Some further musings on what we are seeking to achieve here...

Dear friends,

Cliff posted an interesting link in the forum yesterday that led me to a discussion going on within ACU National (The Australian Catholic University) about using internet discussion boards for learning. Back in my days on the CathNews discussion board, particularly during Maggie's time with us, I remarked that being a member of that discussion board was virtually giving us the opportunity to get the same input that students were receiving for a university degree. As Maggie herself was a professor of economics but had returned to one of the leading Catholic Universities in America to study theology the input she was providing was particularly valuable. Interestingly, Linda made a similar comment last week on the CathNews board in relation to Ian Elmer's input to Catholica. Being a member of Catholica is today providing all of us with access to pretty high level input.

One of the aims of Catholica has certainly been to provide access to the sort of personal, professional and faith development that is available to those who are today in the lucky position of being professionally employed by the institutional Church. It's not the only aim though. As the paper by Dr Simon Ryan which Cliff referred us to explains, quite a few universities now are beginning to use the web as a virtual classroom. Catholica does not set itself up as being some "free" university for those who cannot afford the tuition fees at any of our public or private universities.

In the long run our honest aim is to provide an outreach to, and a place of contact with, those who have become diconnected from institutional Catholicism. To do that we need to create a cyber community that is friendly and welcoming. We trust this will also bring benefits to the members of that community but primarily I think it does need to be emphasised that the commitment we are presently asking people to make in joining the Catholica community is that we are endeavouring to do something for other people. Our membership of Catholica is not primarily for our own jollies and comfort. Obviously that needs to happen — we do have to get some enjoyment from the sense of brotherhood, sisterhood and camaraderie that this place can give — but the objective we need to keep in our minds is that eventually we hope this sense of community might rub off on other people who are searching for meaning or direction in their lives.

Not endeavouring to preach at anybody...

But what are we trying to do here: we're certainly not endeavouring to preach at anybody. Neither are we trying to prove to anybody that we, or the Catholic Church, has all the answers. (I honestly think it has been attitudes like that that have been driving many away from institutional religion and the Catholic Church in particular.)

One of the defining characteristics of our community is that in myriad different ways we all find that in some way, shape or form Jesus Christ does provide an answer to the challenges, loneliness and insecurities that life throws up. An emphasis there does need to be placed on the "myriad different ways". From my own many interactions with various members of this community I know that the things about Jesus that turn me on, or give me meaning, are very different to those that turn them on, or give them meaning. I am honestly finding it is this exchange of perspectives that today is the chief "change agent" in deepening my love for Jesus Christ and those qualities of peace, insight, wisdom, contentedness, peace, hope, charity and love that provide me with a sense that I am becoming a better, or more complete, human person.

In time I envisage that the Catholica community will be needing to constantly renew itself. People will be able to make a commitment to it for a year or two and then circumstances may change in their lives, or they might feel burnt out from constant giving of themselves, so we'll need a constant injection of new faces, new talent to keep the endeavour alive.

I suppose what I am trying to articulate here is that Catholica Australia is a radically different sort of endeavour to what we had on the CathNews discussion board — where, I suggest, if the truth be honestly faced, we largely joined that for our own advancement or pleasure — and it is also radically different to the type of discussion board that, say, a Catholic university might set up for students to become proficient in one particular subject area and obtain a credit for their work. We are not primarily here "for us" but for an audience which is still to find out about "us". To reach that audience though we first have to form ourselves into some kind of community that other people, particularly those like some of us once were, who are feeling a little distanced from formal "Church", or even from a sense that "whatever Jesus Christ had to say" might provide answers in their lives.

One of our critics in another place keeps asking what are we inviting them back to? In a sense it is a good question. Yesterday morning on another discussion forum I came across this quote from Thomas Merton on the ARCC list...

"Authority has simply been abused too long in the Catholic Church and for many people it just becomes utterly stupid and intolerable to have to put up with the kind of jackassing around that is posed in God's name. It is an insult to God Himself and in the end it can only discredit all idea of authority and obedience. There comes a point where they simply forfeit the right to be listened to." [Hidden Ground of Love, p. 230]

The person who placed the quote there was humorously suggesting that that quote was enough to ensure that Merton will never be canonised. (And they're probably right.) There's a truth in that though — Merton wrote that many decades ago and the exodus out of the pews in the intervening period more than likely does suggest that people are not interested in coming back to the lifeless, paternalistic, "we know all the answers – we will treat you as dorks, idiots and little children" formulations of faith and spirituality that characterised the faith of our mothers' and fathers' generations. One does not need to be Albert Einstein to intuit that there is still a very vocal minority out there who do want to impose that concept of faith, spirituality, religion and salvation on the world.

We are still searching but the one thing we hold fast to is...

I think then, if we are honest with ourselves, we are ourselves also still searching for what we want to come back to. I think the one thing, or person, we hold fast to is Jesus himself. We look to Jesus, the Man, as a model, guide, blueprint or roadmap, who shows us how to travel that journey called life. He maps for us the path to our own individual resurrections. We also look to Jesus, the Second Person of that sublime Mystery we endeavour to condense into the word "Trinity". Jesus, in this sense, is our link to the "otherness" of God — and the "other" side of our own deaths — where we yearn to be enjoined back into the Godhead of Creation, the Communion of Saints, the Source of All Life, and all those things that are distanced from "the dark matter, the dark side and all the negative or life-sapping aspects of Creation".

I think it would be wrong then to infer that we are seeking to invite anyone back to some power structure — nor to formulaic, "pray up, pay up and shut up" Catholicism. Catholicism for many has "moved on" from the hoop-jumping formulations of faith, belief, salvation and resurrection that lay at the heart of the vision of what Jesus Christ offered that was sold to our parents, and to those of us who were brought up in the Catholic cultural climate that existed prior to the Second Vatican Council. This is not to discredit the good intentions of the women and men who sacrificed themselves in religious vocations to try and sell us those "hoop-jumping" formulations as to how we might be "saved". The best of those women and men today themselves have moved on from those sort of theologies and methodologies of what it means to be a Catholic or to yearn for salvation or resurrection. We owe them, and our own parents and forebears, an enormous debt. At the same time we do also have to acknowledge that our understandings of what this entire spiritual quest is about are a heck of a lot more sophisticated and subtle than what they were in the past. There is also far less homogeneity between different individuals as to how they perceive the objective of their lives in its spiritual dimension.

Following on from this commentary, in our discussion forum I would like to try and trigger a discussion on some of the things we might do that can foster this sense of "community" that will come across as welcoming to those whom we hope will stumble across our website through the publicity and triggers which we are planning to establish out in cyberspace that bring those who have drifted away to our site.

Blessings, Tom

Links:
Cliff's post: "The role of discussion boards as peer group educational devices"
URL: www.catholica.com.au/forum/forum_entry.php?id=2108
Dr Ryan's article on learning (including the subject of discussion boards):
URL: dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/portfolio/portfolio.htm

Tom Scott is the pen name of the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne.

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