Digital media are much more than just new, sophisticated tools for human communication. They are a culture that profoundly shapes how we experience our world and ourselves within in it, and the church is called to engage in a dialogue with this culture in order to explore its challenges and possibilities for its mission to communicate the faith.
In this book, Daniella Zsupan-Jerome mines the teaching of the Catholic Church on social communication, from Inter Mirifica (1963) to The Rapid Development (2005) and the World Communications Day Messages (up until 2014), for insights regarding the particular demands of ministerial formation in the digital age. The theology of communication that the author outlines, especially in her discussion of Communio et Progressio (CP, 1971), is based on the Trinitarian nature of God as communion and the understanding of revelation and salvation history as communication. Human communication is thus “in the image” of God, following the model of Christ as the “Perfect Communicator” (CP 11; Zsupan-Jerome 52). Digital media have become a way to create authentic community and can thus “be a conduit of … grace” (102), although The Church and Internet (2002) also cautions that mediated encounters cannot replace the experience of the presence of God in the eucharistic community because of the particular form of embodied presence that they enable. Catholic teaching on social communication is thus fundamentally positive and affirms communication—also in its digital forms—as a human right, while also developing ethical and moral criteria for authentic communication toward communion, such as the furthering of solidarity and the common good, authentic relationality, truth and access to social communication. As social communication develops from a model of one-to-many broadcasting to a participatory digital culture, the author argues that the formation of ministers has to shift from the training of select media experts to the development of a more encompassing capacity to guide others in assuming coresponsibility as communicators of the gospel.
Of interest to both an academic and a nonacademic audience, this book offers a clear, accessible analysis of Catholic teaching on social communication, reflecting on how its views shape ministerial formation in the digital culture. As Zsupan-Jerome discusses the documents in chronological order, some repetition cannot be avoided, although the author makes sure to highlight the specific contributions of each text. While the exegesis of the documents in their context has value, the text is strongest when the author develops elements of a nuanced pastoral theology of digital media with the consequences for ministerial formation and offers an analysis of particular examples of pastoral communication in the digital age, such as the use of media for the promotion of the 2013 Day of Prayer and Fasting for Syria or Pope Francis’ iPhone message in early 2014, which was able to convey intimacy and immediacy in a way that challenges views on the qualitative difference between mediated and face-to-face encounters. As our digital culture continues to develop, Zsupan-Jerome's book offers valuable insights that will further reflection on how these developments shape pastoral realities and activities.
