"Catholics, Media Mobs, and the Culture of Contempt" (2021 LA Religious Education Congress)

i'm giving a talk on a topic suggested to me by the organizers of the congress and i think as a follow-up to a short presentation i gave last summer they asked me to speak on the culture of contempt especially as it obtains in catholic social media so what i'm going to do in this brief presentation is just three things first of all what is this culture of contempt secondly where does it come from and thirdly what do we do about it so that's my talk first of all what is it well i think probably everybody listening to me right now has experience on the social media most of you on catholic social media so you've experienced it for sure i'm talking about this toxic poisonous fetid quality to much of the social media dialogue and i'm sorry to say it but to a lot of catholic social media in particular you know i began working with youtube oh about 13 years ago now i think 2007. and in those days the new atheist movement was all you know in vogue and so as i began talking about god a lot of the atheists and agnostics and critics of religion came on my websites and my com boxes and i had a you know a lot of spirited exchanges with these folks and sometimes they would engage in this kind of mob behavior you know they'd send a bunch of their followers to one of my sites to fill them with negative comments and so i knew about that i mean i had some experience with it but i got to tell you i say i guess to our shame if i compare my dealing with those kind of difficult obnoxious atheists from 13 years ago and dealing with my fellow catholics on social media i take the atheists the catholics are just are just meaner to be honest with you and you know this goes across the ideological spectrum both left and right are guilty of it i'll give you one example from my experience first from the left this was a couple years ago at the national usccb meeting so i was chair of the bishops committee on evangelization they asked me to speak on the whole phenomenon of the nuns you know the unaffiliated so i gave a talk on the statistics and the reasons why and so on at the close of the talk i offered several reasons for hope and i went through a number of them and i finally came to what i called the phenomenon of jordan peterson now he's been sick about the last year so a bit off the public scene but certainly at that time i mean he was one of the most influential cultural figures in the world and at the time he was doing a lot of talks on the bible good talk serious talks he was attracting tens of thousands to his personal appearances attracting millions on social media a serious man talking in a serious way about the bible so i said to the bishops i don't know if even you know who this man is but i said and i'm not endorsing everything he's ever said but i think this is a is a sign of hope that this man is attracting so much attention talking about the bible well maybe you know that peterson sort of began his career as a critic of his own canadian government imposing the use of pronouns with the whole transgender business and my point is not to get into that but just to show that's a reason why he was controversial well i make this this simple observation that it's a sign of hope that he's giving these very popular talks on the bible well the reaction on social media was just completely over the top i mean i was called alt-right i was called a nazi i was called the fascist i was a fellow traveler with this right wing a fanatic somebody even said i was basing my apologetics on the alt-right work of jordan peterson i mean it's not even clear to me that peterson believes in god and yet i was basing my apologetics on him my point is it was just a weirdly exaggerated reaction and not just people disagreeing with me but people like personally attacking me over this well that's the catholic left catholic right not much better i'll give you one example last summer in the wake of all the controversy about the statues people tearing down statues of junipero sarah and other people and so a lot of voices were raised in social media about you know what are the bishops doing about it why aren't the bishops doing more and i just made a simple observation in an article that bishops had indeed spoken out we had played our role as teachers but that according to vatican ii as the bishops teach and sanctify it's the task of the laity now to sanctify the world because the secular order is their proper sphere i wrote an article that wasn't polemical it wasn't odd hominem it was attacking nobody it was simply making this observation about the second vatican council well the reaction on social media i was weak spineless gutless a traitor a heretic and mind you those are only the mildest and non-obscene comments that were made in fact i had members of my team that spent i think was two full days simply removing from our social media sites the most vile and hateful and obscene remarks and don't take my word for it i mean look up the article if you want it's still up there a bishop laying out the teaching of vatican ii and applying it to the present situation met with that kind of response i mean these were coming from my brother and sister catholics not from not from you know hateful enemies of the church these are coming from my own brothers and sisters many now who deal with social media talk about the combat like experience what i mean here is it's almost like a ptsd situation when you go into com boxes or on twitter and you read what people are saying about you they witness to it being like crawling off of a terrible battlefield the sheer anxiety self-loathing that it that it inculcates a good example here he's been very upfront about it is dave rubin you know dave began he's a he was a comedian and sort of a culture commentator began as a strong liberal and then underwent a conversion to a kind of a libertarian position today i would say well when he did this how the left came after him