First, was the disappearance of Latin (which had become a de facto badge of identity for many Catholics), and the second was the fact that now the president of the Eucharistic assembly ‘faced the people.'

This was visually different, obvious, and - as is the way with that which we see with our own eyes - imagined to be self-explanatory.

‘He now faces us!' and ‘We can now see him and see what's happening!' were the comments at the time, and the whole church-building re-ordering programme was expressed in ‘turning round the altar so that the priest faces the people.'

For the ‘average person' not thinking about liturgy, theology, or the Vatican Council, this was what liturgical change was about: literally, a shifting of the furniture.

It is probably for this reason that those who are unhappy with the reforms of the Council imagine that if they can change back the furniture and make the language more Latinate as in the 2011 English-language missal, then they will have broken the symbolic heart of the renewal.

Is it about communication?

The new shape of the liturgical arena, the president facing the rest of the congregation, was presented at the time and is still most often presented today in terms of communication and the theory of communication.

The president could now be seen and heard, and this was perceived as a welcome development because it fostered understanding and comprehension (which it does).

This, in turn, was expected to lead to a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist (as it has to an extent that is not often acknowledged and in ways that were not expected).

However, this emphasis on being able to see the priest made him and his role in the liturgy central to the whole event - and this dynamic (one actor with an audience) is actually a hangover from the eucharistic spirituality that Vatican II set out to challenge.

Selling the reform short

But did those who implemented the reform in parishes sell it short?

Was it simply a matter of communications?

Perhaps it was something far more fundamental - indeed, was it such a fundamental aspect of the reform that neither they nor their congregations could take on board the rationale of the shift in one move?

Therefore, they ‘explained it' by simplification - and, in the process, traduced it?

This seems to be exactly what happened: in well-intentioned attempts to communicate ‘the changes' in the liturgy they opted to use ‘communication' as the rationale for the new physical arrangements, and once embarked on that road, then every arrangement had to explained in a similar fashion: it must be seen by all, all the time.

So why did Vatican II want the president facing others in the assembly and every building to have the ancient basilican arrangement?

The fundamental rationale of the reform was the renewed awareness of the early and patristic understanding of the assembly as gathered around the table of the Lord.

The Eucharist is many things, but in its fundamental form, it is a meal of eating and drinking, a banquet, a sacrum convivium, and its visible focus is the visible focus of a meal: a table.

We may interpret that table theologically as an altar - the table is ‘our altar' as distinct from the altar in the Jerusalem temple or the many altars found in ordinary homes in antiquity - but it is, in its own reality, first and last, a table.

The Lord gathers us at his table: there we discover his presence and bless the Father.

The table is at once in unity with our own tables - for a table is a reality of the ordinary world - and in union with the table of the heavenly banquet.

The table transcends the dichotomy, which is a false dichotomy for Christians, of the sacred and the profane: the domestic is the locus of the sacred.

This is a typical Greco-Roman altar found in Caesarea Philippi. Altars such as this one could be found in every building - including most homes - across the Roman world. Photo - Thomas O'Loughlin

A priestly people

The Lord has come to our table, we gather as a priestly people at his.

We can interpret the table in many ways, and interpreting it as ‘an altar' has been the most common, but our eucharistic thinking must start with what it is.

This use of the word ‘table' did, of course, produce allergic reactions to Catholics of an older generation: Protestants had the ‘holy table' or brought out a table for a ‘communion service'; we had ‘an altar' - and the physical object in a church-building was never referred to by any other name: it was an altar, and altars were for sacrifice!

But we still referred to ‘the mensa' in many of the rubrics; the shape never took on that of either an Old Testament nor a pagan altar; and it was expected that a vestigial four legs (just like the table I am writing upon) should appear as four columns or pilasters on the front of ‘the altar.'

There is only one problem with tables: you cannot just use them in any old way, they create their own space for us as dining animals!

How we humans behave

Let us imagine the smallest possible table gathering: two people meeting for a cup of coffee in a café.

Unless they are not focused on their own meeting - i.e. they want to watch a TV screen rather than talk to one another - they will take up positions opposite one another across the table.

The table creates a common space, a space for eating and talking and for sharing a common reality in a way that cannot take place when people sit side-by-side at a bar.

If you are alone, it is as easy to sit at a bar and eat, drink, read the paper or play with your phone as at a table (and you do not risk having a stranger sit opposite you); but if two people go to drink instant coffee or have a magnificent meal together, then they will face one another.

We watch each other eating, and around the table, we become a community - however transient - and not just two individuals.

This is also a space of deep communication between us as people: we can share our thoughts with our food, we can pick up all the richness of facial expression, tone, body language - and really communicate.

This is the communication we long for as human beings, not ‘the communications' of the media or of communications theory that is better described as information transfer.

The table is an intimate place - yet curiously, it is also a public space, a place of respect for one another (hence ‘table manners'), and a place where our humanity and our relations with other humans are enhanced.

The importance of the table is written as deep in our humanity as anything else: it is studied by behavioural scientists, anthropologists, and psychologists - but it suffices here to remind us of the references to tables in the Psalms (Ps 23:5; 79:19; or 123:3), the gospels (Mt 8:11; 9:10; 15:27; 26:7; 26:20 - and this is in just one gospel), and many early Christian stories.

The table is at the heart of our humanity and at the heart of our liturgy.

But what of a table with more than two people? The fundamental logic continues:

We arrange ourselves around the table and create roughly equal spaces between each other.

This continues until we have used up all the space around the table - and then, traditionally, we extend the table into the longer form we find at banquets, in refectories and messes, and even in domestic dining rooms where the table ‘pulls out' for those occasions when we have extra guests.

The Eucharist is our common table as Christians and our sacred table as guests of the Lord: it was to re-establish this fundamental table-logic that stood behind the changes of Vatican II.

The move in the president's direction was not that ‘he could face the people' in serried ranks of pews, nor be visible as a science teacher's bench must be visible to her class, nor as a lecturer on a podium - but so that if he stood at the Lord's table, everyone else could arrange themselves around that table as human beings do.

This seems impossible!

But is this not simply impossible?

How does one put hundreds of people at a packed Sunday Mass around a table?

People need to be in pews: which means that only the president can be at the table!

