunted by this dark side and I don't think we found a good way to solve it yet. I agree with Father Steve that Christians themselves should be the first ones not to participate in this negativity. But it's like the, you know, accident on the highway. Everyone stops to look. Everyone stops to look and it blocks traffic for miles and miles and miles. Same thing on social media is people, they oh, oh, oh, what was just said? Oh, oh, let me get in the. Oh, let me listen to that. And so Christians ought to be on the front lines of saying, no, I'm not going to cooperate with that. Because I've often talked about the evangelically counter indicating quality of this. When you go on a Catholic website, some innocent seeker wants to learn more about the faith. They go on a website, what do they find? But Catholics broken into all kinds of little divisions, fighting each other, name calling and character assassination. I mean, that's completely disedifying and it turns people off from evangelization. In this very room yesterday, I recorded a couple of homicides and one a few weeks from now. The reading is Paul to the Corinthians and saying, what's going on? I'm for Paul, I'm for Apollos, I'm for Cephas. Is Christ divided? I mean, so Paul saw it at the very beginning of the church, this tendency to divide ourselves into camps to do character assassination across the board. So it's haunted us from the beginning. Again, it's the devil's way of undermining the church. It's Haunted us from the beginning. Father Steve is right that the social media amplifies this. It's always been there, but it amplifies it and makes it much worse. They say for a lot of people, the thing that frightens them the most in life is public humiliation. Well, see, the social media gives people an opportunity to do that is. I'll just say something negative. And 24, 7, 365, all over the world, there's this statement.
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C
And then when Christians do it, it's like at the center of our faith is the image of the crucified Savior who the Son of God exposed to public humiliation, to public humiliation. And, you know, lots of people said he deserved it, too, which is kind of like when this type of stuff starts happening. Well, what did they do to get themselves into this thing? It's like it's this. And what we're not doing is recollecting our mind, the image of the humiliated Christ, and then reckoning with the words of the Lord. Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me. Well, you did it to him. We all did it to him. And then we do it again and again and again. And the social media aspect of it gives us an easier way to do it, because you try to do that to someone in real life. You might have somebody say, lay off, get out of here. Oh, I can get an anonymous account. I can do it. They're of no consequence to me. I'm just folded into the rest of the mob. So it's like, we Christians, we've got to understand that there are certain imperatives in our spiritual lives that are of eternal import. And, like, do you want to, on the last day, be facing your Lord and Savior and you see back reflected in his eyes, the person you harmed on social media that you forgot about years ago? And that's your judgment. That's your judgment. And you just went about your life thinking, oh, you know, everything's fine, and everything like that. But there, in the final moment, where the absolute judgment of the Lord is upon you, you're seeing that person. Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me. I don't think we think that way. It's like, you know what? You know, what a very simple thing the Church could do from the highest level is create an examination of conscience for Catholics in regards to that doesn't just take into account, you know, the Ten Commandments, you know, did you worship false gods? But what have you been doing online?
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Yeah.
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Have you hurt anybody? Did you look away from Somebody being hurt, not defend them. Like, you know, maybe that needs to be more integral to what our spiritual life is about and that Christians come to understand. You want to know what mortal sin looks like? It looks like some of this stuff. See, you're worried about these other things as being moral sins, but look what you're doing. Look what you've done. Look what you've failed to do. So, you know, I don't want to be a downer about it, and I don't want to just seem accusatory, but I'm animated about this because the consequences of this spiritually, we should all be taking very, very seriously. I mean, we can talk about what it does to the society or the culture, but we're church people. What's it doing to the souls, Souls of people? What's it doing to our souls? And that's. We're talking about decisions being made to do things on social media that have eternal consequences. And it's not on the radar screen. It's not on the radar screen of our moral lives. And I just. I just think that that's deeply troubling. Yeah.
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B
On this note, because you're talking about what's the way forward. I'm going to return to your interview, Bishop, with the National Catholic Register. You suggested, quote, just as John Paul II in Ex Cordae Ecclesia called for the bishops to exercise greater supervision of universities operating under aegis of the Church, I'd recommend that we bishops exercise some authority over those who claim to teach for the Church in the social media space. There are, to be blunt, a disconcerting number of such people on social media who are trading in hateful, divisive speech, often deeply at odds with the theology of the Church, and who are, sadly, having a powerful impact on the people of God. I do think that the shepherds of the Church, those entrusted with supervising the teaching office, can and should point out when people on social media are harming the body of Christ. I wonder if it's time to introduce something like a mandatum for those who claim to teach the Catholic faith online, whereby a bishop affirms that the person is teaching within the full communion of the Church. Close quote. Could you explain your thoughts on that?