with such hatred and vitriol that he got physically sick read his most recent book talks about his hair falling out his he had went to his doctor with physical symptoms and the doctor said have you been under a lot of stress recently yes and the ptsd caused by this involvement with social media so that's the that's my first observation what is this thing we all know that it's there there's something kind of uniquely awful about the way we're treating each other on social media especially i would say we catholics okay so second point where's all this come from what's making this possible let me just make a few simple observations i think first of all from the impersonality of the internet and the ease with which we can communicate through the internet here's what i mean go back oh gosh even 30 40 years if you read an article in a newspaper or magazine that really got you mad and you wanted to say something about it publicly well you'd have to sit down and you'd have to type out a letter you'd have to find an envelope and a stamp and address it send it to the editor of the magazine the editor would open it up he'd have maybe a lot of letters he'd read yours likely if you were saying all kinds of over-the-top things he'd say well that's crazy and throw it away even if you got through this whole gamut of of requirements and your letter was published it might appear in the paper people look at and say oh that guy's crazy and they throw the paper away now none of that is standing between your opinion and utter publicity anyone now can sit in his basement type out a few words no filter no editor no one standing in the way and just like that 24 7 365 days a year all over the world your comment appears the ease of communication and then furthermore the impersonality of it not even having to claim your own name and identity you just fire off some crazy remark or some really wicked remark under a fake name or a moniker of some kind this has contributed i think to the intensity and the vitriol of these attacks i've read about what they call the the fake backbone phenomenon people say you know i'm mad about this i'm gonna stand up to that person so you feel like really brave you've done something brave and strong but you really haven't you haven't confronted the person you haven't put your name out there you haven't opened yourself to to criticism you've just in this very anonymous way dashed off a remark that's no backbone that's fake backbone i came across this just recently in a um a new book on lincoln i'm reading we all know that abe lincoln was a famous uh story teller right so when he was a young man running for political office in illinois he got up they say at one point and he was also quite a good mimic i didn't i didn't realize that but a very good mimic and he got up and in the presence of his opponent he began mocking him mimicking his voice and and making him seem foolish and the crowd really got into it because lincoln was such a good storyteller big reaction he thought boy i really knocked this one out of the park but then according to the story lincoln looked over and saw his opponent weeping and it so broke his heart that on the spot abraham lincoln decided i'll never do that again so he was you know a politically active person obviously and made strong public arguments but he said he would never engage in that kind of public mockery again i'll get to some of this later but maybe think about that when you're tempted to fire off one of these really vile remarks think of the person receiving it weeping so that's one reason the impersonality of the of the internet here's the second reason i think behind so much of the uh of the cruelty uh we are being manipulated now to back this up and no one paid me to say this but go on netflix and get the movie called the social dilemma i don't know if you've heard about that it's a really interesting documentary and it interviews a number of key players at like google and facebook and instagram the people that were involved in the in the formation of these means of communication all talking about the shadow side of these things all talking about the way that these technologies manipulate us in very dark and negative ways here's a first observation the way these machines were designed think especially of the of the smartphones that we all carry around with their notifications and the email and the dings the pings when something comes in a message comes in all of these were designed to be addictive they they trigger a sort of chemical reaction in the brain hey someone's responding to me oh i got an email oh someone liked what i put up there and the machines themselves are designed to draw us very addictively into this world furthermore we all know about these uh these algorithms so called these sort of impersonal formulas by which we are manipulated to watch things in certain areas so let's say you you go on a website and then the algorithms begin kicking in oh he likes that sort of thing send him five more and i'd be looking around those oh he'll wait really like so send him 10 more of those or boy he follows that that person listen to that political point of view send him five more like that oh he actually watched two or three send him 10 more of those what's the result of this manipulation by the way which is for the sake of money is to get our eyes on the screen so that advertising money flows into the right places but what's it doing to us it's locking all of us into these various silos here's the little area now that i am interested in and all i start watching and all i start reading are people along these lines now politically i just start watching nothing but the liberal point of view or the conservative point of view or whatever point of view but what's behind a lot of it is this impersonal manipulation which is is dividing us into camps another point they make is this the algorithms like it when we fight because you start fighting with somebody that's interesting other people begin