Evangelising the world II...

Have you ever had one of those serendipitous experiences where you were going to do something and yet something stopped you? And then, later on, you realised why you were delayed and the appropriate time had arrived to complete the task.

Well I've had one of them with this article. I wrote the first part on the Communications' Crisis being faced by the Church two weeks ago. It wasn't at all deliberate but something held me back from completing the second part of the article (which I had promised to deliver last week). This morning I discovered why ... two other far more august commentators than myself at the international level have come out saying very similar things to what I wanted to write. Hughie, in his wisdom, seems to be providing me with more ammunition.

Before I get into the arguments here is the last section from my previous commentary which was published on 14 November...

Next week...

I'll continue this commentary next week by examining in further detail the two other factors that I believe help explain the present crisis, and which need to be addressed if the institution is to turn this long-lasting communication crisis around. The first of these is the allocation of resources to communication and the second is the effective "silence" that has been imposed on the great majority of pastors to the point today where the Church has effectively been "shut down" and no longer even tries to communicate in language that intersects with the vast majority of her flock.

While these three major systemic obstructions continue in Church communication I do not believe it would matter how many Catholics John Allen induced to see themselves as "spokespersons" the underlying problem will not be resolved. In fact, inducing an even greater "confusion of voices" to be raising their volume as "spokespersons" would be likely to exacerbate the presently problem rather than to solve it. Before any of us can be effective "spokespersons" we need some fundamental agreement as to what we are actually being "spokespersons" about! There seems to be enormous confusion today as to why we call ourselves Catholics and, at its ultimate purpose, what our Catholicism is actually meant to achieve.

Sandro Magister

Let's now cut to the chase. In the last few days the highly respected commentator Sandro Magister has published a fascinating article in Chiesa which is critical of Catholic communications at the international level. It is well worth the read for its own sake. He covers similar territory to myself but from a different perspective.

The reality is that the Church today does spend an enormous amount of money internationally on communications. Magister indicates that the Vatican's main newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, runs at a loss of 4.6 million Euros a year ($AU7.75m or $US6.05m) and it reaches a fairly miniscule audience. He also indicates that Vatican Radio ran at a loss of 23.5 million Euros in 2005 ($AU39.6 or $US30.9m). The problem does not seem to be lack of resources.

Looking at this another way: Pope John Paul II was more than likely the single most successful pope the Church has ever produced in terms of generating media coverage. He was always on television or in our newspapers — even in the very secular media we have down here in Australia. Ironically though his long papacy also witnessed the greatest exit away from active participation year for year than perhaps any other papacy in quite possibly the whole history of the Church.

It is not enough to simply throw resources at communication — or to get your face in the newspapers or on television. Now the supporters of John Paul II, and the status quo in the Church, would argue that the problems are all to do with secular society and the rest of the Church. They think "these problems are out of our hands. They are God's responsibility. We can't be expected to analyse if our own communications are failing."

Quietly sit back and analyse the mass of Catholic communications around the world. There literally is this massive industry called "Catholic Communications" today. The largest proportion of it is funded by ultra-conservative elements within the Church such as Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ. (CWN, Catholic Register and Zenit are three of the biggest quasi-official news agencies. They are actually all independent of the Vatican just as CathNews is or as Catholica is or as The Tablet and NCR are.) The largest of these outfits, without discussing those that try to mimic the styles of the Protestant Evalgelicals — Zenit, CWN, Catholic Register, EWTN, Our Sunday Visitor — are all highly conservative publications and in fact promote themselves as more Catholic than His Holiness himself. If one peruses Catholic websites around the world the ones that promote a form of sycophantic Catholicism outnumber all others by about ten to one. This has been the situation now for many decades. The resources the Catholic Church internationally puts into communications is absolutely massive.

