of virtual life: the church, specifically in its local form, and the Incarnation. For my part, I am convinced that these are indeed the two most relevant doctrinal loci for analyzing our current technological moment. What I propose, however, is an approach to the internet which attempts to understand its most basic logic, virtuality, as an expansive category that can actually help modern people understand some of the most important aspects of the Catholic imagination.
At the heart of the doctrines of the Incarnation and the church is a necessary dialectic between presence and absence, a dialectic upon which both interpersonal communication and mediation rely in virtual space. Although I will not return precisely to these five aspects of the internet, together they describe the “virtual” and in some cases are integrally important to religious modes of thought that sustain the life of the church and the Catholic imagination in particular.
The very category of “virtual” under which exists all of the activity and content theologians have found to be interesting and troubling is a constitutive part of the sacramental and ecclesial theology of the Catholic tradition. By focusing on what we mean by “virtual” in different contexts, I argue that we can come to see mediation as more than just a function of the internet. Mediation is, in a sense, the very practice that sustains the sacramental imagination. The church needs a “virtual logic” in order to understand both the sacraments and all of the physical-material entities which participate in the larger sacramentality of creation itself. In addition, in order for the church to be understood fully in both its universal and local iterations, one needs both presence and absence. This church has its own virtuality at the heart of its self-understanding as transcendent of both space and time.
Such virtuality necessarily entails attributes such as disembodiment and anonymity, and the necessity of these modes of social interaction and religiosity in the church should alert us to the fact that much of what is making theologians uncomfortable or worried about the internet is not about the form of mediation but in its referent. It is virtual space cultivated not for a community oriented toward God but often oriented toward themselves. While much attention has been given to mediation itself, I propose we instead focus on what or whom is being mediated and to what end. We have begun our theological discourse about the internet by focusing on its form and assuming that its mediating logic is necessarily antithetical to the sacramental and ecclesial convictions of the church. I contend, however, that we must expand our understanding of “virtual,” using it as a hermeneutic for the church’s long history of mediation. This will enable us to return to the internet with a more productive and honest theological evaluation.
NOTES
1. The technologically adept will be quick to point out that it is possible to discover someone’s identity through IP addresses or extensive research.
2. See Hua Qian and Craig R. Scott, “Anonymity and Self-Disclosure On Weblogs,” Journal of Computer Mediated-Communication 12, no. 4 (July 2007): 1428–1451; Erin E. Hollenbaugh and Marcia K. Everett, “The Effects of Anonymity On Self-Disclosure in Blogs: An Application of the Online Disinhibition Effect,” Journal of Computer Mediated-Communication 18, no. 3 (April 2013): 283–302.
3. Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 8.
4. Here one could point to alarming accounts of “virtual” rape through avatars in games, for example.
5. Quoted in Jana Marguerite Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? Doing Theology in an Internet Age (New York: T & T Clark, 2012), 57.
6. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web?
7. George Randels, “Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of the Virtual,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2008): 165.
8. Randels, “Cyberspace and Christian Ethics,” 167.
9. Ibid., 169.
10. Ibid.
11. Rob Haskell, “eVangelism: The Gospel and the World of the Internet,” Evangelical Review of Theology 34, no. 3 (2010): 280.
12. The sacredness of God’s name in the Jewish tradition contributes to this desire for namefulness as well. The God of Israel is particular and personal, although in Christ, the ineffable God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—described in terms of the people whom He has chosen—takes on a name so as to take on humanity. The veil of the sanctuary rips in two, no longer dividing those who can speak God’s name and those who cannot.
13. Adam Copeland, “The Ten Commandments 2.0,” Word & World 32, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 218.
14. Copeland, “The Ten Commandments 2.0,” 220.
15. National Public Radio has become the latest organization to struggle with online comments. In 2016, they published an article with the following statement: “After much experimentation and discussion, we’ve concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users.” Scott Montgomery, “Beyond Comments: Finding Better Ways To Connect With You,” NPR.org (August 17, 2016).
16. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? 145.
17. Ibid., 71.
18. Ibid., 147.
19. Ibid., 151.
20. I return to the issue of vitriol when discussing Pope Francis’ 2017 and 2018 Communications Day addresses.
21. Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The New E-Magisterium,” America 182, no. 16 (May 6, 2000): 9.
22. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge, 1983), 151–152.
23. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 153.
24. Although the Reformation provides a clear example of the role of media in the church, earlier examples exist. Even as early as 325 CE, the positions of Arius at the Council of Nicaea and others involved in the Christological controversies were mediated by means of sermons, a kind of early “mass medium.”
25. Anthony Godzieba, “Quaestio Disputata: The Magisterium in an Age of Digital Reproduction,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes: The Magisterium and Theologians in Today’s Church, ed. Richard Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 140. Godzieba’s worries here could easily be placed under “Access” below as well. At the heart of his concern, however, are the ways in which the internet affects perceptions of authority.
26. Ibid., 143–144.
27. Ibid., 146.
28. Ibid., 147.
29. Ibid. There are related concerns in other ecclesial contexts over communities or individuals online who are promulgating noncanonical texts as Sacred Scripture. Michael Legaspi argues that the shift from understanding the Bible as Scripture to understanding it as “text” can be understood as a shift to “opacity.” The reformers “contributed to what I have called scriptural opacity, with the authority, meaning, and location of the Bible all becoming contested questions” (Legaspi 25). The fixed type of the printing press is clearly an important factor in this opacity reliant on the fixity of the text. In the digital age, however, text has, in some ways, regained its transparency. Text can be altered with a few key strokes, ideas, and images deleted and added at will. It should come as no surprise, then, that there is a small but real consideration of the canon from communities who have been established on the
