The Pope, The Word, and The Blogosphere

The blogosphere is pondering the papacy and.... blogging. For example, Tony Gentile asks, "Will The Next Pope Blog?"

Here's my take: the papacy is one of the last great one-way broadcast “we're in control and you’re not” entities left on earth. Popes don’t listen, they hear from God and pronounce. The last pope used lots of travel and communication technology--- but to the end of extending his centralized reach and minimizing the sway of local bishops.   The pope doesn’t care about comments. (Confessions yes, but that’s not really the spirit of the blogopshere).  The Church is not a conversation.  The Vatican is not a particurlarly fertile Cluetrain , the "customer defines the brand" kind of place. Popes seem swayed by big trends over time (the U.S. Church scandals, rise of 3rd world) but the whole short time-frame, fast feedback-loop thing doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant to a 70 year old guy who’s elected for life, is deemed to be infallible,  and speaks to and for God.  Contrast that with a US elected leader who faces pundits daily, must deal with interest groups that can organize around the blogsphere and is elected every two years. Its good to be the pope!

On the other hand, the Vatican and churches in general will happily adopt any communication technology that lets them preach more effectively. Sermons are one of the killer apps of podcasting--- why settle for reaching just your flock on Sunday morning when you can reach them on their schedule 24/7 with a podcast and easily reach beyond your local parish and speak to anyone who wants to listen. Podcasting is the first technology that lets any preacher preach beyond their local territory easily, instantly and at no cost.  They don’t call it Really Super Sermon technology for nothing. If parishioners can listen to any of the priests in town (or anywhere) via podcasts, will that improve the quality of sermons as competition sets in?

The history of religion is the history of information technology. The printing press and Reformation reduced the power of the Pope as all the new isms---Lutherinsim, Calvinsim--- could interpret the Word their way using the power of the book. Radio and TV created national preacher brands--- Billy Graham and Rev. Schuller -- that had greater power (and purse) than any local pastor. The current technology allows any person of the cloth to hold forth and reach an audience without regard to geography. Its a decentralizing factor, but John Paul II proved the pope can do an amazing job of increasing his centralized power in spite of it all. So the question is not “will the pope blog,” but rather can emergent technology help the Bishops gain more power v. the Vatican. Or more interetingly, is the world ready for a belief system that amasses followers because it listens and interacts? Or is the whole point of religion to gain solace from an entity that specifically doesn’t listen to mortals and speaks Eternal Truths?

While were on the topic of religion and the blogopshere, one more thought. Long before Al Gore, Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee, or Vint Cerf, it was a man of the cloth, Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who first laid down the ideas of a global net based consciousness. What we now call the “blogosphere” he called the “noosphere” and imagined all human thought spanning the globe and coming together as a single living entity.  In his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard  wrote, "Is this not like some great body which is being born - with its limbs, its  nervous system, its perceptive organs, its memory - the body in fact of that great living  Thing which had to come to fulfill the ambitions aroused in the reflective being by the  newly acquired consciousness?"

Chardin's work was a primary influence on McLuhan’s global village and later on Al Gore.  He was also banished to China and almost excommunicated by the Church for the evolutionary ---- and revolutionary--- implications of his work.  But as for the noosphere, its baaack!

Wired wrote an excellent piece on Chardin in 1995 thats both a brief history of his work and an overview of its implications for cyberspace.

.

Comments

[mike]

Just go to church on Sunday.

[sig]

A religion have to be dogmatic - "authoritative, assertion of unproved or unprovable principles" - and as such cannot really live with a free discussion, nor evolutionary theories or anything that would rock the unproven pillar of truth that their belief is built on.
No wonder Teilhard de Chardin was frozen out! And huge wonder if any blogging would come out of the upper echelons of any religious belief system... nope, not possible.

Another situation applies to the (possibly many) that believe in certain religious philosophies and adapts that to their own mix of beliefs - now there the blogs may take root. But I do not think their church would call these true believers...

