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May 26, 2007
The New, New Media
At NCR(egister), Tim Drake has a good, comprehensive piece on online videocasting and Catholics. He pretty much covers all the bases, and ends with this:
Librarian Janice LaDuke of St. Paul, Minn., understands the power, accessibility and immediacy of such media. She credits the Holy Spirit and Internet resources such as Catholic Answers’ online forums and Catholic blogs for her return to the sacrament of reconciliation after a 20-year absence.
LaDuke grew up Catholic, but left in her early 20s for an evangelical church. She came back to the Church in the early 1990s, but admits that she was ignorant of what the Church taught.
Through the Internet, LaDuke ran across Catholics who knew their faith.
“I realized that my practice of what I thought was Catholicism wasn’t really Catholicism,” said LaDuke. “The people I ran into had quotes from Church documents and the Code of Canon Law to back them up. I realize I had nothing to back up what I was saying. The way I was practicing my faith wasn’t valid.”
LaDuke said that was the beginning of her reversion. After a gradual process, in early 2005 she returned to the practice of private confession.
“It was overpowering,” she said of the experience. “Afterward, when I received Communion, I felt for the first time in my whole life as if I was worthy to do so. I had been receiving Communion my whole life in a state of mortal sin and not caring.”
Last year, she started her own blog — The Recovering Dissident Catholic — in the hopes of reaching people whom she said are the way that she used to be.
“I’m not sure if it [Catholic online media] hadn’t existed, if I would be where I am at now,” she said. “Considering that I was surrounded in my daily life and parish with Catholics-in-name-only, the odds are that without the open world of the Internet, the odds of my reverting were probably slim.”
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Comments
I guess the influence of the internet isn't only negative. But it's still hard for good theology and canon law to compete with pornography and online gambling, as well as sophmoric drivel.
Posted by: Irenaeus at May 26, 2007 11:44:36 AM
“The people I ran into had quotes from Church documents and the Code of Canon Law to back them up. I realize I had nothing to back up what I was saying."
Well, let's not get into an excessive legalism. A good many saints were not walking encyclopedias and backed up what they were saying with merely the simple faith written on their hearts. Despite the allure of the Internet, perhaps it is better to simply be St. Bernadette, rather than vainly trying to be St. Thomas Aquinas.
Posted by: Bender at May 26, 2007 11:48:24 AM
'Considering that I was surrounded in my daily life and parish by Catholics-in-name-only....'
This is a wonderful testimony and tribute to the ways God works through gifted people in the blogosphere, but a red light goes on in my spirit whenever I find myself thinking something like, 'since I am surrounded in my daily life and parish by Catholics-in-name-only....' Sometimes God uses those people I consider 'Catholics in name only' to really, really humble me, and to reveal to me the Mercy of God; and sometimes the Lord uses those gifted people writing in the blogosphere to remind me that we are all desperately dependent on God's Mercy just to get out of bed in the morning and be kind to our neighbor.....peace, Janis
Posted by: Janis at May 26, 2007 12:13:30 PM
Yikes. Some negative and picky reactions.
Can we not rejoice when someone comes back to a vibrant faith?
Posted by: kate at May 26, 2007 12:52:18 PM
Can we not rejoice when someone comes back to a vibrant faith?
Who's not rejoicing for her? My point that she shouldn't beat herself up if she doesn't know or otherwise whip out Church documents and Canon Law to "back up" her faith -- and to point out that a "vibrant" faith does not require such encyclopedic knowledge of Church documents and Canon Law. Indeed, such reliance on positivist authority can sometimes get in the way of the vibrant faith that grows out of simple humility and love of God.
Posted by: Bender at May 26, 2007 1:27:49 PM
Who needs the Church anyway, when one has "vibrant faith that grows out of simple humility and love of God"? I could commune with God in a fishing boat as well as at Mass (if I liked fishing).