Well, first, the shift in the position of the table has been done in most buildings in a minimal way.

It was just ‘pulled out from the wall' rather than made the centre of space for the assembled banqueting community.

Second, in many places, it has been found possible to create a long table in an otherwise uncluttered space and arrange well over a hundred people to stand around it such that all could see they were gathered around the Lord's table.

And third, the Eucharist is a human-sized event - and a gathering of over a hundred should be considered very exceptional - as they were for most of Christian history.

However, it is important to note just how deeply set this reality of ‘being around the table' is within our tradition.

First of all, in the directions for gathering at meals that come from Jewish sources that are contemporaneous with the earliest Christian meals, we find that when the guests assembled, they had a cup of wine (‘the first cup'), and each said the blessing individually; then they went to the table, and there was another cup (‘the second cup') and now one person blessed for all.

The reason for the shift is explicitly spelt out: only when they were at the table were they a community, and so only then could one bless all.

Now think again about the Last Supper, the other meals of Jesus, the blessing of the cup in 1 Corinthians, or the ritual instructions for the community meals in the Didache.

Second, consider the words of the traditional Roman eucharistic prayer (Eucharistic Prayer I): Memento, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum et omnium circumstantium, … . A literal rendering (still too daring for translators!) supposes the arrangement of people that existed when the text was created: ‘Remember, O Lord, you male servants (famuli) and your female servants (famulae), indeed all who are standing around … '.

Could it be that the venerable Roman Canon assumes that the community, both men and women, are standing around the table of the Lord?

And third, we have from the patristic and early medieval periods directions for how the broken parts of the loaf are to be arranged on the paten, and these often assume that the arrangement around the paten's rim reflects the people around the table.

So, once again, table gathering is not a new ‘secular' or imported idea but a return to the depths of our own tradition.

A whole community gathered

If we start thinking about the new orientation not as ‘priest facing people' or ‘people looking at priest', but as the whole community gathered around an actual table we not only have a more authentic expression of the Eucharist, a deeper appreciation of the many prayer of the liturgy that suppose this physical arrangement, but we also how shallow has been our taking up of the reforms of Vatican II over the last half-century.

A fuller renewal, with a deeper appreciation of its inherent logic, is going to mean more shifting around in buildings a gradual exposure of the ideas so that people feel comfortable with them and see why we are abandoning the ‘theatre-and-stage' arrangements.

Moreover, and it will run into cultural problems in that many modern households do not eat together at a table at home and so lack a basic human experience upon which grace might build the community of the Lord's table.

A recent UK survey found that one in four households now have no dining table / kitchen table at which they take meals as a household - the human consequences for society are frightening!

Over the last few years there have been calls from some liturgists - including bishops and cardinals - for a return to the ‘ad orientem' position (i.e. president facing away from the assembly), while others, needing to reply to these calls, have tried to make out that the present arrangements are nigh on perfect!

But both the present arrangements of ‘the expert' being visible at his bench and pre-reformed notion of only one person at the table - in effect not facing the same way as the people, but turning his back on them and keeping them away from the table behind him and railings - are fundamentally flawed as being neither true to Christian tradition nor human nature.

If we think about how tables are part of our heritage, we might also appreciate why Pope Francis has insisted that there can be no question of going backwards as if the pre-Vatican rite and the current rite are simply ‘option.'

Sixty years ago, Sacrosanctum Concilium made a definite change upwards.

The theological bottom line is this: if the Logos has come to dwell among us (Jn 1:14), then every table of Christians is a place where one can rub up against him at one's elbow.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

Gielen is currently in Portugal at World Youth Day.

The announcement arrives in the wake of a report by TV3 journalist Michael Morrah that exposed alleged unapproved exorcisms conducted by the fringe Latin Rite church group known as 'The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer', or more colloquially, the 'Transalpine Redemptorists'.

Reports suggest that the group performed at least seven exorcisms, five more than authorised by a Christchurch bishop.

Disturbingly, one individual was allegedly subjected to repeated protracted sessions, including an exorcism that was performed for three consecutive days.

Notably absent were the standard medical and psychological evaluations required before performing an exorcism.

Despite their YouTube Channel having 263,000 subscribers, their most recent video having 563 likes, and 104 comments, a former member of The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, Greg Price stands by Gielen's call for a review.

"This goes much deeper and wider than just the exorcisms," Price said. He did not offer more details.

Suggesting that complaints were made to then Christchurch bishop, Paul Martin, Price expressed hope that Gielen would be proactive.

"There are people out there, and they will be willing to converse with the Bishop if he demonstrates a genuine interest in hearing them out."

Retired Professor Peter Lineham, a religious commentator, suggested: "Bishop Michael would be gravely mistaken if he ignored the pressing concerns."

Lineham also believes that in ordering a review, Gielen is looking to see whether these priests should be allowed to have standing in the Diocese of Christchurch.

In Tuesday's CathNews, Dr Joe Grayland questioned why a Bishop of Christchurch give permission to this fringe group to perform exorcisms and why, in light of Pope Francis' most recent instruction, they are still permitted to use the old Latin Rite for Mass.

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Sources

• NewsHub
• CathNews - Christchurch exorcisms - Paddy Gower has issues
• CathNews - Poor Church communication helps trivialise exorcisms

Poor Church communication is in the spotlight.

The nub of the issue is why a fringe group, that does not belong to the mainstream of the Church and does not follow the ordinary form the Mass promuligated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 (Novus Ordo) is permitted to perform any sacrament, let alone a sacramental like a "major exorcism"?

Why did a Bishop of Christchurch give permission to this fringe group to perform exorcisms?

Why, in light of Pope Francis' recent tight restrictions on the old Latin Rite has the permission to perform the old Latin Rite not been withdrawn from this group?

Exorcism

The distinction between a "simple form" of exorcism, such as the one performed in the Rite of Baptism or when blessing ourselves with holy water, and the more elaborate "major" or solemn form used in sacramental exorcisms, has not been made clear.

Due to this lack of clarification, exorcism has been trivialised, along with the serious issue of potential religious or spiritual abuse.

Now we have a situation where people have heard about exorcism and abuse in the same sentence and wonder what is going wrong.