I don't have recent figures for the cost of diocesan newspapers in Australia but I am reasonably certain at least one significant diocesan newspaper was running at an annual loss of about a quarter of a million dollars per annum not too many years ago. Who knows the total cost expended by the Church on communications in Australia each year? The harsh reality, simply from the continuing decline in participation, is that this expenditure is largely a complete waste. In simple terms, IT IS NOT ACHIEVING WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ACHIEVING WHICH IS TO "SPREAD THE GOOD NEWS"!

Taking a big, big picture view I think that somewhere back in the early decades of the Twentieth Century the institutional Church somewhere or other lost its understanding of the importance and method of effective communications. The error, or change in policy did not occur in the 1950s or the 1960s orduring the reign of Pope John Paul II. The "loss of nerve" actually occurred back around the time moving pictures marked another turn in mass communications. Prior to that time the Church seems to have had an innate understanding of the value of communications AND OF ITS COST. Effective communication is expensive and it is also filled with enormous risk. Just look at the enormous gambles Rupert Murdoch has to make each year with feature films.

In the days when mass communication was chiefly by means of architecture, patronage of the arts and music, and the printed word the Church made a massive investment in these media that far outstripped all her insitutional competitors. Today, for all the seeming millions in expenditure she really does not compete in the same league as the Murdochs, the Packers, large corporations and governments with their massive advertising and communication budgets.

I suggest, under the category of "allocation of resources" the international Church needs to urgently conduct an audit of the effectiveness of what expenditure she does commit to communications. All individuals and all institutions communicate. None of us are 100% effective in communications. All individuals and institutions have both people who agree with their communications and others who are not convinced by their arguments. Successful communication occurs in the mass sense when more people are turned on by our communications than are turned off. Again taking the big, big picture overview it is self-evident that more people today are turned off by the overall communications coming out of the Catholic Church than are turned on by it. If this were not the case there would be increasing, not decreasing sacramental participation. It is simply not sufficient answer for the leadership to respond by saying "but we know the truth and all those people who are drifting away do not accept the truth". That may well apply to some. It is not the case when one has apostacy on the mass scale that we have witnessed during our lifetimes and over such a long period of time.

Continuation...

In the interim to completing this I've written some stuff on the forum in response to Gail in the Christ the King string that is related. I argue there:

The clued up politician, Church leader or impressario in society who wants power and influence learns how to patronise or sponsor the artist but they do not endeavour to hold the hand of the artist (musician, writer etc.) and do the actual painting for him or her. Sadly the Church today too often wants to hold the hands and do the painting for the artist, or design the building for the architect. Michaelangelo and many of the great musicians and artists of past centuries the Church was patron to I am sure would never get a commission from the Church in today's millieu. Yet in the past that is largely why the institutional Church became such a powerful force in Western society. The institution seems to have lost the innate understanding she needs to have with the "opinion leader" segments in society and that's broadly why the great mass in society no longer care much about what the Church thinks about anything. The role of patron of the arts today has now shifted to the other major institutions in society who actually learned their lessons from the institutional Church. Governments and large corporations today are the major patron of the "opinion leader" segments in society that largely determine the direction in which any society heads.

The silence of the institutional leaders...

The third area I want to address in this whole question of the communications' crisis being faced by the Church is what I describe as the "silence" of our spiritual leaders. The National Catholic Reporter this week has an excellent editorial addressing this issue that dovetails in exceedingly well with the point I am trying to make.

The NCR editorial is responding to the statement issued by the American bishops following their major get together a week or so ago. As the editorial suggests it is actually very funny watching these grown men busying themselves and making it look as though they are doing productive work by publishing the statements they have in recent weeks. The reality though is that the bishops are engaged in a game of kidding themselves that anybody is going to pay the slightest attention to anything of what they have written. They are simply not addressing the issues that those they are meant to be serving want them to be addressing. I submit, they carefully and very deliberately avoid the issues that the great mass of the people want answers to because they're precisely the answers the issues that they (the bishops) think will get them into trouble with from Rome. Who do the bishops think they are kidding? Do they think God falls for this kindergarten level game — the "make work" sorts of behaviours that army cadets engage in when the sergeant major is on the prowl?

