Bridges Link Communication & Theology
By Frances Forde Plude
[This presentation was the annual Siena Lecture at Notre Dame College, Cleveland.]
Prologue
My personal introduction to the brave new world of Communication Theology occurred in a lovely setting: an Italian villa in suburban Rome. I was invited there to join a small group of theologians and communication scholars and practitioners -- to spend a week together with about a dozen of these individuals from all over the globe.
Our task was to respond to several commissioned papers and to think together, have our meals together, and generally conceptualize together, around the specific topic of Communication and Ecclesiology. This is the special branch of theology dealing with what the term church means today and how our understanding of church has developed from scripture and tradition. Well, this was exciting! I was told our villa looked out toward the spot where Cicero's villa used to be. I could not help thinking how much he would approve of communicators being in the neighborhood since this was his specialty too.
This seminar reached some interesting conclusions about how the theological enterprise and the field of communication studies should interact. As our week concluded, we committed to homework assignments: various individuals agreed to develop one aspect of our material as a chapter in a book. This book, The Church and Communication, has been published by Sheed and Ward as part of their series on Communication, Culture & Theology I began to develop, in that Italian villa, a thesis that the blossoming interactive communication technologies (which I had studied at Harvard and MIT) were a metaphor for a more interactive, dialogic concept of church. That thesis is developed systematically in my chapter in this book entitled "Interactive Communications in the Church."
So, one source of our Communication Theology intellectual enterprise has been multiple seminars held every other year for more than a decade in Rome. These seminars have addressed varied theological topics (moral theology, ecclesiology, etc.) -- all linked to communication, all providing forums of thought where theologians and communication scholars covered both areas of inquiry, building bridges for a new field -- Communication Theology. We were not self-consciously aware of creating a new field, but it began to happen.
Another obvious source is the publication of books -- creating a "literature" for this burgeoning field. The Rome seminars and the publications still tended to speak of communication and theology. However a new development here in the U.S. began to change that.
A colleague of mine, Father Bob Bonnot, began to strategize with me to develop a communication and theology seminar at the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, known as CTSA. When we prepared a proposal for CTSA officials they recognized the importance of this and supported the plan. Bob and I have organized this seminar with each year featuring different speakers and papers. Father Paul Soukup, S.J. and I delivered the papers at the Baltimore convention a year ago. These are featured as the opening article in the November 1995 New Theology Digest.
One year the CTSA paper was presented by Father Randy Sachs, S.J. of the Weston School of Theology. In San Diego, the presenters were Terrance Tilley and Sister Angela Ann Zukowski, both then located at the University of Dayton. Tilley is the author of a book entitled Story Theology. Another year the topic was trinitarian theology and communication. Still another topic was biblical storytelling in a digital age.
One year our seminar audience included a former president of CTSA, and Edmund Arens, a CTSA member from Germany. Arens and I had a follow-up meeting and met again when I was in Germany that summer -- to confer on communication theology principles.
So, we became a fixture at the Catholic Theological Society; I was invited to join America's leading theologians as a member of CTSA; we now have an international awareness at our seminars; and we will soon become more ecumenical than we are, inviting colleagues from other religious groups to contribute to this growing Communication Theology field; and we are developing a literature for this field.
Bob Bonnot and I have also adopted the practice of convening a small group of theologians and communication scholars to think jointly about the upcoming topic for the CTSA convention. The speakers thus have the benefit of this brainstorming session as they develop their papers. We did this last year at St. Louis University for Randy Sachs and the eminent scholar Walter Ong joined us for the weekend discussions. Later, a group gathered at the University of Dayton to confer with Terrance Tilley and Sister Angela Ann Zukowski on their presentation. These interactive sessions provide another forum for interchange between theologians and communication theorists and practitioners.
Incidentally, we are now committed to the title Communication Theology. We no longer speak of "communication and theology" or "a theology of communications". Like Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology, we are developing a theology that totally integrates communication theory into it -- Communication Theology. With this Siena Lecture, and the development of a Communication Theology course here at Notre Dame College, the college makes a unique contribution to this intellectual enterprise.
