Virtual Communion
Virtual Communion
Theology of
the Internet and the Catholic
Sacramental Imagination
Katherine G. Schmidt
s
LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
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Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932599
ISBN 978-1-9787-0162-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-9787-0163-2 (electronic)
Contents
2 Ecclesial Perspectives on Media and Communications
3 Incarnation, Virtuality, and the Church
4 Virtuality and Sacramentality
5 The Social Dynamics of Life Online
6 The Suburbanization of American Catholic Life
Table 2.1 World Communications Day Speeches and Topics 1967–2018 41
I would like to thank the community of the University of Dayton for all of their love and support as I worked on this project. My mentors—Vince Miller, Sandra Yocum, and Bill Portier—were especially supportive of not only this project but of all of my work as a graduate student and beyond. Without the encouragement and insight of Vince Miller especially, I would not have been able to write Virtual Communion.
Special thanks to Adam Sheridan, whose wisdom and creativity has been a source of inspiration to me as a scholar for a decade. Long road trips and sumptuous meals with Tim Gabrielli solidified so many of my thoughts on this subject and kept me sane during the writing process. My work is also bolstered by the constant friendship of Emily McGowin and Derek Hatch, who make up just part of a much bigger community of scholars with whom I have been lucky to study and teach.
Finally, the support of two women—my mother, Marsha Miskec Schmidt, and my cousin, Jennifer Miskec—helped me have the confidence to write on this topic. In this project and in my teaching life, I strive to represent the beauty and grace of all the Miskec women.
Many in the Catholic Church will remember March 13, 2013. On that evening, Francis spoke his first words as pontiff, introducing the world to his humble style through a small wave and a slight smile. His first speech is really a prayer—for Pope Benedict XVI, for the Church of Rome and city of Rome, and for Francis himself. He paused before offering his own blessing to allow those gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him as he embarked on an office he never sought. Francis then gave his own blessing, his first “Urbi et Orbi,” before bidding the crowd goodnight and telling them “sleep well.”
Between these two moments of prayer the cardinal who had introduced the new pope (known in this capacity as the Protodeacon) stepped in to provide a prologue to Francis’ first blessing as pope. The official transcript includes the following to convey what happened instead of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran’s actual words:
The Protodeacon announced that all those who received the blessing, either in person or by radio, television or by the new means of communication receive the plenary indulgence in the form established by the Church. He prayed that Almighty God protect and guard the Pope so that he may lead the Church for many years to come, and that he would grant peace to the Church throughout the world.1
As much as I will remember Francis’ first words for their beautiful simplicity, I will also remember the words of Cardinal Tauran. For in what most people might only recall as a pro forma interlude to Francis’ first papal prayer, I heard with clarity an ancient church grant an indulgence through the internet.2
In Cardinal Tauran’s announcement, we can see the church dealing with various media as they came along: radio, television, and “new means of communication,” now so various as to need a generalized phrase to capture them. The Protodeacon was speaking to people in St. Peter’s Square holding cell phones that transmitted pictures and sounds to their loved ones, and to people watching the announcement while huddled over laptops and iPads in offices and on buses. I have no evidence of who wrote this sentence about indulgences, and I have no evidence if he included “new means of communication” for more than what he assumed were practical reasons. I take this sentence, however, as a call for theologians to be ever attentive to the means of communication as they relate the economy of grace. This project is a response to that call.
I remember exactly where I was when I first learned about the internet. I stood in the room of a teenage girl, the daughter of a family friend who had called my technologically savvy father over for help. “She wants to be on the Web,” her father told mine, “but I’m having trouble with the connection.” I learned that “the Web” was a way for people to talk to each other through their computers. I stared in awe at the blank screen of the monitor,