As a point of teaching, it is important to clarify the major or solemn form of exorcism is only performed by a priest who has the explicit permission of the bishop.

No ordinary priest is permitted to perform the solemn form of exorcism.

The priest chosen for this sacramental must be judged against external criteria before being permitted to perform a solemn or major exorcism. The priest must proceed with caution, follow the strict rule laid down by the Church and be in regular contact with the diocesan bishop.

The ritual for this sacramental is found in the Rituale Romanum.

The rite is used to protect a person or object against the power of evil or withdraw the power of evil from a person.

The solemn rite of exorcism must not take place where there is a physical or psychological illness. These illnesses are to be treated through medical science, and engaging in the solemn form of exorcism where it is not warranted is just a return to magic or witchcraft.

NZ Media

The trivialisation of such an important matter by TV journalists shows the sorry state of journalism in New Zealand.

When allegations of ritual abuse are juxtaposed with the nonsense of finding out where the best-fried chips are found, it trivialises something very serious.

Add to this the expressed bias of the main presenter regarding his own Catholic upbringing, and one is left saddened that New Zealand seems to have few informed investigative journalists worthy of the title.

New Zealand Bishops' Conference's Response

The trivialisation by society's media of potential spiritual or ritual abuse was not helped by the communications response of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference.

In this particular case, a prior communication informing clergy and other diocesan and school leaders of the programme's airing was sent, merely saying that the programme was being aired and that Church representatives had engaged with the journalists.

It was not very helpful, and we still do not know what the Church representatives said to the journalists.

Unlike other recent communications from the Bishops' conference, this one did not forbid recipients from publishing its contents. Nor did it slander a journalist.

The Catholic Church needs to be able to speak clearly and professionally for itself in these matters.

In this instance, the lack of Bishops' Conference communication; its silence left those interviewed to explain the situation when they lacked a working knowledge of the Church, theology and practice of the solemn rite of exorcism.

More generally, the situation shows the paucity of theologically educated people employed by the Bishops' Conference and available to Catholics and local media.

It reveals the lack of skilled communicators who are able to intelligently explain the nature of the sacramental of exorcism and the relationship of the fringe Christchurch sect to the Catholic Church.

Overall, the approach of the Bishops' Conference highlights the mentality that has landed the Church in the scandal of the abuse of minors and others.

Through its lack of communication, the Bishops' Conference seems to suggest it is incapable of addressing issues in adult ways to adult believers and questioners alike.

In this, the Bishops' Conference is poorly served.

As Catholics and members of civil society, we must ask:

• Why were there no informed commentators from the Catholic Church?
• Where was an intelligent and informative press statement from the Bishops' Conference before the programme aired?
• Why was an intelligent and informative follow-up not issued?
• Why didn't the Bishops Conference issue a general press release to balance the television reporting and inform people of the complexity of the issue?

One of the Church's roles is to communicate and engage constructively in dialogue with society.

Where religious authorities do not take up their role of engagement with Catholics and society's media, we are all prey to uninformed journalism.

In times when the Church, its practice and indeed Christianity is not as familiar as it once may have been, and when it is in the spotlight for sexual abuse, the onus is on the Church to communicate effectively.

As instanced by this example, the lack of proper communication increases the likelihood of the Church giving scandal to the Catholic faithful, other Christians and those who see Catholicism as a risk to public safety.

• Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is: Liturgical Lockdown. Covid and the Absence of the Laity (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).

The Christian Gospel, which is a word meaning, ‘good news' - is that the Creator of all things, God, so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have life now and eternally.

To put it another way, God who is Just provides salvation.

And what that means in practice, is a worldview that trusts the faithfulness of God.

At the same time, Christians live in a God-created community, the Church - and that is the rub.

The Church, being full of human beings, is full of those who go wrong.

The Church often seeks to speak truth to power, but we must recognise as different bits of the Church, and, speaking as the Church of England, our own power as well as our immense failures and sins.

And therefore, we should welcome the challenge and scrutiny from the media that is part of living in a democratic society. Having spent a good deal of my life travelling in places that don't have those freedoms, I know which I prefer.

When I started this job just over 10 years ago, the media landscape, even that short period ago looked different. It has become faster, more complex, more driven by social media.

In an age of misinformation, distraction, and the competition of noise with truth, it is ever more difficult for journalists to do their job. The best account of that I've heard recently was a series of podcasts by Jeremy Bowen, that some people may have seen - they make long journeys go very quickly!

My approach to the media has developed over 10 years.

I take more risks, deliberately rather than accidentally.

I try to engage, and I recognise the vital importance of seeking to communicate well what the Church is doing and what we actually care about.

I tried to say yes to as many media outlets as possible, especially the local and the regional.

I know how successful they are because they are deeply embedded in the community.

I have a very strong memory of a visit to a particular diocese in the province of Canterbury and being asked - did I enjoy travelling on buses, and what I thought about the bus timetable in that particular town?

They were certainly embedded in the community.

And they do marvellous things, especially at the local level, being immensely stretched and having had an incredibly hard time in the last 10 years.

I actually quite enjoy interviews, believe it or not, although they make me very nervous.

I could sit on the sidelines, and I'm very tempted to do so very often, knowing that when anything is said in public by anyone, it will be analysed and instrumentalised.

One of the relatively few things I'm looking forward to in my eventual and long distant retirement is being able to read the paper without worrying about whether I'll see my own name in any context at all.

There are two aspects to any religious figure's involvement in the media.

First, you're reported on - for example, after making a speech on the Illegal Migration Bill.

Secondly, there is the context of engaging with the media proactively and giving interviews or engaging on social media.

There's a difference.

So if we start off by engaging with the media, why do it?

The greatest single reason is that Christian faith claims truth.

For Christians, truth is not a concept, it is a person - Jesus, not an idea.

When in John, Chapter 14:1-6, one of Jesus's disciples expostulates with him when he says, you know where I'm going, and the disciple says to Jesus, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

And Jesus replies, I am, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

When Pilate, at his trial says what is Truth?

He's asking the wrong question.

He should ask who is Truth - and Truth is standing before him, beaten and bloodied, and looking anything but impressive.

When I was interviewed by Alastair Campbell several years ago, we talked about his famous phrase ‘We don't do God'.