Theories of Human Communication
When we speak about integrating communication and theology, we are not talking just about TV programs or even about the impact of new telecommunication technologies, although this latter is a topic very important to my own research and study. As Stephen Littlejohn points out in his text Theories of Human Communication, communication theory began after World War I, with research into propaganda and public opinion studies. It was soon enriched by the emerging fields of sociology and social psychology and by new technologies developed in education. After World War II, social science became recognized as a discipline and communication studies resides under this social science umbrella.
Our communication theory is primarily Western, a limitation I will address below when I speak of communication bridges to be built in the area of spirituality; this is clearly a place where Eastern thought has already had an enormous impact, especially in the writings of Thomas Merton and Bede Griffiths.
There are roughly five genres of communication theory. Structural and functional theories are rooted in linguistics, the organization of language and social systems, and in biology. The second genre consists of cognitive and behavioral communication theories which come out of psychology, like behaviorism and these theories focus on the individual
Thirdly, there are interactional theories of communication -- viewing social life as a process of interactions. I often comfortably reside within this camp with my own studies of the impact of new interactive technologies of communication (the telephone, computer networks, the fax machine, etc.).
The fourth genre consists of interpretive theories of communication including phenomenology (the experience of the person) and hermeneutics (the process of interpretation). And, finally, there are critical theories of communication with their commentaries on society and social practice. Marxism and feminism are key examples of this genre. An exciting new area of communication studies is influenced by recent developments in anthropology. These writings explore the interplay between communication and our various cultures.
Obviously, there is a lot more here than TV programs! And when I speak of the integration of communication and theology, it is clear with the above overview of communication studies that theology simply should not be done today without integrating the above insights, garnered during eight decades of formal research and practice.
Theological Voices
Avery Dulles, S.J
In 1974 the American Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles published a work entitled Models of the Church. This work, later updated, gave us an analytical structure for our thinking about what the concept of "church" embraces. Dulles spoke of models of the church as institution, as sacrament, as herald, as servant, as mystical communion (Dulles, 1978).
This was a handy conceptual tool, but Dulles himself urged us not to get too attached to the tool because each model or view of church was incomplete by itself. There is a temptation to get attached to the model we feel most comfortable with and stay put there. Some professors have even stated to me that once a theology student gets into the Dulles model mode, it's difficult to get them to do other creative conceptualizing on church because they are unable to think outside of the Dulles model structure. Dulles later added another model -- church as community of disciples -- so obviously we need to keep thinking beyond existing model structures. Incidentally, in a later book, Models of Revelation, Dulles used the same methodology to examine varied aspects of the revealed message of Christian faith, including Christ Himself, along with church tradition and teaching. His models here include revelation as doctrine, as history, as inner experience, as dialectical presence and as new awareness (Dulles, 1985).
I return to these Dulles theological models because Dulles has long been aware of the significance of communication in our theology, especially our theology of church. As early as 1971, even before he published his famous models, Dulles delivered an address to Bishops at the Loyola University Communications Institute, in which he uttered the line we communicators treasure: he said, "The Church is communications" (Catholic Mind, October 1971, pp 6-16).
In another work, The Reshaping of Catholicism, published in 1988, Dulles has a chapter entitled, "The Church and Communications: Vatican II and Beyond", and in this chapter he offers some general reflections on communications and then revisits his models of church, examining just how each different model seems to employ a different communication approach. Samples of this matchup between models and communication styles will give us a sense of what Dulles is proposing. If we consider the model of church as hierarchical institution, for example, it seems clear the printed word is a major communication channel for this model. Print communication allows us to "package" authoritative teachings in a way that sees most of the church faithful as learners -- much like students studying text and taking exams on the content.
If we think of the model of church as herald -- designed to proclaim the "good news" of scripture and tradition to the world, then mass media are seen as tools to evangelize and we have had numerous examples of this model and communication merge, ranging from Pat Robertson to Mother Angelica.
