the means of communication that participate in and aid it, is a matter of cultivating true communion, sustained by the sacramental life of the church. Divini illius Magistri picked up on the social structure envisioned by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, emphasizing the different levels of society, or more properly, the three interrelated kinds of society: “Education is essentially a social and not a mere individual activity. Now there are three necessary societies, distinct from one another and yet harmoniously combined by God, into which man is born: two, namely the family and civil society, belong to the natural order; the third, the church, to the supernatural order.”17 The family is central to Christian education and has right to educate its children: “The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.”18
The encyclical then connects the rights of the family and the church in terms of education, emphasizing that civil authority has a role in education but only as it befits the mission of education established by God within the church and family. Between church and family is the fabric of the local community. Early in the encyclical, Pius XI writes, “We implore pastors of souls, by every means in their power, by instructions and catechisms, by word of mouth and written articles widely distributed, to warn Christian parents of their grave obligations.”19 Coupled with the “concrete proposals” of Vigilanti Cura, this warning to pastors is all set against the backdrop of “the dangers of moral and religious shipwreck” found in books, radio programs and film. To steer young Catholics—all Catholics—away from such perilous content one needs the church, instantiated in the thick matrix of local pastors, the local parish, and the family.
Near the middle of the twentieth century, television coupled the intimacy of the family radio with the visual elements of film, bringing the moral dangers of the earlier media into the very heart of the home. In 1957, Pope Pius XII addressed film, radio, and even television in Miranda Prorsus. Pius XII extended his predecessor’s comments about motion pictures into various forms of electronic media. He conveyed the persistent worry from the Holy See to extol the virtues of such media and enumerate their dangers: “From the time when these arts first came into use, the church welcomed them, not only with great joy but also with a motherly care and watchfulness, having in mind to protect her children from every danger as they set out on this new path of progress.”20 Miranda Prorsus continued the project of Vigilanti Cura insofar as it pays close attention to the ways in which these media shape the morals of media consumers. The church, therefore, has the solemn duty of ensuring that those entrusted to its care do not find themselves in the near occasion of sin by virtue of any given film, radio, or television program.
In assessing the situation before him, Pius XII understood the possibilities and promises of media technology to go beyond education and formation, the foci of his predecessor. He connected the media to the mission of the church itself: “Much more easily than by printed books these technical arts can assuredly provide opportunities for men to meet and unite in common effort.”21 While Miranda Prorsus continued to assert the role of bishops and priests in steering the community toward proper use of the media, the emphasis on each medium considered—television, film, and radio—was broader and more universal in its ecclesial vision. Pius XII went on, “Since this purpose is essentially connected with the advancement of the civilization of all peoples the Catholic Church—which, by the charge committed to it, embraces the whole human race—desires to turn it to the extension and furthering of benefits worthy of the name.”22
Miranda Prorsus also placed more emphasis on the responsibility of individual media consumers. This seems like a natural evolution in emphasis, given the shift from film to television as the medium of central concern. The difference, according to Miranda Prorsus, is that “Television shares, in a sense, in the nature and special power of sound broadcasting, for it is directed towards men in their own homes rather than in theatres.”23 As essentially public, film lends itself to a more communal effort, introduced and encouraged by the parish priest. Television, on the other hand, concerns the daily choices of individuals and families, free from the accountability of publicly entering a theatre.
On the surface, these relatively early encyclicals on media appear to sacrifice any theological account of media or technology itself for an intense insistence on the morality of particular products. That is, most of both Miranda Prorsus and Vigilanti Cura addressed how pastors (bishops and priests) should work toward encouraging (or insisting upon) responsible and moral media consumption. One is tempted to characterize these texts as antiquated moral pronouncements that reflect a nostalgic yearning for a time when the church was a cultural and political force which could insist upon the “objective moral order” as the standard for all media production. But within these texts emerges a distinctly theological account of these media and their concomitant technologies, especially in Miranda Prorsus. Before attending to the moral questions of any particular medium, Pius XII writes, “From the drawings and inscriptions of the most ancient times down to the latest technical devices, all instruments of human communication inevitably have as their aim, the lofty purpose of revealing men as in some way the assistants of God.”24 One can see the germ of this theological understanding of media technologies in Pius XI, who writes that “the essential purpose of art, its raison d’etre, is to assist in the perfection of the moral personality.”25 While Pius XII continued this emphasis on the relationship between media and morality, he furthered the theological basis for it by including a more detailed account of how the media actually work and of their relationship to a theological anthropology:
Among the various technical arts which transmit the ideas of men those occupy a special place today, as We said, which communicate as widely as possible news of all kinds to ears and eyes by means of sounds and pictures. This manner of spreading pictures and sounds, so far as the spirit is concerned is supremely adapted to the nature of men, as Aquinas says: ‘But it is natural to man to come to things of the understanding through things of sense; for all our knowledge has its origin in a sense.’ Indeed, the sense of sight, as being more noble and honorable than other sense, more easily leads to a knowledge of spiritual things.26
What this captures, even at such an early date in the influence of these various media, is the degree to which communications technology are part of the economy of grace. The wisdom of these papal statements is that while they understand such media to be “instruments,” they do not argue for their inherent neutrality. Instead, they recognized the way in which their existence actually tells us something about what it means to be human, specifically what it means to be made in the image of God. This emphasis is hard to find in contemporary theological engagements with the internet. There is an implicit and sometimes explicit assumption that the internet and its culture is somewhat of an aberration, something separate from what we might call “religious” or “Christian.” Consequently, the practical recommendations from a Christian perspective seek to add to online life, searching for ways to carve out a distinctly Christian space within cyberspace. In contrast, these ecclesial perspectives challenge us to engage in discourse that situates media—presumably to include the internet—within the very fabric of the created universe, as a vital part of human history and culture, and even a mediator of “spiritual things.”
Therefore, one can argue that a deeply incarnational theology, while not explicit, undergirds these early ecclesial perspectives on media. By taking on human flesh, God has redeemed the world and made it possible for even the most banal aspects of creation to participate in the economy of grace. This is the incarnational theology on which the sacramental life is based. These documents are more explicit in explaining the place of the church in their particular cultural situations with regard to media. On the level of the church universal, the documents reflect an optimism about the relationship between the church and the rest of society that is difficult to maintain in our hyper-pluralistic culture today. On the level of the local church community, much emphasis is placed on the roles of bishops and priests to affect the media consumption of average Catholics. An example of