And we talked about the fact that even if New Labour didn't do God, God still does us and, for that matter, New Labour.

God's faithfulness and providence is an embracing worldview that is not a private hobby but a universal principle, recognised or not.

Terry Pratchett, whose books I found enormously amusing, has a book called ‘Small gods' and the size of the god depends on how many worshippers they have.

Well, it's clever and amusing, but it's false.

God does not need worshippers; people and creation need God.

If we take the Illegal Migration Bill, for example, I find myself reminded of the passage in Matthew 25:31-46, which is about the Last Judgement.

It concerns two groups of people who unknowingly live in a way that either honours or fails to honour God's commands for our way of life in the world.

It echoes what's often called the Nazareth manifesto.

In Luke chapter 4:16-21, these two groups of people, the sheep and the goats they're called, they either feed the hungry or fail to do so, they nurse the sick, they visit the prisoner, and as we think about the Illegal Migration Bill, they welcome the stranger - or they fail to do so.

The second group lived as though it didn't matter.

The first group is welcomed by Christ to eternal life.

The second group have to face the terrible consequences of living for their own interests, as though those in need did not matter.

Churches are active in this world and in its concerns because they see God being active in this world. And many of those people who call for our help are Christians.

Churches are over 2 billion strong in every country around the world, even the Anglican Communion spans about 80 or 85 million people across 165 countries. And the typical Anglican is a woman in her 30s in Sub Saharan Africa, likely living in an area of conflict or persecution who lives on less than $4 a day.

Anglicans live in the hills of Papua New Guinea or, they work in the streets of the City of London, or in the banks and the dealing rooms.

So when I talk about migration or about poverty, or conflict or trade or natural disaster, or climate change or social justice, it isn't a hobby or a way of filling the otherwise empty days.

When I talk about these things, I see in my mind's eye the people I know and love around the world.

The people I call brother and sister because we belong to the same family in Christ.

Being part of that changes everything. Religion isn't a bolt on to our lives.

It's not an app you can download into the human software.

It's the entire operating system.

It's the prism through which we see everything else.

And then this country may be becoming more secular or not, as the case may be.

The world as a whole is not, 80% of the world population is religious, and it's going up, not shrinking.

So when we talk about religion or religious people, we're not studying some endangered exotica under the microscope.

Of course, not all of that 80% are Christians, not even the majority.

And our relationship with other faiths is very important, as we saw at the Coronation.

We work closely with other faiths not just out of a deep sense of hospitality, which is arising from our understanding of the nature of God.

But also because other religious groups have a religious perspective that shapes how they see the world.

The Big Help Out, a volunteering initiative on the Monday after the Coronation, was endorsed by religious groups.

And you may have seen the images in the news: Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, and others of no faith and of other faiths got together.

It involved 7.2 million people in this country, well over 10% of the country.

It was a project started by the Together Coalition, which I chair, and on that day, Caroline and I served lunch together at a homeless charity.

Going back finally to what I said at the beginning, about 'good news'.

At the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops from around the world, which happened for the first time in 14 years last summer in Canterbury, I joined journalists who were covering it at a reception.

During that gathering, I said, yes of course we know there are stories about deep disagreements over sexuality that they would want to report on, and rightly so; they're important issues, and they are a good story.

But please remember that, at that gathering, I said there are people from war-torn countries and nations suffering from famine and drought, people who have literally just fled oppression and brutality, and people who have come from refugee camps.

Bishops represent the most vulnerable people in the world.

At the Lambeth Conference we talked extensively; we spent two hours on sexuality in 10 days, on everything else, slavery and justice, suffering.

But we chose to love one another despite our differences.

Please, in your reporting, don't forget the millions of people and the incredible stories that the Christian church and even the Church of England represent. Because I think that is also good news for all its faults, both for journalists and Christians.

So now, as I finish, I'd like to turn the tables and ask a couple of questions of you.

How do you communicate the worldview of religious people, as well as the fact in a way that just doesn't put their religion in a part of their lives?

And, can you help me through your questions and your comments, understand better, how we can communicate with you?

• Archbishop Justin Welby is Archbishop of Canterbury
• Speech delivered at Religion Media Festival

Although a Catholic can only appreciate the pastoral value of this document, its numerous insights, and biblical inputs, it is hard not to see its neo-liberal approach and question its partial way of addressing challenges raised by social media.

The problem is not about what the document says.

It is pastorally relevant, biblically rich, and ethically subtle.

But it only speaks to individuals as if they should bear on their own shoulders the whole responsibility to evangelise the digital space and its social media.

Surely, Catholics need to be mindful of their ways of engaging with online interactions.

The document elaborates on the Parable of the Good Samaritan to creatively question our personal ways of encountering others through social media.

But as Margaret Thatcher famously said, the Good Samaritan did not only have good intentions, he also had money!

And I will add that he also had available institutions to truly fulfil his charitable impulse.

Not just about individual online

The Good Samaritan who made himself a neighbour to a stranger in need, was not operating in the wilderness.

Both men were on a road built by others.

After their encounter, the long-term care of the wounded man was transferred to an inn - a specialiszed institution able to support people in need.

In other words, responding to the challenges of social media is not only a matter of individual responsibility and good behaviour.

Whether we want it or not, it also involves the presence of and the financial commitment to institutions able to support and evangelize our digital encounters.

Since the Catholic Church stands as a resourceful set of institutions certainly able to act upon the digital space, it is quite a paradox that the Dicastery for Communication put all responsibilities on individuals.

And it is regrettable that the text refuses explicitly to develop principles and norms able to structurally respond to the pitfalls of social media.

Although the end of paragraphs 10, 13-15, and 32 touch on institutional challenges, the following sections immediately go back to interpersonal relations and make the whole text fall short.

To move forward and search for guidelines at a more structural level, let me highlight creative ways through which Catholic institutions have corporately engaged with the digitalization of social interactions.

Among the too many examples that come to mind - the French section of Vatican News, the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, numerous podcast and YouTube channels - I offer three cases from Asia, a continent too often marginalized in conversations about global Catholicism.

Looking to the East

In Asia, missionary societies have long mobilised massive human resources to develop professional news agencies gathering and disseminating information on the religious dynamics and social changes of Asian societies.