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Yeah, I still agree with that. That was some years ago and I brought it up. I remember on the floor of the usccb, we discussed it one time. It never got a lot of traction, but I still think it's an important thing because bishops monitor catechesis all the time. We monitor who teaches, we monitor the Books, we monitor, programs that are used. Well, that was the way we taught the faith. We still do, but now it seems to me the dominant way we teach the faith is through social media. The problem is a lot of it's outside of the purview of the church. It's someone hangs out a shingle. I got a podcast or I've got whatever, and here I go. Well, fine, fine. But is the shepherd of that diocese monitoring this and seeing, is this person qualified? Is this person teaching faithfully? Is this person causing much more mischief than good? I think it's important for the shepherds to be involved in that. Again, part of the problem was a lot of bishops. Well, we're older and they're not as attuned to that world. They get, oh, let's look at books and catechetical programs or then universities. John Paul ii, We should have a mandatum for those who teach theology. That's why I was suggesting something like that. For those who are teaching now online, should they have some supervision or formal authorization from bishops? I still think that's right, but I think we bishops aren't as attuned to that world. We don't think about it, but we should. And I think we should be, you know, more attentive in monitoring that world.
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Father Steve, would you any thoughts on this?
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It's hard for me to understand how that would work, because. I think it could work. It would be kind of a reorientation. Maybe it's the reorientation the church needs because it's an assertion of the bishop's authority. And then how would. Since the online thing is kind of ubiquitous and universal, it would be the responsibility of the bishop of the diocese the person was living in to say, hey, are you in communion with the church or not? And in order to be in communion with the church, you're gonna have to do these things if you're gonna teach online, if you're gonna evangelize online, or it's like. Or be able to say, you know, anyone can put up a shingle on the Internet and say that you're a Catholic this or Catholic that, or whatever, but you're not. I'm not permitting you to do that, so you're on your own. So be very, very careful about how you use the word Catholic, because you didn't come to me with this. But also, you know, it's like, will bishops be able to. How will this be structured?
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Or
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people coming to bishops all the time said, I want to start a podcast and I want to do this and things like that. Do they have the time for it or how to do it? So there's the practical ideas of it. I just think, you know, Christians have been so internally combative and vociferous from the beginning. That's the word I'm looking for, that we kind of fight with one another a lot. And I don't think we reckon with how that affects evangelization. That when we're all at one another's throats, usually arguing about things that most of the world doesn't care about, we cease to be a bridge or a route of access into the faith. Because who wants to join an argument club? Because that's what it starts looking like. Maybe that's part of the examination of conscience that the church has to be brought into. It's just like your presentation of yourself is related to your presentation of the faith. And that's public, and it's very public online. It might not seem that way to you. And what impact are you having? And are you gonna want again my image on the last day when you face the Lord Jesus? Is that the thing that you're gonna face judgment for? It's like you thought you were very well intentioned, that you were gonna purify and clean the church, or you were gonna lead the church into a new era of social justice and things. And. And then Jesus shows you the mess you made and the number of people that you drove away from him, which out of your vanity or your egoism or your narrowness, you didn't give consideration at all because you were just righteous in your cause. So, you know, it's very Catholic to think we can have these formal processes and offices, things, and that's how to manage things. And as far as it can go far, you know, but it'll only go as far as it goes. So I don't. I think the enemy is ourselves. And it's. It's kind of like there's this. There's authentic spirituality has a lot to do with coming to terms with a lot of fundamental questions about yourself. Religion becomes particularly dangerous when religious people go out into a culture, into a society, and they haven't done the really, really hard spiritual work, because it's kind of like St. Paul. So St. Paul did terrible things, terrible things. And it's not like he's immediately immersed into the life of the church. He has to go away for a while and be instructed in the faith. And I think a lot of that was reckoning of what's wrong with Paul. How did it get to the point where you're murdering people. How did it get to that point? And he's got to come to terms with that. I think at times in terms of the spiritual life, we think it's almost instantaneous. I got Jesus now, or I'm in the church now and I'm all in and I'm going to do this, this, this and this. You haven't dealt with a lot of. A lot of the aspects of your interior life. So I would just bring it from process, procedures, ecclesiastical office, to the person. And my thing is examine your conscience. Don't examine the conscience as if you're determining your own righteousness, but assume from the beginning you are unrighteous and you are a sinner. Start there and work through that and then see if something is awakened in you in which you can authentically express the gospel to others and be a bridge and a route of access rather than a hindrance.