[Joe Begalla]

I am watching the Pope's funeral on CNN in one corner of my screen, and I find that I want to post my thoughts somewhere. But what I am discovering, and I am surprised at this, is how the content of what I "thought" I wanted to express has dramatically changed.

Instead of posting my feelings about the Pope's impact, the state of the Church, and the panoply of the events in Rome - all from the perspective of an avowed cafeteria Catholic, I'm being drawn to a couple of thoughts about the connectivity of us all, and how the elusive electron has become an important part of the fabric of my own spiritual foundation.

I read once that it may be that there is only ONE electron, but it's everywhere...all at once! Maybe that's what the divine is - that one electron. And in some timeless and unbounded way, that one electron touches and is actually part of every singe thing (and maybe every single thought) in the universe. If so, we really all share in everything, in every moment. For me, it's kind of like Chardin's "noosphere" and I believe that this underlayment of connection is becoming recognized more visibly, and at a much faster pace, as we continue to share ideas, observations and experiences in this fabulous electronic era.

Zhukav wrote about "The Evolution of the Soul" and it was interesting stuff, but I think he has it wrong. I think the real evolution of the soul is arising through the growing enhancement to consciousness that occurs as we find more, and better, and faster ways to connect and share ideas. Out of those connections, new patterns of thought emerge, and maybe they will blend someday into a universal consciousness that keeps us all pointing to the "ideal." And of course, I want that ideal to be individualized at each point of consciousness so I don't lose my personal identity and sense of self. But, paradoxically, I want it to be commonly shared and universally acknowledged. Maybe it'll prove to be that this "one" electron is kind of like the American Express commercial "It's everywhere you want it to be!"

What a great way to connect. I hope that the Church will come to recognize the value of an open source operating system where other voices add and contribute to the energy and "spin" of the electron that touches us all. If so, maybe its influence, and value, would increase. I would love to see the leadership in Rome sermonize, enclylicalize, publicize AND even podcast a stream of support that gains credence from the body of thought that can arise from our collective input. Maybe that sort of wiki will produce some energizing ideas that will bring about real change and spiritual optimism. Cross your fingers and watch for the smoke!

I see the funeral is over, an advertisement is running, and I have muted the sound. But, though the "media event" is not capturing my attention at the moment, I am still connected to its meaning as I write, because that "one" electron is persisting in its influence; and it swirls through my individualized consciousness, runs through the mechanisms of my muscles down to the keyboard... and moves out into the sphere of the blog community with the message that, yes, we're connected in many more ways that we think we are.

Just a few thoughts from the west coast of Florida....
Joe

[Aaron Cabral]

So, was Pope John Paul II into technology or not? I have two completely contradicting news feeds:

CNN says he was:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/08/pope.technology/index.html


Reuters says he was not:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050407/80/ffvf4.html

Well, this is interesting indeed. I am skeptical of both articles, because
neither are what I would consider "1st sources." In fact, I think they are
op/ed or 3rd sources at best. While it is probably true that PJP wrote his
encyclicals by hand, and had them transcribed for the internet, who's to say
he liked or disliked the internet? Did either of these authors actually
quote the pontiff? It may be really quite simple, such as "he's the leader
of one of the largest churches in the world, does he REALLY have time to
transcribe them himself into every popular language EVERY week?" Notice,
there is nothing in that statement that describes the Pope's personal
feelings about the internet. Also, to attribute the Church's entry into the
computer age isn't really that big of an accomplishment, and here's my
argument: He became Pope when no one used computers on a consumer level.
When computers became mainstream in the 90's, the church responded in kind,
and at the most, PJP OK'd the use of such technology. (He probably didn't
get on his knees and run all the cat-5 cable in the Vatican himself.) I
believe it just shows how much the Church does run like a business. Correct
me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Vatican have it's own councils on finding
the best possible ways of spreading their message to keep the whole church
unified? After all, It's had its fair share of renegades in the past. I
think it would have been a bigger deal if the Church had actually spent
decades debating the moral issues of using the internet and PJP jumped in
and saved the day.

That's my personal Op/Ed on the issue.
-Aaron