The American Maryknolls, the Italian PIME, and the French MEP have created three news agencies focusing on Asia: UCANews, Eglise d'Asie, and Asianews.

Each has its own framework, challenges, and agenda.

But all have increasingly developed their visibility on social media to diffuse professional information about Asian Churches.

They manifest how missionary societies have responded to Vatican II, renewed their missionary commitment, and engaged with the challenges of a digitalized world.

My second example is more local.

It comes from Lokon St. Nikolaus High School, a private boarding school in Tomohon, Indonesia, owned by a wealthy Catholic family and where less than half of the students are Catholic.

In the early 2000s, the country went through a moral panic about youth accessing cell phones and pornography.

To address challenges raised by new technologies, anthropologist Erica Larson explains that the school decided to formulate explicit rules about cell phones on campus and to generate discussion sessions about social media.

In 2014, the private institution changed its policy to allow students to bring their devices to class. And it also introduced discussion sessions on the use of social media during Catholic religious education attended by all students.

Over the years, the Catholic school has continued to adapt its policies to positively help students question their engagement with new technologies and social media.

My last example is more academic.

It relates to ISAC, the Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics, a scholarly enterprise established with academic colleagues of mine to strengthen social scientific research on Asian Catholics in contemporary societies.

While discourses about Catholicism in Asian are often shaped by outdated assumptions, we believe that scholars must find new ways to engage with broader audiences and make their research socially and ecclesiologically relevant.

Over the past two years, we have developed online events, social media presence, and podcast series to bring scholarly debates and research findings to more people.

We have also mobilized new technologies to design research projects that can overcome socio-political restrictions and expand scientific research on the lived realities of Asian Catholics.

These three examples represent more than the individuals who constitute them.

They are organizations that all seek to institutionally address the opportunities and challenges brought by social media. Yet, none of these structures is directly supervised by a bishop.

Despite what many believe, Catholic institutional responsibility is not solely episcopal.

We all share structural responsibility.

But it's not all good news

Nevertheless, if we want to discern guiding principles for Catholic institutions, we also need to acknowledge that our communal engagements with social media are not always free from moral ambiguities and collective sin.

The Church as an institution can fail.

We all heard Pope Francis qualifying a large Catholic media outlet as being the work of evil. We need to consider these failures as well.

My first case study will come from Asia.

Colleagues have methodologically documented how a large Facebook group promotes questionable agenda through insidious means.

This independent group is apparently open to all Catholics of its archdiocese, administered by 6 lay Catholics, and a safe space for dialogue and mutual support - under some reasonable rules.

However, what the administrators fail to disclose is that they are less numerous than they pretend, they mostly operate under the guidance of two tormented souls, and they apply all kinds of measures to discreetly delete posts that do fit into their agenda, promote hate speech against alternative views, and harass or exclude dissident voices.

The result is that among some twenty thousand members of this Facebook group, only a few dozen share posts regularly. Their contributions are quite homogenous and often cheesy statements that give the false and highly manufactured impression that this represents Catholicism.

After years of anti-Francis campaigns promoted through this group, critical Catholics have complained to their archbishop. In 2021, a warning was finally sent.

The administrators reaffirmed the fidelity of their Facebook group to the magisterium publicly while highlighting the legitimacy of those expressing concerns about the current pope.

Meanwhile, the rest of their toxic and sectarian agenda - which resonates with the mindset of some local Catholic elites - has not changed. And unfortunately, it is most likely that their archbishop will not do anything about it.

Another example, not Asia but famous, comes from Colorado.

In an article published by the Washington Post on 9 March 2023, the world discovered the fallacious ways through which some wealthy American Catholics have generated a private organisation to launch a systematic witch-hunt against American priests with same-sex attraction and active on Grinder.

Quickly, the structure evolved into something more than a few wealthy individuals who believed they were serving the Church.

It became a stable but secretive entity under no ecclesial regulation.

While some bishops and Catholic media have heard about it, they failed to question its scope, legality, and morality.

As we have often seen during investigations related to clerical sex abuses, it was finally a secular media that took the lead to publicly uncover this Colorado-based witch-hunt.

Indeed, secular institutions such as private media and civil authorities can play a critical role in questioning Catholic leaders who cover evil.

If bishops and Rome do not act, other institutions can save the Church. The creativity of the Holy Spirit is borderless.

Three ways the Vatican can help

With these failures in mind, we now return to the Vatican and its contribution to our digital engagements.

Since we do not send money to Rome to simply get lengthy sermons that a parish priest could produce, what is the additional value of the Roman administration?

How can the Dicastery for Communication support us, individually and institutionally, in our journey through the digital continent?

To address these questions, allow me to bring three suggestions.

First of all, one could hope that the Dicastery for Communication will identify and publicize institutional practices that are deemed positive.

As mentioned, there are many experimentations at local and regional levels which deserve attention.

Out of this data, the Roman administration could publicly formulate principles and norms able to frame the ways Catholic institutions in their diversity engage with the digital continent. The Church has an institutional responsibility to make social media a safer space of encounter.

Second, if we turn to episcopal regulators, Rome could openly ask bishop conferences to take on institutional and financial responsibilities. And this kind of call cannot only occur behind closed doors.

Listening to one another through digital space requires support and accountability.

It is, for instance, essential to maintain a diversity of news outlets to secure our ecclesial capacity to spread critical information.

Bishops cannot reduce social media to top-down communication and monochromatic evangelization.

If we do not want to wait for secular media to come to our rescue, Catholic bishops need to truly support our access to ecclesial information and trustworthy social media.

Third, canon law should not be politely ignored.

This legal tool should be mobilized in developing robust and institutional responses to the challenges of a digital world. And adding new canons from the top will not be enough.

Local and national Churches need to truly invest in the training of canon lawyers who are not necessarily clergy members and serving the interest of their cast. Canon law is here to protect all of us in all aspects of our Christian life.

In a synodal Church, Catholics should have ecclesial ways to make vicious structures accountable without depending entirely on the goodwill of their bishop.

In conclusion, as the "Inside The Vatican" podcast has already noticed, Towards Full Presence is a precious but partial text. We now need to hear from the Dicastery for Communication on institutional ways to engage with social media.

