Tonight on
Channel Ten’s The Project, secondary
school students interviewed regarding the selection of a new pope in the
Catholic Church, suggest that a pope with a “fresher, modern” and a more
innovative and “forward thinking vision…would get more people involved in the
church”. One student even suggesting tweeted jokes might be “good to hear” from
the new pope.
Pope Benedict
XVI had over 1.6 million twitter followers, to whom he regularly tweeted and
answered questions. His first tweet on 12 December 2012 read: “Dear
friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for
your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
Although
met with “mockery” as well as enthusiasm (The Australian 13 December 2012), the
pope continued tweeting, and considering one the earliest advances in
communication, that is, from oral to written form, were met with criticism, so
he should. In Writing
Restructures Consciousness, Ong (79) states that Plato objected to
expressing ideas in written form as the memory is destroyed due to lack of use
and that attempting to “establish outside the mind what can only be in the mind”
is “inhuman”. Early literate cultures
continued to rely heavily on oral history and knowledge long after the practiced
of writing was established.The introduction of print was also met with
opposition due to an assumed threat that mass produced works would have on
memory. (Ong, 96)
The reality,
however, is really quite different--the more written and printed work, the more
knowledge that can be obtained. And, if this knowledge is not remembered by the
reader, then it can simply be located again.
The inclusiveness
resulting from the pope’s use of twitter and twitter’s association with popular
culture may be effective in drawing people to the Church. As Ellen Graham states
in What We Make of the World, “people
turn to the sources and resources of popular culture as a means of rehearsing
and examining questions of belief, meaning and spirituality” (68). The Catholic
Church’s use of so an obvious tool of popular culture may well attract these
people back.
Graham,
quoting Tom Beaudoin in Nickel, 2006, (p 18-19), also states that if the church
is to communicate with the people in a way that they understand, then it is
necessary to use the language they are using.
Considering
this, should the next pope’s first tweet be in the language of the youthful
masses?
“dEr friends,
I M plsed 2 git n tuch w U Thru Twitter. thk U 4 yor generous response. I bless
aL of U frm my hart.”
References:
Graham, E., (2007). What We Make of the World. In Lynch, G. (Ed.) (2007) Between Sacred and Profane London: New York: I B Tauris.
Ong, W. J., (1982). Writing Restructures Consciousness. In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London; New York: Routledge.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/mockery-outweighs-piety-after-popes-twitter-debut/story-e6frg6so-1226535898504
The Project, Channel 10, 12 March, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment