The new media conference CatholiCon continues today in Houston under the guidance of Catholic Underground and Almighty God. Fittingly, the conference began with sung Vespers on Friday and resolves with Holy Mass on Sunday. Today there will be more workshops. Since I am not nearly as tech savvy as some of the participants and all of the organizers, I have been learning a great deal.
The participants here have been outstanding. Truly nice people.
During the conference in my contributions, I was asked to speak to common points between new media and tools of social communication and, this may not surprise, sacred liturgy. I tried stressed especially that Holy Church is all about communication. The Church communicates us upward, lifting our prayers and sacrifices on high, and communicates the graces God offers to us. Christ is, as the document Communio et progressio 11, describes, the “Perfect Communicator”. In the Incarnation, that mysterious, communication of God and man, He reveals man more fully to himself (GS 22) in the fact of the Incarnation and in His words and deeds. He continues to communicate in Holy Communion, in the voice of the Church teaching, even in the words and deeds of the baptized when they are conformed to His will.
Holy Church’s greatest means of communication is her sacred liturgy.
There are many conclusions we can draw from these starting points.
Furthermore, making the link between social communication and sacred liturgy is a “natural” also because the first two documents of the Second Vatican Council were, Sacrosanctum Concilium, on liturgy, and Inter mirifica, on social communications, both promulgated together by Paul VI on the same day, 4 December 1963.
The issue of new media is going to critical in any consideration of “New Evangelization”. But new media needs not only a savvy use of cutting-edge tools. We need a deeper “theology of communication”.
In any event, this has been a great event. You might think about participating at CatholiCon next year. It has been a rich experience.
