Every kind of celebration is transmitted through them: "home-made" liturgies are held, retreat houses offer online activities, spiritual assistance is offered through a computer screen and so on.

The coronavirus crisis is reinforcing a trend that has been going on for years. In the lives of many Christians, the digital environment has become a stable presence.

More and more people are praying while listening to podcasts such as Pray as you go on their smartphones or preparing for Christmas and Easter using digital retreats.

This development is welcomed with enthusiasm, but at the same time it arouses objections and resistance.

Every day, together with a large group of professionals and volunteers, I produce digital religious material. During the coronavirus crisis we have been offering themed audio retreats on life in isolation, community prayers for Holy Week and Easter, and a series of videos on how to live your spirituality in times like these.

We reach people of all generations and from different Christian Churches and communities.

Among our most faithful visitors we count many lonely, sick and elderly Christians.

Often they are people who, through no fault of their own, no longer have physical access to a community of faith.

There are also young people in north-western Europe who can no longer find a community of reference.

Then there is the special phenomenon of monastic communities that are reduced in number and are often elderly. They struggle to find a pastor and for this reason use digital audio and video material for their retreats.

In short, today many people have no other choice.

Sometimes people label everything "digital" as "virtual," or they contrast the real world with the digital environment.

But in people's lives what is digital is real, even in terms of religious experience.

"The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual world, but part of the daily reality of many people"

Benedict XVI made this clear: "The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual world, but part of the daily reality of many people" (Message for the 47th World Communications Day, May 12, 2013).

Those who surf the web can take advantage of the offer of "digital" faith, so to speak, wherever and whenever they wish.

In addition, this offer is usually free of charge.

This combination contributes to the fact that many people are deeply touched by it: this includes practicing Christians, but also people who do not have a defined religious affiliation.

Does this mean that physical churches as places of worship are destined to disappear?

No.

For Christians, the digital environment will not take the place of the physical environment.

It is not desirable and it is not possible.

In the digital offering it is necessary to build bridges with the physical environment and to seek to build local communities.

But, at the same time, the ecclesial community is called on to fully come to terms with the place that the digital environment occupies today in our societies and cultures.

More specifically, we should consider the digital environment above all as an opportunity that encourages us to think of and experience traditional practices in a different way. [1]

In this regard, the exponential increase in streaming Eucharistic celebrations during the coronavirus crisis is an interesting case. It attracts both enthusiasm and criticism.

In their home churches, the faithful are happy to see their priests celebrating the Eucharist.

At the same time, the sight of a church reduced to a largely deserted building can increase the feeling of loneliness and isolation.

The prescriptions of social distancing mean that in many celebrations streamed on Facebook or YouTube only the priest is seen.

This brings a clerical dominance to a liturgy whose community character is essential.

You can choose different ways: I have presided over celebrations through Zoom.

It is a software that allows the community to be audible and visible and makes it possible to carry out readings, songs and prayers in a practical and interactive way, which is impossible with the usual radio and television celebrations.

Participating and celebrating together on a digital platform, rather than watching as strangers while the priest "says" the Mass broadcast alone, is certainly a better solution.

Participating and celebrating together on a digital platform, rather than watching as strangers while the priest "says" the Mass broadcast alone, is certainly a better solution.

But even in the best of circumstances, streaming celebrations make many people uncomfortable.

As a priest, I find the moment of communion in such celebrations unreal.

We sing together, listen to the Word, engage from our different houses; we see and hear each other while we pray, bow and kneel before the consecration, and wish each other peace.

At the moment of communion we say a prayer of spiritual communion.

With it the faithful express their desire to receive the Lord, but at the same time they are invited to realize that they cannot receive Him sacramentally.

It is clear that there is a limitation here.

Pope Francis, on April 17 last, in his homily at Mass in Santa Marta, recalled this deficiency and the fact that only spiritual communion can be achieved.

He continued: "And this is not the Church: this is the Church in a difficult situation, which the Lord permits, but the ideal of the Church is always with the people and with the Sacraments. Always. The Church, the Sacraments, the People of God are concrete. It is true that in this moment we must provide this familiarity with God in this way, but so as to come out of the tunnel, not to stay inside it. And this is the familiarity of the apostles: not gnostic, not virtual, not selfish, for each one of us, but a concrete familiarity, amongst the people."

The document The Church and the Internet (2002) issued by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications was very clear: "Virtual reality is no substitute for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacramental reality of the other sacraments, and shared worship in a flesh-and-blood human community. There are no sacraments on the Internet."

But it also affirmed that "religious experiences" on the web "are possible by the grace of God" (No. 9).

The question that this coronavirus crisis is posing remains open: what does inculturation of the liturgy and the sacraments in the digital experience mean at a time when internet mediation is becoming increasingly important?

1. See A. Spadaro, Cyberteologia: Pensare il cristianesimo al tempo della rete, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2012.

• Nikolaas Sintobin SJ joined the Society of Jesus following a short career as a lawyer. He is a spiritual director who is keenly interested in online ministry and discovering new ways to help people find God.
• First published in La Civita Cattolica. Republished with permission.

"Digital pastoral care" as a way to meet young people where they are remains a main topic of conversation for bishops and auditors at the Synod on the Youth.

Bishops are aware that young people, many of whom are opting out of religion, speak a digital language.

It may be less clear however, that many non-religious young people who are spiritual seekers, are doing so outside of the digital sphere.

This is because young people are seeking authenticity.

Digital technology, however helpful, cannot substitute for authentic human and divine relationships.

There is no question that the Church needs to do more with digital and social media in order to reach young people.

It also true that God can be found everywhere and does use all means, including digital media, to pull people to Himself.

