Resuming my post on the 'youth' synod's Prop 146, here first is Aldo Maria Valli's comment...
Te synod, communications,
and the desire to control
Translated from
October 30, 2018
The final document of the ‘youth synod’ – an indigestible brick – written by someone who aspires to omniscience, also touches on the use of communications technologies. It does so in a section entitled ‘Mission in a digital environment’ where, after maintaining that “the digital environment represents a challenge on multiple levels for the Church”, states that
“it is the young people themselves who ask to be accompanied in discerning the mature modalities of life in an environment that is today strongly digitalized, which allows for availing of its opportunies while forestalling its risks”
(No. 145).
I would really like to know who ‘gave birth’ to such concepts. Young people wish to be ‘accompanied in discerning…’ [
when it comes to using computers]??? What? Where? When? If I look around me, I see none of this at all. What I see are many adults and older people, like myself, who would very uch want to be ‘accompanied’ by young people to understand a bit more and to be able to make some use of all this digital deviltry.
But when I ask my own daughters to do this for me, first they snort, and then tell me they have other things to do, and finally mumble something incomprehensible to me. And when finally, after much insistence on my part, they deign to explain something to me, they speak and fiddle around with the computer so rapidly that I can understand nothing. I would like so much to ‘avail of the opportunities’ offered by these new means of communication, but I cannot find anyone with the patience to ‘accompany’ me.
But the other passage in the document that is dedicated to communication is this: [
He cites Prop 146].
Now, apart from finding it paradoxical that the Vatican should give us lessons about fake news – after the Vatican itself had been the protagonist of a mega-‘fake news’ event (Remember the news conference where a message from Benedict XVI was presented as ‘approving’ of Pope Francis’s theology, when in fact, he had declined to write an essay that would supplement that already written by 11 [mostly no-name] theologians to celebrate the Bergoglian theology),
this proposal 146 to “manage systems to certify Catholic sites” has something more than disquieting. How shall we translate this bureaucratic language into a single word? ‘Censorship’? Or ‘muzzling’?
I don’t know why what comes to my mind right away is the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with its efficient ‘offices’ in which diligent
apparatchiki evaluated, rated, checked, corrected [
all written material for publication] and eventually manipulated, censored or prohibited their publication.
The proposal suggests that at the Vatican, the subject of digital communications, especially via websites and blogs, is evidently an open nerve.
I ask: how could they possibly launch such an operation? Who and how could anyone possibly keep an eye on an indescribably enormous mass of information, news and commentary on the Internet? It would need a sort of all-seeing, sharp-eyed and implacable Big Brother
[or a multitude of Big Brothers] with a police apparatus like the vastest and most sophisticated systems of thought control in totalitarian states.
So, does the Vatican think it is equipped for this?
[We know it is not – so how much less would similar offices ‘at the appropriate level’, i.e., parochial, diocesan and national, be equipped to do this? Yet, believe me, I am expecting maybe Cupich or Tobin announcing shortly how their respective dioceses are already setting up such an office!] Is it going to use the new super-dicastery for Communications to do this, or will it institute a new organism dedicated to this task?
I have a suggestion for how to name such a new organism – something like Commission for the Security of the State. You don’t think so? Just listen to how it sounds in Russian:
Komitet Gosudarstvennoj Bezopasnosti, much more familiar, of course, by its initials KGB.
On the other hand, some representatives of the ‘church of mercy’
[better yet, ‘church of misericordism’, the ideology of mercy, rather than mercy itself] (such as the Jesuit ‘patron saint’ of LGBTQ, James Martin), have already made it known that
‘the church’ ought to regulate some sites thought to be insupportably ‘traditionalist’ and ‘conservative’ by simply closing them down.
But I know that these misreicordists like James Martin ought to resign themselves for now to the fact that
most of those who produce these ‘insupportable’ websites and blogs, who are for the most part independent, also live in countries in which, for better or worse, freedom of thought and expression is still safeguarded. And therefore, a great over-arching ‘certification’ system would seem to be unrealizable.
Of course, I unxerstand that this thing called ‘freedom’ is intolerable for anyone who argues in favor of ‘certifying’ Catholic content. But I don’t know what they could do about it. The misreicordists must simply resign themselves to this fact.
On this subject, I would ask:
When Jesus said “ Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one” (Mt 5,37) in his Sermon on the Mount, did he imagine such a system of certification? On the other hand, did not the Superior-General of the Jesuits, Fr. Sosa, say that there were no tape recorders in Jesus’s time, so who knows what he really said?
But I recall another apposite statement –
“During a time of universal lying, to tell the truth is a revolutionary act”. George Orwell wrote that. He who understood more than well enough about Big Brothers, thought control and dictatorial regimes.
[Apropos, for Antonio Spadaro, Orwell also said, "Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four".]