watching this is the the car wreck on the side of the road phenomenon right there might be just a little fender bender off the side of the road but we all got to stop and stare at it so two people are fighting ah that's interesting let me pay attention to that oh algorithms are kicking in oh send them more things like that where people are fighting about the same issue oh that's really interesting now i'm spending hours of my day watching these ridiculous ideological fights on facebook or on twitter or whatever am i realizing again watch this film for the details am i realizing how manipulated i am and how all of us are being drawn into conflict precisely by these impersonal forces here's a third observation gosh i think it was actually many years ago at the congress i spoke on renee gerard the great french american philosopher died just about 10 years ago now but maybe most of you know the the contours of jarrar's famous theory of scapegoating victimization basic idea is that when conflicts arise in a given society this could be a coffee clash it could be a nation-state when conflicts arise what we do by a basic instinct is we look for scapegoats there's somebody behind this someone's to blame that guy that woman that group and then all of us come together forming gerard would say a kind of mob and again from the most local to the most geopolitical level forming a kind of mob that finds an ersat sense of unity and peace precisely in the act of commonly blaming the scapegoat look at the woman caught in adultery story in john chapter 8 for the details gerard love that story by the way do we see this phenomenon on the internet you bet i tell people if you want to see the truth of gerrard's theory i used to say i mean look to the dynamics of politics in the 20th century fine but i'd say look to the dynamics of the internet the social media space boy it's no accident that these groups of of critics on twitter are often called twitter mobs what's a mob like it's irrational it's scapegoating and it's violent and dangerous sound familiar that's the girardian theory in a nutshell and you see it acted out beautifully in these twitter mobs today some poor person says something that that someone finds inadequate or offensive or problematic and what happens is like that because of social media a mob can form a scapegoating mob together let's blame that person that group gerard named this by the way is one of the most fundamental forms of sin and he's dead right about that and i think this has influenced the dynamics of of social media to a large degree you know here's something else and again i say it to our shame but the the sex abuse scandals now we've been you know reeling from these for the past several decades have certainly contributed to the intensity and and violence and retuperation that you can find in social media there's such suspicion and again to a degree i understand it a suspicion of the institutional church the suspicion of of pre-suspicion of those in authority and that's exacerbated a lot of these tensions leading to hair trigger reactions etc and just a last reason for why this is happening where it's coming from is you know frankly the presence of some pretty nasty people on social media and especially in catholic social media people that are drawing their power from the stirring up of of hatred not really educating or illuminating but drawing their power from um conflict stirring up trouble stirring up verbal violence again the car wreck phenomenon what makes a lot of these websites attractive is precisely that quality oh oh someone's fighting oh someone's being blamed someone's being attacked that's interesting this has not helped obviously this has contributed to a lot of the situation okay so what is it where does it come from lastly i want to spend the most time with this what do we do about it what's the way forward now for all of us who are you know users of social media but people that also love the catholic church we want to get involved in in community we want to get involved in evangelization we want to get involved in teaching we want to use the social media as best we can but avoid these difficulties let me make just a couple of practical suggestions first i'd recommend everybody fasting from social media from time to time now there were people by the way in that film i i referenced the social dilemma founders of these of these uh uh technological tools who recommended just permanently get off of them like just just quit i i i'll take that seriously i'm not going to go that far but i am going to recommend fasting from social media from time to time using the social media a lot less than we do have you paid attention i i'll confess to you the first time i became aware of this it kind of shocked me you know your iphone will tell you how much time you've spent on the social media in the course of a day the first time i saw that i thought oh no no no there's been a mistake there's no way i was on the phone for that long and then it sinks in no i don't think the machine is lying without even knowing it i was drawn into so many of these of these sites stop spending so much time on that stupid phone use it for good and there's plenty of good in it i got a whole social media ministry but let's watch the time that we use on him a lot of researchers you know have been showing read to gene twenge on this the tight correlation between screen time and depression i mean i i can i think feel it in my own life that when when you're spending a lot of time on the screen it does something to your brain chemistry or something you you start just feeling more lethargic or down you know watch it and then as i've been saying the more we're on these things gosh the more we're drawn into these endless controversies the more we end up in arguments and disputes it's not good for us as i've said you know i'm not completely negative on comm boxes i think good things have happened on con boxes i know that from my ministry you do a video and someone