Nonetheless, a personal and intimate relationship with God will necessarily need to move beyond the digital.

Finding intimacy with God requires silence, solitude, stillness, and patience.

As some Synod members point out, digital and social media are neither good or bad, but neutral media.

However, the digital language young people speak is less important than what many of us are missing and what we ultimately desire: authentic friendship and a connection to God whose language is silence and tenderness.

Taizé

Young people are being drawn to the spiritual regardless of digital media.

At a recent Synod press briefing, Brother Alois of the Taizé community spoke about thousands of young people, religious and not, who come each year to their community.

What is it that draws so many to Taizé for a week of contemplation, community, and sung praise? It isn't Taizé's digital or social media platform.

The simple, repetitive chant prayer of Taizé "is an awakening of personal prayer in the heart, and at the same time it's a common language that unites us," Br. Alois told TJP.

This connection, not only of unity with our neighbor, but with Transcendence, is what many young people seek.

While many are leaving the Church, they still continue to seek a spiritual life. The desire for more, for God, is not lost in young people.

Communities like Taizé offer young people both a welcoming community and a way to experience a profound spiritual connection to God.

This same is seen in groups like the Nuns & Nones, where religiously disaffiliated millenials are finding inspiration in community, activism, and contemplation of Catholic sisters, another group without a thriving digital or social media platform.

Through encounters like these, young people "wonder how it is possible that we are united like this, and then they can discover that Christ is really present.

Christ is not an idea.

The Gospel is not a theory but a presence," Br. Alois explained.

Silence and Sacrament

Synod members are conscious of the new media's limitations, but could we be missing the forest for the trees?

Focusing too much on the digital language young people speak could distract us from capitalizing on authentic spiritual, albeit not religious, seeking that many still have.

The Synod's working document notes that, "the irruption of digital technology is starting to have a very profound impact on the notion of time and space, on our self-perception and on how we see others and the world….[it] is changing our way of learning and the development of critical faculties."

It not only changes critical faculties, but limits our spiritual faculties when pushed too far. We do need the Church to reach us where we are, but we also need the Church to reveal show us the limits of digital language in our pursuit for authenticity. Continue reading

• Billy Critchley-Menor SJ studied at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN for a year before joining the Jesuits. He is currently studying philosophy and sociology at St. Louis University.
• Image: Diocese of Duluth

Orchestrated under the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) with support from Google, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is a free, online archive comprised of thousands of high resolution fragments.

History, now, is literally brought to the homes of people everywhere, accessible by computer and smart phone.

As IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman says on the library's website:

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a touch of the screen will be able to freely access history in its fullest glamour."

The first of the scrolls was discovered in 1947 in the West Bank, in what is often called one of the most important archaeological finds in history, and certainly in the 20th century. Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: Fragment from the Tobit scroll, an apocryphal text from Second Temple times. Shai Halevi, IAA

The process, which will take nine years, has been made possible by the EMC Corporation, an international information technology company, making available 2.8 petabytes of storage. One petabyte is equivalent to a million gigabytes.

Vatican librarians are anxious to preserve some of their priceless older works in digital form because the originals are subject to deterioration from age and repeated handling.

The digitised Vatican collection will include old Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and early illustrated copies of the New Testament, among other items.

"The Apostolic Library contains some of the oldest texts in the world that represent a priceless legacy of history and culture," said the prefect of the library, Monsignor Cesare Pasini.

"It's very important that these documents are protected, and at the same time made available to scholars around the world. Thanks to the generosity and expertise of supporters such as EMC we are able to meet these goals, preserving a treasure-trove of rare and unique texts in a format that will not suffer from the passage of time."

The Vatican library, established in 1448, is one of the oldest in the world.

Some of the most notable documents to be digitised include the Sifra, one of the oldest extant Hebrew codes which was written somewhere between the end of the 9th and the middle of the 10th century, as well as Greek testimonies for the works of Homer, Sophocles, Plato and Hippocrates.

"Where once knowledge and information would have been stored on the page, facilitated by the scriptoria or later the printing press, today EMC serves the same purpose through our storage technologies," said Marco Fanizzi , country manager for EMC Italy.

"The collaboration with the Apostolic Library is an incredibly important project and will provide future generations with access to knowledge and insight that may otherwise have been lost."

Sources:

The Next Web

L'Osservatore Romano

Image: The Next Web

And among America's great institutions, the Catholic Church looms large as another arena for the reconciling of our physical and digital experiences. The American Catholic Church represents nearly a quarter of the population; some 68 million people across 18,000 parish churches within 195 dioceses in 50 states.

Catholics under 30, who embody the future of the Church, are true digital natives. They experience life in both the physical and digital space, with real world experiences like the Mass amplified across online profiles and communities, sparking curiosity and conversation among people who expect to be able to find answers (at least, orthodox clarity of information) as simply as they search for an address or pay a bill.

The digital life, in other words, impacts lines of thinking and personal formation. This leads to an inescapable conclusion: the Catholic Church is missing a tremendous opportunity.

The dioceses, and especially the major Archdioceses in cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles — the organs of the Church's unique central management — have a chance to take a cue from New York City's hiring of Ms. Sterne to recruit "Directors of Digital Strategy" of their own.

Pope Benedict XVI has made the new evangelization a cornerstone of his papacy. This is the challenge of carrying the Gospel message with a new zeal and urgency to all people, everywhere. What simpler way to begin answering this call than to make the local Church relevant in the digital space — the lives — of her people?

So what of this New Evangelisation and a Digital Strategy for American Catholic Dioceses

Source:

• Image: Live, Laugh and Learn