• Michel Chambon is a French theologian and cultural anthropologist who is Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

As measured in surveys, Americans' negative attitudes toward political parties other than their own have increased dramatically in recent decades and at a much faster pace than in other countries.

These entrenched divisions simultaneously increase the vehemence of our arguments and decrease our willingness to listen to one another.

We exhaust ourselves by declaring our opinions but are not in conversation.

We produce monologues that are intended more to reassure us than to convince those with different views—or worse, that are received by them as taunts and provocations which must be answered in turn.

Constant exposure to arguments that we are not willing or able to engage with in dialogue is draining as well.

It is like listening to a radio tuned to a station that is half static, half shouting—but that we dare not turn off lest we miss the point our own monologue will aim to refute later.

When we think about polarisation in terms of its derangement of public discourse, we often think first of political partisanship.

But it is clear that this dynamic also plays out in many realms of common life, including religion. In the Catholic Church, it is easy to recognize polarisation operating both within the life of the church itself and in the church's relation to the secular world.

For example, conflicts over the Traditional Latin Mass and over how the church should engage with a wider culture whose sexual norms have changed radically both reflect different factions arguing fervently but often talking past each other.

Indeed, what most characterizes polarisation is the constant sense of threat: Everything is always at stake, always in need of defence.

In fact, a closer look at the relationship between religion and secularity provides powerful insights about how polarisation arises and how it becomes so intractable—and it also helps us imagine how to find a way toward greater unity.

The reality of the church as a communion, not just an association of individuals, offers a powerful antidote to polarisation.

Finding resources within the church's tradition for a healthier engagement across internal divisions can also provide a model for responding to secular forms of polarisation.

Where polarisation and secularity intersect

Polarisation is not simply an intense form of extremism but not just the worst case of division or disagreement.

The kind of polarisation that is exhausting us is, instead, a pathology endemic to pluralism.

It is a name for how attempts to live together with others who hold different accounts of meaning, goodness and human nature—accounts that overlap and intersect but do not fully agree—break down and turn into fear and scapegoating instead.

Our arguments about how to live together run in circles.

As we despair of ever convincing each other, the "other side" in a polarized discourse becomes less a partner in conversation and more a threat to be neutralized.

Indeed, what most characterizes polarisation is the constant sense of threat: Everything is always at stake, always in need of defense.

Because we lack shared ground on which to agree or disagree, we also feel the lack of safe ground for our own beliefs.

This is the ugly and dangerous truth of why the outrage machines of social media and the 24-hour news cycle work so well on us.

We are already afraid—and they are ready at hand to tell us why.

Believers or not, we all live in a secular age in which we become responsible for opting to believe.

In thinking through how polarisation operates, I have found that the philosopher Charles Taylor's analysis in A Secular Age offers crucial insights into how the stakes of disagreement have risen so high in our contemporary situation.

(While I would encourage everyone interested in these issues to read A Secular Age themselves, a 900-page tome is a very good reason to make a recommendation of a shorter précis as well. James K. A. Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is an excellent exploration of the key points of Taylor's work.)

Two main points from Taylor have bearing on the question of polarisation: his distinction between three different meanings of secular and his concept of being "cross-pressured" by having to constantly choose among many sources of ultimate meaning. Continue reading

• Sam Sawyer is Editor in Chief of America Media

In Matthew's Gospel Jesus concludes the parable of the Sower with the words, "Listen, anyone who has ears to hear".

Talking is not enough. If real communication is to occur, each has to listen to the other.

There is a pertinent exchange recorded on the performance of Johnny Cash when he gave a concert in San Quentin Prison, the oldest prison in California.

When talking between songs, Cash is interrupted by a prisoner shouting a remark. The rejoinder was swift — "Excuse me, I couldn't hear you. I was talking."

How often do we talk over each other when if we actually listened there would be a more fruitful exchange? Impatience to respond with our own eloquence gets in the way and the result is confusion.

I would suggest that one of the significant responsibilities of the poet is to listen in many and varied ways — listening to the voices of others, listening to the mood of the times and then, after due reflection, responding to circumstance.

When it comes to making response, the carefully crafted choice of words is the valued skill of the poet.

It is a skill demonstrated in much of Seamus Heaney's work, the listening poet making available to others the consequence of his attention, as in these lines from his poem, "Nesting-Ground":

He heard cheeping far in but because the men had once shown him a rat's nest in the butt of a stack where chaff and powdered cornstalks adhered to the moist pink necks and backs he only listened.

As he stood sentry, gazing, waiting, he thought of putting his ear to one of the abandoned holes and listening for the silence under the ground.

The poem is found in North, a collection of works Heaney published in 1975. It was his response to listening to the voices of people during the troubled decades of the late 20th century.

This work looks frequently to the past for images and symbols relevant to the violence and political unrest of the time.

The willingness to listen to those for whom he has responsibility has been the unbroken thread of the pontificate of Pope Francis. Time and again in Scripture we hear the lament, "My people would not listen to me."

Listening demands a good filter to remove extraneous noise. It demands a focus on issues that allows for due consideration and informed response.

We first experience this need to listen within the context of our families. Young children listen to the advice, admonition and loving care of their parents, anxious to help them navigate a difficult path through an uncertain world.

Later, when they reach older years and have left home, we are still called on to listen, only now the relationship has changed.

As we listen to their stories, sharing joy and sorrow, our ability to solve problems is diminished, the times of applying a band-aid to a cut knee and giving a hug to make it better have long past. Yet, still, the hug is important, the knowledge of our "being there" supportive.

"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing" is the title of one of Heaney's poems also found in North. Those words might serve as safe advice in times of political strife.

Within the context of family, they must be accompanied by attentive listening and the gentle touch of a cared-for hug.

• Chris McDonnell is from England and a regular contributor to La Croix International.
• Republished with permission from La Croix International.

But more recently, it's the Pasifika community who are feeling battered and bruised over a series of Covid-19-related communications blunders.

Our Minister for Pacific Peoples was recently challenged on TV's Breakfast to acknowledge the Covid-19 vaccination messaging failures. He responded that no system is 100 per cent, then skilfully dodged the question by bridging to the wider public health reforms.