This "make work" sort of activity does appeal to a small sector of the population — the zealots — who almost go into orgiastic revere over anything that is published by an authority figure. As Cliff suggested a few days ago these behaviours are a form of spiritual masturbation — an activity engaged in for no ultimately productive end other than the self-gratification of the person engaging in the activity.

I am arguing that it is now a general and endemic problem right across the face of the Western world that our spiritual leaders — bishops and priests — have largely ceased communicating altogether through the mass channels of communication on the issues that those they meant to be serving really want them to talk about. Homilies today say virtually nothing. They are a collection of motherhood, feelgood statements that are meant to give the impression that the guidelines for homilies are being followed and some productive work is being done but in the vast, vast majority of cases they deliberately do precisely avoid saying anything about the actual issues the world is hungry for answers about. At times our spiritual leaders attempt to "be brave" by venturing into territory that might seem to be "controversial" but they are what Cliff describes as "safe controversy" — even the proverbial blind freddy and his seeing eye dog worked out many moons ago that Catholics are expected to be "controversial" on these issues and the perpetrators of this sort of communication are again "kidding only themselves" that they are really engaged in the business of communication — spreading "the Good News" and bringing people into intimate contact with the real substance of what Jesus Christ has to offer to a spiritually famished world.

If you want real and honest advice from a priest do not ask him to give it to you in a letter or in any form of public address that can be quoted. Go ask for the advice privately.

What has caused this and what is to be done?

I think the major reason why this state of affairs has come about has been because of the takeover of Catholic communications internationally that has taken place by the zealots and the psychologically insecure sectors of the Catholic congregation. These people are passionate about their work almost to the point that suicide bombers are passionate about their God-given role in society. Who can be bothered today setting up communication channels for the Church? Only the zealots. That is why we see such emphasis placed on communications by groups such as Opus Die and the Legionaries. Nobody has stopped to ask though: does this form of communication actually turn on more people than it turns off? It might appeal passionately, even zealosly, to a small cohort of the population but it is an almighty yawn to the vast mass in civilisation. We have a Church today that is largely run by "thought police" and even our bishops and priests are scared to death of them and this culture which infests their thinking that the institutional Church (the Magisterium) is incapable of error, incapable of changing teachings and has to be locked into some cultural time-warp located somewhere in the mid-19th to mid-20th Century.

In an hierarchical organisation I am frankly skeptical that any effective change can originate from the grass roots of the institution. The entire weight of history and cultural and institutional momentum suggests that hell might freeze over before there is any response to concerns from the grass roots. The fact that 85% of the population have been allowed to drift out the door with virtually only murmurs of concern from the institution suggests that no change is likely to occur from this direction. For those who think that it will, when do you think "the penny might drop" — when 90% have reached the exit door; or 95%?

I believe the only effective change will occur when those in positions of power are awoken to their responsibilities. There is going to be an accounting for what has been allowed to happen. They are simply not going to be allowed to rock up to the throne of accountability and plead "but I was only following orders"! My own feeling is that we will all be asked "but what did YOU think? I am not asking you what the Cardinal thought or what you thought the Pope thought, I am asking how did you reason through this enormous mess that has been created? What did you do to live up to your responsibility to bring the Good News 'to all nations'? This was not some game of 'warm fuzzies' in the tum-tum you were playing. It was a serious business of introducing humanity to that peace of heart that surpasses all human understanding. That 'peace' is not found in your own psychological comfort. What we're talking about here is 'spiritual comfort' and that resides in an entirely different place to your ego and emotional comfort zones!"

Blessings, Tom

ARTICLE NAVIGATION: PART I

LINK:
Here's the link to Sandro Magister's column: www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=99381&eng=y
Here's the link to the NCR Editorial: www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006d/112406/112406v.htm
PHOTO CREDIT:
Spire image sourced from stock.xchng. Photographer: Craig Jewell Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Tom Scott

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©2006TomScott

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