comes on even negatively but you're able to engage and make some progress and yeah con boxes are good but let's be honest they're often pretty awful places and i think the less time we spend on those the better here's a line i came across what has no one ever said on his deathbed gosh if only i'd spent more time arguing with strangers on the internet no one ever says that on his deathbed and so why are we spending look at your phone today why are we spending hours and hours doing precisely that so ignore it to a degree to a degree hey you know what with um with lent coming up that's a challenge do you want to get really really serious maybe maybe fast completely from these things but but fast maybe just to a degree say i'm not going to go beyond you know one hour of use per day try something like this during lent here's a second recommendation of what we do keep in mind the distinction between quarreling and arguing the distinction between quarreling and arguing here's a citation from gk chesterton's autobiography that's where i got this distinction this is gk speaking my brother cecil edward chesterton was born when i was about five years old and after a brief pause began to argue he continued to argue to the end i'm glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing and we never once quarreled that's the distinction what's to quarrel to quarrel is to fall into animosity mutual dislike odd hominem attack feelings of aggression self-loathing those are the marks of a quarrel what does it mean to argue and you know if you've been following my work you know i've been on this for several years to recover the importance of argument to argue is to observe carefully to propose hypotheses to think clearly and logically to draw conclusions reasonably to admit when you don't know something to accept criticism gracefully good that's what it means to argue i'm for argument put that on my tombstone if you want that guy stood for argument i hate quarreling the internet is filled with quarreling and almost no arguing we've forgotten the graceful art of engaging in just this kind of disputation with someone with whom we disagree listen again observe carefully propose hypotheses think clearly and logically draw conclusions reasonably admit when you don't know something accept criticism gracefully if you're into that off you go use the internet all you want go into every com box you want if that's what you're doing if you're quarreling forget it forget it cut it out cut it out quarreling's getting us nowhere arguing will get us to a very good place i've long agreed with the great methodist theologian stanley howard was who said the great need of our time is to learn again how to have an argument about religion in public man it's a good line isn't it to learn again how to have an argument about religion in public somewhere in between violence and bland toleration there's the space of argument thomas aquinas lived in that space by the way recovering it is really important i think to moving forward here's the third recommendation we might recover the moral significance of calumny we might recover the moral significance of calumny now i know that's a word that seems maybe a bit quaint calumny but it actually names something i think of real importance in our internet age here's the catechism of the catholic church on calumny mind you in the context of its presentation on the eighth commandment thou shalt not bear false witness against one's neighbor maybe not the commandment that springs right to mind but i think today commandment number eight it's a really important one here's the key citation from the catechism when it is uttered publicly a proposition contrary to truth takes on a particular seriousness again when uttered publicly a proposition contrary to truth takes on a particular seriousness you go on the internet remember 24 7 365 all over the world you're saying something that you know or suspect to be false about someone you're propagating a a calumny already committed you're destroying someone's reputation bearing false witness against your neighbor in a very serious way here's a a bit of a definition of calamity from the catechism telling me has to do with propositions contrary to the truth that are detrimental to the reputation of others and give occasion to false judgments in their regard hmm maybe put that on a little piece of paper next to your computer screen again it has to do with propositions contrary to the truth that are detrimental to the reputation of others and give occasion to false judgments in their regard does that sound familiar i mean i think we're all in the social media space guilty of this from time to time more from the catechism kalani destroys the reputation and honor of one's neighbor and thus offends against both justice and charity think about that everybody when you're tempted to trade in this kind of you know mean-spirited exchange when you're tempted to to get involved in a twitter mob to jump onto this train of calumny keep these offenses in mind you're you're writing something that you know is false or at least misleading or superficial or one-sided you're not just playing a game here this is something of great moral danger i love this from pope francis boy is he good on this isn't he he really is clued into the dangers of of calumny he spoke in one of his morning mass homilies of quote the dark joy of gossiping it's good isn't it there is a kind of joy that's why we do it that's why we join gerardian scapegoating mobs or twitter mobs but it's a dark joy it's a dysfunctional joy it'll eventually turn on us and turn into something much more like depression i like this from kierkegaard the great philosopher he said when you label me you negate me it's true isn't it you jump on the internet now and you start you join a twitter mob and you're just labeling someone because they said one thing that was slightly off what you think is right when you label me you negate me as a person reread that section of the