He was being grilled about the vociferously vocal criticism by Pasifika leaders and health professionals, including staunch Labour Party supporters, over the Covid-19 vaccination rollout and the low Pasifika uptake - the lowest of any ethnicity we've been told repeatedly.

The critics contend the advice of Pacific providers and leaders has been ignored and they haven't been part of the solution-making. The Government and Ministry of Health diplomatically disagree.

We'll never know the internal politicking and machinations, but media-wary community leaders and health professionals don't normally air their divisions publicly unless they're feeling exasperated.

It usually means all in-house manoeuvrings and channels have been exhausted. And when our largest health provider The Fono is also being publicly critical, there's definitely something amiss. That various institutions of government allowed it to reach this point is communication blunder No 1.

The next communications failing is just as complex - the vaccination data.

The media has been empathetic in its coverage of the low Pasifika vaccination rates - One News described the rollout as "stunningly unsuccessful".

The Covid Minister and the Director-General of Health have always pushed back, arguing they're on track with their equitable outcomes approach, but no-one has really understood what that meant. Even when the health ministry released data to prove it on August 6, it was largely ignored by the media and the low vaccination rates narrative persisted.

Admittedly, it would have been easier to crack the Enigma code than decipher the ‘equity' chart that accompanied the ministry's release, but it did illustrate that Pasifika vaccinations were exceeding their equity targets for almost all age groups.

Communication blunder No 2 is the hash job the ministry made of releasing and explaining the vaccination ethnicity data. Much of the consternation over low vaccination rates could have been addressed with easily digestible information and regular, clear media and community updates.

Earlier in July, a frustrated NZ Herald cobbled together their own figures, showing 7.3 per cent of Pasifika had been vaccinated and 9 per cent for Europeans. Pasifika make up 8 per cent of the population, so given older age groups were vaccinated first and Pasifika has a younger population profile, these figures were surprisingly good.

Communications failure No 3 is that most of the media didn't pick up on this. There was little fact-checking or critical analysis of the vaccination rates early on - to be fair though, the health ministry didn't help.

Media largely reported actual vaccination numbers as a way of showing a significant gap between European and Pasifika rates.

But understanding that the median age (age that divides the population in two parts of equal size) is almost a generation apart for European and Pasifika, would have helped explain the gap, and contextualise the ministry's equity approach - the European median age is 41 and Pasifika is 23.

• Continue reading Communication blunder 3, and numbers 4 and 5
• Samson Samasoni is a journalist/producer and senior communications specialist who has worked in New Zealand, the Pacific, Middle East and the UK. ​

They're seeing fewer friends too.

But they might be seeing a lot more of their family, or their roommates. And that isn't easy.

For some, especially those who live alone, social distancing can bring with it a sense of isolation and loneliness.

But for those who live with family or roommates, staying home means spending a lot of time together.

After a few days of fun, being "alone together" all the time, can become difficult.

Neither living alone nor with other people is easy in a time of great stress, Dr. Christina Lynch told CNA. But there are ways to build and maintain healthy relationships during the coronavirus pandemic.

A supervising psychologist at Denver's St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Lynch offered CNA a few suggestions for maintaining friendships, and family relationships, under quarantine, "shelter in place" orders, or social distancing policies.

Lynch suggests accepting that losing control is a difficult feeling.

"When we can't be in control, we become agitated."

"This is part of our survival mechanism that God gave us so that we do whatever it takes to survive."

Unfortunately, [through] the negativity of social media and the internet, it's made us so attached to the world and to what others think and to comparing ourselves that we think we must always be busy," she said.

It is difficult to be restricted to a house, Lynch said. It is difficult not to be busy.

To address that, she emphasized the importance of building a routine, especially one that includes prayer and recreation.

Families and roommates should also be proactive about building an atmosphere of healthy communication, where thoughts and feelings have a safe place to be shared, she said.

Communicate with each other.

This is really important when you live together in close quarters, especially when you can't escape from each other.

If there's a dispute, start with something positive about that person or about what they do.

Don't accuse, don't blame about anything."

People need to be sensitive to one another, especially during this anxious time, and foster a positive environment, Lynch added.

"Reframe thoughts and feelings of anxiety to how you can do good for others," she said.

"Communicate with each other. This is really important when you live together in close quarters, especially when you can't escape from each other. So, you need to set up a place and a time to actually share your feelings and thoughts, and process them out loud," she said.

"If there's a dispute, start with something positive about that person or about what they do. Then mention [about] the behaviour, how that behaviour has affected you or the household or the family. But, don't accuse, don't be accusatory or blaming about anything. It's good to be constructive in that communication."

Lynch added that shared recreational activities can have a positive effect on the mood of everyone during a period that feels like confinement. She suggested board games, making collages, or watching movies together.

"Use board games, cards, or even invent a board game," she further added. "This is a great thing to use our creativity that God intended and to start doing things for good."

Lynch offered a few suggestions for people living alone during the quarantine. She emphasized the importance of maintaining a schedule that involves exercise, community, and prayer.

She also suggested keeping a journal, and keeping in daily contact with friends or relatives.

"If you live alone, it's very important to make sure you have connections with others if you can't every day. So whether you set up a schedule with a friend or a family member to FaceTime or just talk to them on the phone. Maybe each day pick two people that you'd like to talk to and make a phone call to them, [or] ask your family to check in with you," she said. Continue reading

Those with the gift of listening are the biggest gift of all, he said.

Tagle, the newly appointed congregation head for the Evangelisation of Peoples was speaking with clergy and laity at the foundation blessing of the FABC Veritas Asia Institute of Social Communications in Radio Veritas Asia's Quezon City compound.

"Having a beautiful building in itself does not guarantee evangelisation. It (evangelisation) is the training and formation of people," said Tagle.

"Evangelization is communication. God is a God who communicates, who dialogues. But He is also a God who listens," Tagle said.

Nurture "the spirituality of listening, to God, to neighbours and to the signs of the times," he urged.

"We are all in a hurry, rushing to say something, to issue a statement even when we have not heard yet".

"We have already something prepared without knowing what the question or statement is," he said to laughter among senior clergy.

"Listening comes first," Tagle stressed.

"Many people are longing for someone and a community to listen. Even if you have no words, you communicate your presence, your compassion, your unity."

