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BRIAN'S
TAKE...
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Digitising the "Good News"...  Dear friends,
It was a welcome break from my little perch in "digital heaven" up here in the Blue Mountains to venture down into the "big smoke" of Sydney today to attend the inaugural Day3 Digital Conference. This was a fledgling venture, largely the brainchild of New Zealand Marist priest, John Murphy, but enthusiastically supported in Australia by Fr Michael Kelly SJ, CEO of Church Resources and CathNews, Sr Adele Howard, founder and Director of Fraynework Multimedia — an initiative of the Sisters of Mercy using the modern tools of communication to give "a voice to the voiceless", and Marist, Br John McMahon, Director of Champagnat Education Office in Melbourne. As a first off venture bringing together both professionals already working in digital media and those interesting in utilising the new media to "give the Gospel a digital future", the organisers confessed they weren't too sure what to expect — or what might develop from the Conference. From my conversations during the day with some of the participants, and listening to the discussion from the floor, I picked up the feeling that most participants weren't too sure what to expect either. All up about fifty people participated in the conference from the East Coast of Australia and a strong contingent from New Zealand. It was a diverse group from professionals, such as Sr Adele, working right at the leading edge of digital communications, through to others newly entrusted for management of parish, school or agency websites who saw this conference as an opportunity to pick up a few tips from others more expert than themselves. The diversity of the audience made it difficult for the presenters in knowing where to "pitch" their presentations. Those of us with more experience in digital communications were perhaps looking for greater concentration on issues concerning the philosophy and objective behind Catholic communications — precisely what are we trying to communicate and why has the institutional Church been failing so spectacularly in her communications in countries like Australia and New Zealand? What the conference achieved...
The conference did serve two valuable purposes though. Firstly, it did enable participants to gain some overview of where various parts of the Church are at in their efforts to exploit these new media in service of the Gospel. The bulk of the day consisted of presentations, basically from the four organisers and the agencies they represented, of where they are up to technically and some overview of their objectives and the different philosophies, charisms and theology they bring to their mission. I'll discuss that further in a while. Secondly, in a closing plenary, the participants agreed almost unanimously to establish some kind of on-going network or association of professionals working in this area of ministry that might enable on-going collaboration, networking and sharing of experience across the institution in Australia and New Zealand. A loose "committee" was self-nominated from the floor to facilitate how this might be implemented and one expects that in due course they might produce some more formal report and proposals for further conferences, workshops or opportunities for networking via the internet itself.
There were two interesting presentations from New Zealand (by John Murphy and Peter Ravlich) on developments on that side of the Tasman. My overall impression from these reports, and also comment from the floor, is that there are some good things happening in New Zealand, that there is encouragement from the bishops to be using these new media and, importantly, there seems to be some understanding on the part of the bishops as to how it might be used. The smaller size of the Catholic institutional structure in New Zealand also seems to lend itself to better communications between the various dioceses, parishes, schools and agencies that lends itself to better coordination of the endeavours. Perhaps the highlight of the day was the presentation by Sr Adele Howard of the impressive body of work that is being produced today by Frayneworks (named after the founder of the Sisters of Mercy in Australia, Mother Ursula Frayne). The Sisters of Mercy now have a substantial workforce based in Melbourne of over 20 creative and technical professionals engaged in digital communications. Sr Adele gave an impressive overview of the diversity of works they are involved in from digital video production, to complex websites and database management systems operating at an international level, to digital, multi-media streaming. The professional reputation of Frayneworks today in the secular education world and industry is such that they are also engaged in commercial production which helps raise much needed income to fund their principal "Mercy mission" of endeavouring "to provide a voice to the voiceless". What I honestly found most impressive in Sr Adele's presentation was not so much the superb technical quality of everything that her organisation seems to produce but that the Mercy Sisters seem to have a very clear objective of what they are endeavouring to do and it is intimately tied into both the Gospel objective of the Church and into the particular charism of the Mercy Congregation. If you are not already familiar with the work of Sr Adele and her team I urge you to spend some time perusing their website at: www.fraynework.com.au.
In Australia we are extremely fortunate to have the Jesuit, Fr Michael Kelly. Fr Mick I personally liken to Dr Peter Tannock (Vice-Chancellor and key individual behind the establishment of the University of Notre Dame Australia) in that both of these guys are impressive political operators and entrepreneurs who both have enormous vision and also the incredibly impressive capacity to actually pull off the building of impressive infrastructure projects in service of the Gospel and the mission of the Church. In Peter Tannock's case I am sure there is no other individual in this entire nation who could have pulled off the building of a Catholic university from scratch in the way he has done — particularly given the dire financial position he found his chief sponsor in soon after the plans were publicly announced back in the early 1990s. Fr Michael Kelly's achievement is no less impressive in the now huge and extremely successful buying agency and media endeavour, Church Resources. Church Resources not only serves the Catholic Church but is a valued service today in a very ecumenical way to other Christian Churches and is further expanding to providing massive costs savings to not-for-profit charitable organisations. Fr Mick shared with the conference today that his original dream was in fact fueled by a frustration that the Church (i.e. meaning the bishops and his superiors) never had any budget for communications. The Church has an impressive budget each year for education, health endeavours, social works and its core sacramental mission but media and communications has always run a poor second to those "core endeavours". The "deals" Michael Kelly was able to negotiate with the bishops, heads of religious congregations, parishes and schools on the one side, and suppliers of goods and services on the other side has resulted in savings of literally millions of dollars each year for the Christian churches now affiliated with Church Resources in Australia. Most of these savings are passed on to the agencies but a small slice is retained by Church Resources to further extend the services it provides to the institutions and agencies which support it and also some is committed to the now impressive suite of media endeavours that are now supported by Church Resources. Some of these, in particular its flagship endeavour, the daily CathNews service are now self-supporting within their own right and more than probably actually deliver a profit to Church Resources that is able to be ploughed back into the newer media endeavours that are in a development phase. Questioning one of the underlying premises...