The Dulles work on church and communications stands tall in the development of the field of Communication Theology. There are some aspects of his thinking, however, that I see as somewhat limiting. Let me address a few.
In the first place, most of the time the thinking Dulles does on communication relates almost entirely to mass media forms of communication -- print, TV, etc. He begins to expand upon this limited view when he speaks in this specific text about a secular dialogic theology -- somewhat better suited to our post-literate culture, where God is to be found in the great events of secular history, where revelation is a dimension of our contemporary experience. Dulles notes that the Second Vatican Council "did not fully embrace this type of radical or secular theology, but it provided openings for it" (p 11).
When Dulles reflects upon communication in this secular-dialogic view, he tends to speak of talk shows, interviews, etc. -- all radio/TV mass media channels. However, as we all now recognize, the major dialogic tools of communication are the interactive ones -- computer networks, like the Internet, telephone technologies, like faxes and cellular phones. These communication channels are basically two way and go way beyond TV talk shows to facilitate a secular dialogic theology. And they are more available for our use: we all communicate by telephone and very few of us will ever be on a radio or TV talk show.
In addition, as mentioned above, the field of communication studies includes many other theoretical paradigms; it is not limited to defining channels of communication, such as radio and TV. It includes studies on language, myth, symbol -- varied types of communication as shared meaning. The field includes organizational communication research studies, along with theory in interpersonal and intercultural communication. Dulles was the first to speak authoritatively about the role of communication, but it was "communication and theology" -- two disparate fields interacted upon and by one another. Now, several decades later, we have a more integrated view of these two fields -- linked by bridges upon which theologians and communication scholars can travel and think about a vision of theology mediated by communication studies, theology permeated by the research and realities of a world bathed in, and graced by, our understanding of the communication process and its impact upon our postmodern culture.
Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J.
The field of Communication Theology has received a double gift from the theologian Elizabeth Johnson. As President-elect of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Johnson encouraged us to develop Communication Theology seminars within the CTSA convention she convened. In addition, of course, we have Johnson's own scholarship in Christology and in her recent book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. As Leo O'Donovan, the President of Georgetown University said about her book: "Elizabeth Johnson seeks a liberating language for women and men to use together in addressing the mystery of God" (book cover).
As Johnson explores speech about God, she visits feminist theology and critical discourse about God, basic linguistic options, women's experience, scripture, classical theology, female metaphors -- moving well beyond the typical discussion of inclusive language. It is patently clear, of course, when you are speaking of language, of discourse, of shared experience, you are speaking about communication.
I cannot here delineate the various connections between Johnson's theological insights and communication; in fact, this clearly is an area requiring more systematic articulation. It may be Johnson was unaware of specific conceptual bridges between theology and communication as she wrote She Who Is; but any linguistic analysis is going to overlap on to communication studies almost immediately. Johnson discusses "expanding the treasury of metaphor" in a Commonweal magazine article (January 29, 1993, p 9). In this reference (and in the follow-up "Letters to the Editor" exchange of March 26, 1993), Johnson refers often to language and symbol. She notes: The women's movement in civil society and the church shines a spotlight on the exclusion of women from public discourse and decision making and their resulting absence from the formation of cultural and theological symbols (p 9). would suggest the "formation of cultural and theological symbols" is primarily a "communication and culture" exercise. Johnson reminds us of Martin Buber's observation that images of the divine "come into being not simply as a projection of the imagination but as an awakening from the deep abyss of human existence in real encounter with divine power and glory" (p 10).
Human constructs and language cannot express adequately the mystery of God; our language about God is not literal, but analogical. However, she notes "the fact that the Christian community ordinarily speaks about God in the image of a ruling man" ... reflect(s) a patriarchal arrangement of the world ... (with) implicit stress on solitariness, superiority, and omnipotent power" (p 12). In calling for more inclusive "God-talk" Johnson notes: "... religions die when their lights fail, when they lose the power to connect people's current experience of the world with the ultimate mystery of God" (March 26, 1993, p 30). I would argue, although we have not built this bridge yet, the theology of "God-talk" should benefit from, and be infused by, what we have learned in decades of communication research about language, myth, and symbol.