Meanwhile, LifeSite News compiled a few other reactions from Catholic tweeters:
Vatican’s proposed Soviet-style tactic
to quash dissent invites questions, derision
by Doug Mainwaring
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October 29, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican has indicated that it will adopt the tactics of leftist activists and seek to silence the voices of those who don’t fully agree with the agenda of the current pontificate.
The final Youth Synod Document proposes a system to “certify” Catholic sites in order to counteract what it deems to be “fake news about the Church.”
Crux’s Christopher White tweeted:
Keen Vatican watchers were quick to zero in on the troubling proposal embedded in paragraph 146 of the final Youth Synod Document, recognizing it as p
art of a continuing effort by progressive forces within the Church to rid itself of criticism by shutting down conservative Catholic websites.
Many saw it as outlandish.
“Yeah, that’ll happen!” wrote Fr. John Zuhlsdorf in his Fr. Z’s Blog. “And guess who would be in charge of something like that.”
Zuhlsdorf predicted that such a measure would trigger the exact opposite effect, awakening a conservative sleeping giant, unleashing many more critical voices.
“If they want to know the meaning of total, unrestricted and asymmetrical warfare just try that,” he continued. “They won’t know what hit them.”
The Vatican Post Office, a twitter account that often offers humorous takes on Vatican missteps, immediately recognized the inherent danger in such a scheme and delivered a pithy, albeit stinging, response:
[SUPER DUPER NOTE!]
The Vatican is still reeling two months after former papal nuncio Carlo Maria Vigano published his first testimony revealing scandalous details about the hierarchy’s handling of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s decades of homosexual abuses against seminarians and adolescents.
Vigano’s truth-telling was viewed as a betrayal by progressive prelates who want to fully detoxify homosexuality and normalize it within the Church.
“Vatican leaders are now calling for Catholics on the Internet who do not meet their approval to be censored. The censorship would come in the denial of official certification from the Holy See,” explained Michael Voris at churchmilitant.com.
While details about how the process would work have not been disclosed, “What is clear is that leaders in the Vatican are feeling the heat and are concerned about continuing to lose control of their carefully constructed narrative,” said Voris.
Voris then offered a litany of important questions raised by the synod proposal:
● What would be the criteria for applying and being granted certification?
● How many sites would be eligible?
● Is the Vatican communications office sufficiently staffed with people fluent in multiple languages to review each website during the application?
● How frequently would the renewal process be triggered?
● Would a renewal process even exist?
● What would be the mechanism for revoking a "certification" already granted? (The presumption is that the certification would not be in perpetuity, but even that is a presumption.)
● Would "certification" apply to just postings designated as news, or would it extend to commentary?
● And if commentary would be included, would certifiers sitting in the Vatican communications basement be sufficiently trained in cultural nuances and social circumstances to render a verdict on the commentary?
● If a given commentary on a newsworthy issue were determined to be out of bounds by the Vatican toleration and certification police, would that one instance trigger an automatic revocation of the certification?
● If not, how many "chances" would be granted before the certification would be withdrawn?
[NAAAHHH... futile questions. None of those who voted for Prop 146 got as far as considering them at all because I bet the certification bit didn't even register on any of the 234 synodal fathers who voted YES, because if it did, who in his right mind would have voted YES to such a preoposterous and totally objectionable idea which is also totally impracticable???? Which the voter ought to have realized as soon as he read it - but, as I said, brain-dead after 146 previous propositions voted on and three weeks of tedious playing at "We're doing really significant work here to be able to accompany young people" - and the hell with saving their souls. Or any souls for that matter, including theirs.]
Pointing out that thousands of articles in many languages would have to be reviewed daily, Voris notes that a “behemoth” bureaucratic agency would have to be created to handle the workload.
Voris sees inclusion of the impractical proposal in the final synod document as a thinly veiled ploy.
“The real reason any talk like this is being presented in official Church documents is because it creates the appearance that some Catholic sites are simply untrustworthy and should not be followed.”
The proposal comes just as other forces within the Church have launched campaigns to shut down conservative websites.
Jesuit Fr. James Martin recently “urged his nearly one million social media followers to get Facebook and Twitter to shut down LifeSite and Church Militant,” reported Austin Ruse, president of C-fam, in Crisis Magazine. “He also called on his followers to complain to their bishops. He, too, believes these groups must be silenced.”
“Fr. Martin charges that outfits like Church Militant and LifeSite are nothing more than social media mobs sent to harass the innocent,” continued Ruse. “However, counting Facebook and Twitter, Fr. Martin’s social media presence is twice the size of Church Militant, LifeSite, and Lepanto combined. And Martin has never hesitated to unleash this sometimes-threatening social media mob.”
“Making false charges is straight out of Fr. Martin’s playbook,” he added.