While what Fr Michael Kelly has created is exceedingly impressive from both a financial point of view, and also in terms of the media reach (CathNews is one of the most visited religious sites in Australia and these results are audited by an external secular agency), I do believe there are a number of serious questions that do need to be raised about the underlying philosophy of what is happening with his endeavours. In his address today Fr Kelly seemed to be likening his endeavours to those of Google's YouTube and Rupert Murdoch's My Space in that these organisation's actively promote themselves as not being "content providers". They provide a facility for users to broadcast whatever they want. Fr Michael Kelly has long promoted Church Resources as not being a "content provider". I believe it has been a skillful ploy on the part of Fr Kelly to get the entire endeavour off the ground and skirt around the difficult political situation anyone faces with the bishops in Australia and the Australian Church's relations with the Vatican. Church Resources is basically not a "content provider" I would argue, because, if it was it would have been impossible for Kelly to have built what he has built.
Does the question not have to be asked though: if an institution is missioned with the task of "bringing the Good News to all people" is it not inextricably a "content provider"? It is a broadcaster of "the Good News". I would argue though that what Church Resources illustrates today is the dire straits Church communications is in where a man like Michael Kelly has to engage in a sham, and what is effectively an enormous subterfuge, to pull off his vision. The confusion today though is over "precisely what is 'the Good News'" we are supposed to be broadcasting. The political divisions in the Church today are acute and there is no consensus, and no direction as to what the "Good News" actually is. Kelly himself is at times critical of the institutional leadership for having little interest in communications, and even less understanding (he voiced some of those criticisms today), and I believe his criticisms are justified. At the same time I do also think Fr Mick needs to be challenged if the Church can be likened to the direction being taken by Google or Rupert Murdoch where they are turning away from being "content providers" in the search of profits. Fundamentally the Church does have both "a mission" and "a message". I would agree with him that there is a lot of confusion today as to what, precisely, that "message" is supposed to be. In private conversation today Fr Mick accused me of being "authoritarian" in the sense that I wanted to dictate what the version of "the Good News" ought to be. In one sense I understand what he is endeavouring to say. I would argue though that my own motivations are largely derived from analysis of the dire strait communication of the Good News is presently in where 85% of the baptised have vamoosed out the door in this country. I have no agenda other than to understand what has gone wrong and in trying to find precisely why "the Good News" is no longer "getting through" in the ways it once did. That necessarily involves criticisms of some interpretations that some groups in the Church, including at times the ecclesial leadership, put on "the Good News". I would argue they, very often, come across as enormously confused as to what they are trying to "sell" — or invite the world to participate in — when they say they have a message of "Good News". Unfortunately, Fr Mick is on pretty safe ground as he understands the deep political divisions within the bishops themselves and the "little tap dance" that everyone conducts around that small gaggle of bishops who actually control the communications' agenda in this nation (and who everyone is scared to death of offending) and he knows collectively they probably couldn't care less about issues like this as they have as much a sense of powerless as the rest of us, and people like Fr Mick has himself, to change that fundamental parameter that has stuffed up Catholic communications so comprehensively across the length and breadth of the Western world. Fr Mick, I do not pretend to know precisely what the correct understanding of "the Good News" is. Here at Catholica we are endeavouring to provide a platform to a wide range of intelligent voices who might discuss what the core message is. The only "agenda" we have is in not allowing a particular element to dominate the conversations and drive everybody else out of this space as happens elsewhere in the institution. I do know that what is presently being presented as "Good News" by our bishops, and by Rome, is not hitting the target and the vast majority of the baptised are pretty cheesed off to the extent they want to run away. Privately, I think you also share that assessment, or something pretty close to it. I would suggest to you, the Catholic Church is not Rupert Murdoch. It does have a message albeit there might presently be much confusion as to what that message presently is. The Church though is not some "value free" provider of "communication space" or a platform where certain minorities can usurp the agenda as you claimed at one point a certain deceased gentleman from Melbourne managed to do. Neither is it some entirely uncensored "free for all" where public opinion or the majority alone determine what is theologically fashionable or "The Truth". Rupert Murdoch has a long history of demonstrating he doesn't care where he gets his audiences from. The founders of Google though do have some ethical standards and do monitor to some degree on ethical principles what is broadcast through their channels. (See my recent review of David A Vise's book, The Google Story.) Now that the Australian Catholic Bishops do not even appoint some bishop to take overall responsibility for media and communications — isn't that as shameful, or embarrassing as your criticisms that Rome is unable to see the wisdom of registering the domain name "dotcatholic"? — one hopes that a body such as this embryonic "Day3 Digital Conference" gathering of communication professionals might be able to seriously debate issues like this that pertain to the core objectives and methodology of what we are trying to achieve through our communications. Blessings, Brian LINKS:
We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum. Brian Coyne can be contacted at: ©2007 Brian Coyne |
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