While new savvy is needed to navigate the minefields of the digital revolution and artificial intelligence, Tagle said the Catholic Church must hone other kinds of intelligence, like that needed to understand context, reports ABS-CBN News.

Without context, communicators cannot collapse complex ideas to meet the demands of the digital age, he said.

Developing his comments, Tagle emphasised the importance of relational intelligence in evangelisation and communications.

Relational intelligence allows communities to avert conflicts before they erupt or quickly resolving conflicts that break out, he said.

"In our world today, so much fear, suspicion and prejudice. We don't know whom to trust,"

"We need people who can generate that atmosphere of trust," he said.

Sources

• ABS-CBN
• CathNews

Fr Thomas Rosica told a World Communications Day event in New York that sometimes Catholic conversation online is more "culture of death" than "culture of life".

"Many of my non-Christian and non-believing friends have remarked to me that we ‘Catholics' have turned the Internet into a cesspool of hatred, venom and vitriol, all in the name of defending the faith!" he said.

"The character assassination on the Internet by those claiming to be Catholic and Christian has turned it into a graveyard of corpses strewn all around," said the priest.

Fr Rosica assists the Vatican Press Office with English-speaking media and runs the "Salt and Light TV" Catholic network in Canada.

"Often times the obsessed, scrupulous, self-appointed, nostalgia-hankering virtual guardians of faith or of liturgical practices are very disturbed, broken and angry individuals, who never found a platform or pulpit in real life and so resort to the Internet and become trolling pontiffs and holy executioners!" Fr Rosica said in New York.

"In reality they are deeply troubled, sad and angry people," he said.

"We must pray for them, for their healing and conversion!"

Rather than being against everything, Fr Rosica said, we should be "known as the people who are for something, something positive that can transform lives and engage and impact the culture".

The good news, he said, is that in the broader media universe, Pope Francis has had exactly that effect.

Graduate schools of business and management are now using Pope Francis as a case study in rebranding, Fr Rosica added.

Both Fr Rosica and his "Salt and Light TV" network have occasionally been targeted for on-line criticism, especially from conservative and pro-life Catholic organisations.

Sources

• Crux
• Image: Church Militant

Lord Patten, head of a Vatican Media Committee formed to recommend reforms, said the Holy See needs better capability to respond to a constant news cycle and in different languages.

"What is needed now is more visual, multi-media content, especially if one wishes to reach younger people," he said.

About 85 per cent of the net cost of the Vatican's media outlay goes on newspapers and radio, Lord Patten noted.

Television and social media resources are professionally run, but under-resourced.

But Lord Patten warned that reforming Vatican media could see individuals who had long enjoyed effective autonomy very likely finding it hard to adapt to being accountable to others.

Continue reading

They aren't scary because of anything Pope Francis actually says; the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio spent decades choosing his words carefully as an Argentine priest and then prelate of Buenos Aires, emphasizing the pastoral care of the Catholic Church while the extremes of politics from both left and right engulfed Argentina for decades.

The first Jesuit pontiff knows how to speak about faith and clearly enjoys doing so — and Catholics aren't alone in their enthusiasm for listening.

So where does my anxiety come from? Well, from having to read what the media think Francis said.

Often, I find out from U.S. newspaper headlines that the pope has declared faith irrelevant to salvation or that same-sex marriage is acceptable. I stumble on these breaking-news bulletins before most Catholics are even aware of the interview itself.

But here's the truth: The media seem incapable of understanding the pope, and Catholicism itself.

It's not as if they haven't had the practice.

The problem first became apparent in the spring, shortly after Pope Francis's installation, when USA Today reported about the pontiff's supposed "obsession with Satan," which must have come as a shock to Catholics, Christians, and others who have, er … actually read the Bible.

Having "mentioned the devil on a handful of occasions," the newspaper took an innocuous incident in which Pope Francis gave a blessing to a disabled young man and speculated that the Jesuit pontiff was an exorcist. Or perhaps from The Exorcist.

The Vatican had to inform the world press that no priest performs ad hoc exorcisms, and that popes usually pray with and bless visitors to St. Peter's Square.

There is nothing secret about exorcisms in the Catholic Church, nor about papal blessings or the belief that Satan is a real and malevolent force in the universe.

Any media organization could have flipped through the Catholic catechism, canon law, or even the Bible — all of which are online.

Instead, USA Today and other media outlets around the world seemed stunned that a pope would talk about Satan, which led Fox News's Kirsten Powers to quip on Twitter, "The @AP should just change the title to this story to BREAKING: Pope Francis believes the Bible." Continue reading

Sources

• Edward Morrissey in The Week
• Image: First Things

Edward Morrissey writes for Hot Air and hosts several internet and radio talk shows.

Christ "used tweets before everyone else, with elementary phrases made up of fewer than 45 characters like 'Love one another'", said Ravasi, the Vatican's equivalent of a culture minister.

"A bit like in television today, he delivered a message through a story or a symbol," Ravasi said at a conference with Italy's leading newspaper editors.

The cardinal emphasized the importance of clergy making full use of modern-day computer technology.

"If a cleric, a pastor is not interested in communication, they are defying their duty," he said. Continue reading

He says "They are out of control of their message ... that is. And they are so out of control of their message precisely because they think they can control it.

It is hoped that a meeting of the first women-led Community Radio Consultation which began in Tonga on 6 April will pave the way for the establishment of the first suitcase radio in Tonga.

Suitcase radios have been operating in Fiji since 2004.

In an interview on Radio Australia's Pacific Beat Sharon Bhagwan Rolls said the the suitcase radio is "literally a radio station that fits into a little suitcase. It's about 20 kilograms in weight, it has a low-powered transmitter. We work with a 100 watt transmitter, very different from the large commercial or public broadcasters. But what it gives is a small station that is easy to manage, particularly for communities that come from no broadcasting experience, and the opportunity to also travel around with your radio in a suitcase and a mast to go out and broadcast with communities."

The meeting in Nuku'alofa is the initaive of Tonga based 1325 Media and Policy Network in conjunction with Fiji-based partners Femlinkpacific.

Church leaders in Africa and Aia have, for some time, used suitcase radios to communicate with scattered small and isolated faith communities.

Source
Pacific Beat

Photo Credit
Wantok Radio