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B
Final question, Bishop and Father, given that we have an incredible ubiquity to social media and at the same time we're called to have a deep interiority in our faith, how do we reconcile those two? To be present on social media, to be around social media, and yet to be called to a deepening, deepening of the wellsprings of our faith, how do we reconcile those two and what are your hopes for evangelizing in the social media landscape going forward?
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D
Well, my quick answer is prayer and study. I always tell my seminarians those two things, so they really learned the lesson about prayer. And Fulton Sheen, a lot to do with that. The daily holy hour, the Mass, the rosary benediction, to be grounded in prayer. If you're going to do the work in social media trying to propagate the gospel and you're not a person of prayer, it's not going to work. But the second thing I think almost as important, study. Are you reading the great sources? Are you a person of books? I never trust social media people that are at the same time people of books that go back to the very old medium of pages and ink and so on to get grounded in the great tradition. So you've got something to say that when questions are asked, you've got a really good, compelling answer, not just something off the top of your head or what you've heard in the culture. So I think prayer and study have got to be the sources if you're going to do this work. And that's a discipline. And people for many years have approached me asking about how do I get involved in this and what Do I do. And that's always the answer I give. I said, forget about cameras, forget about lights, forget about that. Read books. Augustine, Aquinas, Chrysostom, Jerome, Benedict xvi, Carol Wojtywa. Read books. Chesterton Lewis. Read books. Read books. And then be a person of deep prayer. Pray every day, pray in a very focused way. Those will feed then the work you do in a way that technology will take care of itself. But you need to care for those great sources of spiritual wisdom. And I think that's the way forward. If you want. We need, and this is behind my idea of a word on fire order of priests, priests that would be shaped and formed. Very much prayer and study, understanding the social media, but their use of it informed by these great spiritual sources. And I think that's the path forward.
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B
Father Steve.
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C
You know, there's a short story by Flannery o' Connor called Revelation, and it's. I think everybody should read it. I think all Catholics should read it and they should internalize it. And it's about this insufferable woman who's given a revelation of basically she's like a sinner, like everybody else. So her haughtiness and her self righteousness, it's like that's just a false front. But it's the revelation at the end that is significant because she has this vision of heaven. She sees heaven and she sees all the people that she thought were unworthy of going to heaven. And they're at the top and they're full of joy and they're going up to heaven. And then there are people like her, they're going to go to heaven too, and they're all in line and. But she notices something. She sees their faces and she said she could see by their shocked and surprised expression that even their virtues were being burned away. It's like, I really think that the condition for the possibility of genuine apostolic
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service
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discipleship is the internalization of that message in that story, that you have to get to a point in your life where you're standing with that woman, looking at the surprised and shocked looks on the faces of people like you as you watch the things that you think are important about yourself being burned away. And so I guess I'm saying that what's most important right now is a disposition of humility. And I think that that's in far too short supply and a lot of online engagement because it's not built into the algorithmic structures. The contrary to humility is built into the algorithmic structure, which is pride. And without humility. There's no love, there's no real love without humility. And so if there's only pride, what follows from pride is envy. And envy is the most self destructive, culturally destructive force that the devil unleashes upon humanity. It's responsible for more cruelty and mischief than anything else. But and social media algorithmically favors pride and envy. So Christians finding their place in social media, when our disposition is fundamentally humility and love, it's gonna be a spiritual battle.
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B
Bishop Robert Barron and Father Steve Grunel, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It's been a pleasure to talk with you.
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D
God bless you, John.
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A
Thanks.
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C
Thank you.
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A
That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word on Fire Show. If you're interested in learning more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and for others, and work for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute, check us out at institute.WordPress.org that's institute.WordPress.org welcome. See you next time.