I actually share your distaste for excessive legalism, Bender. But don't you think that it may be a little presumptuous to apply that to the case in point, or to the Catholic blogosphere in general? Is interest in the specific teachings of our written and oral tradition, whether obtained in homilies, books, blogs, or other media an indicator to you of excessive legalism and a lack of faith and humility?
Posted by: Joseph R. Wilson at May 26, 2007 6:48:29 PM
Bender: She didn't say that she needed to know the documents and canon law to back up her faith, only that when confronted with the truth as found in those places she realized that the dissenting opinions she was grasping onto had no similar foundaiton behind them.
That's not excessive legalism. It's simply the law of a necessary sort.
Posted by: Domenico Bettinelli Jr. at May 26, 2007 8:13:00 PM
The key quote from this testimony for me was:
The way I was practicing my faith wasn’t valid.
I knew a young woman when I was in college who was a reader at the Nat'l Shrine in Washington. She was at daily Mass all the time, and was an excellent reader. One day when talking with her it came up that she almost never went to Mass on Sunday. She had no idea that it was required. She knew it was important to go to Mass, but her method of practicing her faith wasn't valid because she had been so poorly taught growing up. She was a regular Sunday churchgoer after I explained the relevant canons.
Posted by: Steve Cavanaugh at May 27, 2007 1:36:39 PM
Exactly. The Faith belongs to all of us, because God gave it to us. If people are being deprived unjustly of their full rightful inheritance because nobody's ever told them about it, something has to be done to get it back to them. It's just the same as if they were having the bread stolen from their mouths. That's not legalism; that's justice and compassion.
Posted by: Maureen at May 28, 2007 9:15:59 AM
What has gone unmentioned is the failure of LaDuke's local church (parish) to teach the truth of the faith. When I returned home to The Catholic Church after a thirty year absence I attended a "returning Catholic's" class put on by my local parish. During this class I was informed, with a wink and a nod by the DRE that I really didn't need to go to confession if I was uncomfortable with it. This was just one of the many untruths that were taught. Fortunately this hit a discordant note with me, so I went in search of the truth. I thank God for the many great Catholic websites (not to mention EWTN)I found that have helped me learn my faith.
By the way, I agree with Kate.
Posted by: Mike McLaren at May 28, 2007 4:55:14 PM
Janice LaDuke and I both owe a lot to the internet. :) I recently converted from a Protestant denomination and it took me months to find a church that cared enough about Catholic doctrine to teach it. But in the meantime, I had lots of blogs to assure that there *are* wonderful parishes and lots of faithful, thoughtful Catholics out there. For a while the internet was the only Catholic community I had.
Posted by: Rachel at May 28, 2007 5:05:54 PM
I understand what Janice LaDuke means. My boyfriend and his father are Catholic - but they also belong to the Masons. His father had been assured by a priest that it was "legalized" by Pope John Paul II. I printed them out Pope Benedict's recent reminder that the ban is still in effect. I myself didn't know about novenas other than the bizarre St Jude the Extortionist sort that get published in the paper (you know, the "if you do this, you must promise publication, or St. Jude will send some of his associates over"). Leaning about novenas and other devotions has been a great blessing of the Internet.
Posted by: MissJean at May 28, 2007 9:21:55 PM
There certainly is no requirement to know the faith like St. Thomas (and few of us could even if we wanted to). But to equate the comfort of knowing your faith well, and knowing that it is well founded, does not strike me as "legalism." Ms. LaDuke's experience is quite similar to mine, and countless other Catholics "catechized" in the '70s and '80s. Vague ideas of what we believed, no real in-depth explanation of why or why it made sense, etc. Heck, not even milk, much less meat. More like watered down powdered soy by-product.
To discover the richness and depth of true Catholicism is like striking a vein of pure gold. And in large part, for all their other warts, the internet, Google, etc. have played an important part.
Posted by: c matt at May 29, 2007 9:19:06 AM
