Is Catholic Internet a Real Place?
Regular readers on the blog would probably know that I dabble in research in theology and the internet.
I have blogged on the subject (here, here and here), and have also produced a few scholarly outputs from the endeavour. These include my contributions to Texas A&M’s Heidi Campell’s projects on The Distanced Church, as well as my little piece on faith in the Church of facebook, just to name a couple.
Another moment in this research thread is an interview I did with my friend Fr Harrison Ayre of the Clerically Speaking podcast, in which i covered the area of how Catholics occupy space, in particular the space of the internet.
The jumpoff point for our discussion came off the back of a previous episode, in which Fr Harrison made the remark that Catholics in the main do not think the internet is a real place. In private chats with him, I pushed back on that claim and we also had a really productive discussion on the clarification of terms. That discussion then became the crux of our subsequent discussion on the podcast itself, which recently went to air.
In that episode, we spoke of the two ways in which Catholics understand space, which intersect with Augustine’s understanding of the two cities in his City of God. On the one hand, you have the city of man which, afflicted by the lust to dominate, occupies space in a domineering fashion. On the other hand, you have the city of God, which occupies the space controlled by the city of man, but moves through the latter on the former’s pilgrimage towards the last things.
Along those Augustinian plot points, I drew out the distinction the Jesuit social theorist Michel de Certeau between two postures towards the occupation of space. On the one hand, there was what he called “space”, which was an abstract notion of a locale which made abstract by its being measured out and controlled. In the urge to control this space (like the city of man), everyone is viewed as a potential threat to be countered and eliminated. On the other hand, there is what he called “place”, which was a more intimate engagement with the locale, made intimate by the recognition that the space is not ours to control, but is a gift which we receive and thus occupy in the lighter, more playful and indeed more liturgical fashion of the city of God (I cover de Certeau’s distinction in more detail in my book Justice, Unity and the Hidden Christ).
Ultimately, the point I made is that Catholics suffer from a cultural problem, and it does not lie with the lack of taking the place of the internet seriously. Rather, I made the claim that the internet is a “space” as laid out by de Certeau, and have tried to occupy the space of the internet like the city of Man, that is, to occupy the internet in a domineering fashion. The contrast that Fr Harrison laid out well in the episode is that the Church, if it is to be truly itself, has to occupy the net as a “place” as laid out by Certeau, and this form of occupation is a liturgical one.
My thanks to Fr Harrison for the opportunity to join the podcast. For more details, have a listen to the episode in full here.
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