It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
If we did not have the internet, blogs, social media and the like, would things for Catholics be happier today than they are?
I long for the days when I couldn’t wait for our diocesan newspaper to arrive in the mail each Friday. It included lots of photos of parish events, First Holy Communions and the like with a smattering of international Catholic news.
Our parish provided The National Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor which provided more national and international Catholic news. We are had Catholic Update.
On the parish and local level Catholicism seems happy to me. Is that true for you? But not so much on Catholic internet sites, except mine of course.
6 comments:
We have always filtered information - this is necessary for, first of all, physical health and survival.
A young animal learns to filter sounds - this sound means someone in the group has found food, that sound means there is danger lurking. We also learn to filter what we see. Does that movement in the distance mean a predator is coming closer, or does it mean a member of my pride or flock or family is coming home?
For mental and spiritual health and survival we need filters. They help us make sense of the massive amounts of data that come our way. The genius of advertising is figuring out how to bypass these filters. The attractive man or woman on the scree or the page elicits a reaction without much thought (filtering). "Having whiter teeth makes you more popular." "Owning a Lincoln makes you like Matthew McConaughey." "Building wealth is a sign you are a successful human being."
Whether it is a diocesan newspaper or a rant-filled comments section on a news website or blog, we have to reinvigorate the filters. Assaults on our thinking are always there. How we choose to internalize or to ignore them can impact our sense of contentedness.
No, it is that bad. If you compare US Catholicism's health in 1955 to today you would really have to be an uber Pollyanna to believe otherwise. If you base the Church's health on the basis of the remnant that shows up you might be fooled into believing otherwise. The only vitality I see today is in parishes with the EF. But progressives are in denial about that. My old territorial parish with a grade school at best has a couple of dozen school age children at Sunday Mass. In contrast, a nearby parish with the EF literally has around 200 children at the Sunday EF. The Church buildings at both are virtually the same size.
I have said before, that I think the Internet was a gift from God particularly to fight against demonic influence in the world, but like all gifts, they can be perverted for evil use.
There are all sorts of Catholic Internet sites, but one must first have the desire to visit them which may not be the case for many Catholics, perhaps even most. If one is interested, there is a lot of information on the Internet whether or not it is are biased, and people can choose the bias to bring a sense of contentment, that one is not alone in his opinions.
I have often also wondered that had the Internet been available at the time of the Vatican council, whether the Modernists would have been able to pervert Catholic teaching as they did, and whether Bugnini and his gang of pseudo-liturgists would have been able to get away with fabricating the very imperfect Novus Ordo. These were made possible by the lack of information that the faithful readily had at their disposal then, something which has dramatically changed with the Internet today.
What Fr MJK writes makes a lot of sense. The danger is that our filters can be ideological (his certainly are, and mine are probably so). In other words, we filter out inconvenient truths.
In the 1960s few people had a clue as to what was going on in the Vatican. Cardinal Heenan was as close to the centre as anyone, yet admitted in 1967 that he knew none of the 'experts' who were busily carrying through a liturgical revolution with the backing of Pope Paul VI.
I can access much more information via the internet, but most Catholics do not look at Catholic websites, any more than in the old days they read the Catholic press (yet priests were continually exhorting them to do so from the pulpit). In any case, by the 1970s the mainstream Catholic Press was peddling an uncompromisingly liberal line. It only began to change when William Oddie became editor of the Catholic Herald in 1998.
things are all fine and dandy at the NO local parish level if you care nothing for the Catholic Faith and the salvation of souls.
St Michael the Arch Angel defend us in battle....
To me, diocesan media reads like propaganda. That mentality trickles down to the parishes which, mostly have corporate pastors (don't misunderstand me, there are many, many, really good pastors but, you have to "play ball" to become one). So, yes, the average parish is in a la-la land state of blissful ignorance relative to many of the goings on (as to are we - I'm sure there is much that doesn't filter this far down). The abuse scandal was, however, a wakeup call for many that all is not right. But, mostly, that's out of sight and, therefore, out of mind as well.
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