catechism take a good look at this treatment of the eighth commandment about bearing false witness and i think friends that could be a good way forward here's a fourth recommendation and this is another one you could put up i think next to your computer screen go to uh paul to the galatians chapter 5. paul to the galatians chapter 5 and there you see his famous discussion of the fruits of the holy spirit and what he calls the works of the flesh what are the fruits of the holy spirit they are the signs that the holy spirit is present and operative in you or somebody else what are they put these next to your computer screen love joy peace patience kindness generosity faithfulness gentleness and self-control okay got him you go on the internet you go to a let's say a catholic website do you see someone who's exhibiting their these qualities can you watch that person say yeah i'm sensing love joy peace patience kindness faithfulness self-control good good chance the holy spirit is operative that person how will you know them by their fruits you shall know them this isn't guesswork it's not it's not rocket science actually you can see the fruits of the holy spirit in these qualities now in that same fifth chapter of galatians paul lays out what he calls the works of the flesh that's to say those things inimical to the spirit or better those things indicative of darker spirits at work what are they enmities strife jealousy anger quarrels dissensions and factions let me name them again enmity strife jealousy anger quarrels dissensions and factions those are the marks of the dark spirit those are the works of the flesh now you go on the internet you go on especially catholic internet and you tell me if you see these qualities in somebody i'd recommend staying away from that person i would suggest strongly to you you're dealing with something there of the darker spirit put these next to your computer screen galatians 5 put the the fruits of the spirit and the works of the flesh it'll help you make a decision about what you should be watching mind you too this last point under this heading the devil has two great names in the new testament right he's called hadiyabalos which means the scatterer and he's called hosatanas which means the accuser two great moves of the dark spirit the dark spirit divides and accuses reads gerard by the way under that rubric if you're looking at a website that's doing a lot of dividing and accusing i think you know what spirit's behind it here's a fifth and final recommendation as a way forward prayer should precede and accompany all of your use of the internet prayer should proceed and accompany all of your use of the internet now i know when you speak of prayer it can seem oh kind of you know pious and isn't that nice i don't mean this as a pious remark i mean this is the most important remark i've made which is why i put it at the very end of this talk pray as you sit down to the keyboard pray before you go on the internet unless until your use of social media is connected to god and the things of god you will probably end up misusing it i'd recommend to you what my thesis director in paris many years ago when i was doing my doctoral work recommended to me he said find an icon of the lord and put it right next to your computer this was years ago and i was surprised but delighted by that recommendation i followed it ever since put an icon of the lord or one of the great saints or the blessed mother next to your computer screen and when you sit down to do your work on the internet or your engagement pray in a very conscious way to forge a connection to heaven is to do what everybody it's to move into the world of love because love is what god is what's love to will the good of the other it's thomas aquinas definition to love is to will the good of the other okay okay you're on the internet you're watching websites you're in com boxes you're responding if you're willing the good of the other off you go what did augustine say love and do whatever you want terrific terrific you're in the space of love you're willing the good of the other fine then enter into these comm boxes enter into arguments because you won't be quarreling by the way you'll be arguing you won't be attacking in a mob spirit you'll be trying to engage out of a sense of charity and love for the truth good love and do whatever you want so when you sit down at the computer with the icon in front of you say a prayer that links you to god and the things of god before you get involved in this space before you put fingers to keyboard to make a statement and i know believe me i'm preaching to myself everybody because i know the the impulse someone said something mean i'm going to say something mean back right before you fingers the keyboard ask the simple question am i doing this out of love am i willing the good of the other if not cut it out don't do it don't make the statement all right just for conclusion uh i'm known i guess as one of the you know most enthusiastic users of social media in the catholic space i still believe strongly in its evangelical efficacy we have to do another talk on that the positive sign i've long encouraged bishops and priests to get involved in social media because it's of enormous evangelical potential to use these tools not just for information sharing but for the proclamation of the gospel especially to those who would never think of darkening the doors of our institutions but we can move into their space using this great tool and so i am totally in favor of that please don't construe anything i've said today is a you know one-sided dismissal of social media no no i believe in it but i also realize how dysfunctional this world can become so use it but use it with caution use it but discern the spirits as you do use it but use it always with love love and then do what you will god bless you all

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 37min 21sec (2241 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021