David Tracy
Another theologian who speaks of the analogical imagination is David Tracy, whose book by that title has been a challenge to our theological paradigms. Tracy notes "... a distinguishing characteristic of the contemporary period in religious studies and theology is the continuing recovery of the symbolic imagination... those several theologies which employ story, metaphor, image, symbol, myth, and ritual as their central categories, the emergence of the centrality of the imagination for the study of religion..." He mentions, for example, "the imaginative genius of a genuine storyteller with a theological bent such as Elie Wiesel."
Tracy speaks of the three publics in which theologians are involved: the wider society; the academy; and the church. He is especially aware of the uses of modern technology in these realms. I was told by a colleague that one paper by Tracy in Rome dealt extensively with communication technologies. This colleague talked with Tracy about the growing development of Communication Theology, so he is aware of this work. In his book, The Analogical Imagination, Tracy refers to "what John Courtney Murray named 'civic discourse' or Walter Lippmann articulated as 'a public philosophy'" (p 9), what, I would suggest, Richard John Neuhaus called "the public square." Tracy adds his voice to the many who call for rationality in the public discourse of modern society.
I suggest we must articulate and institutionalize the role of communication principles and technologies in this debate. We have radio and TV talk shows and we have Internet forums and E-mail messages. We continue to need thoughtful analysis of how all this impacts our public philosophy. I applaud the fact that David Tracy is joining others in becoming aware of how critical an understanding of communication is. Once again, however, I would warn against an exclusive emphasis on media channels of communication. Decades of communication studies and theory-building should play a key role in our Communication Theology forums.
Hermann J. Pottmeyer
Professor Pottmeyer, one of Europe's leading theologians, attended the seminar in Rome where I first began to dialogue about the theology of church and communication. He has continued to assist me in clarifying my own thought about bridges between theology and communication. (Of course, he bears no blame for any of my conceptual inadequacies). Pottmeyer has a specialist's knowledge of the first Vatican Council; this gives him a perspective on the second Vatican Council that is both historical and theological. In our Rome seminar he provided us with a conceptual model of Vatican II's theology of church. This is primarily known as communio (communion or community).
We have generally heard this model referred to as "the church as the people of God." Pottmeyer calls communio a leitmotif -- a norm or criterion -- for the church, her structures, and relations. It has, he says, a theological and anthropological meaning. To clarify our thinking there in Rome he cited three theological dimensions of communio. The first is reflected in communion and communication within the church; the second is communication aimed outward to all people; and the third is the self-communication of God in history.
With this as a context, Pottmeyer's chapter in our follow up seminar book (The Church and Communication), is entitled "Dialogue as a Model for Communication in the Church". He notes here that the "word 'dialogue' as a description of communication within the Church is new. It is not found in pre-conciliar ecclesiology whose key words were 'jurisdiction' and 'obedience.'"
Pottmeyer notes there is a tendency to return to one-way communication in the church (mainly because the "new awareness that 'we are all the Church' creates fear in some people") (p 97). There is a comfortable connection between Pottmeyer's chapter on dialogue and my own chapter in the same book on "Interactive Communications in the Church." My own concept, views newer interactive technologies (telephone technologies, computer networks, varied information systems) as an infrastructure that can facilitate the dialogue Pottmeyer speaks of. I will address some of these more specifically below.
Here in this text, Pottmeyer refreshes our memory on early church history. He notes that structurally "the early Church was a communion of local churches... (where) consensus developed. It took place first among local churches and ultimately within the entire Church" (p 99). He adds: "Indeed, the consensus of the universal Church regarding doctrinal decisions was, from the outset, the most important criterion in determining whether a doctrinal statement was to belong to the Church's binding tradition of faith... canon law adopted the secular Roman legal maxim: 'What concerns all must be discussed and approved by all'" (p 100).
Pottmeyer himself notes: "... modern communications media are extremely important in this kind of consultative process" (p 101). He gives as examples the process the U.S. bishops have used in developing their pastoral letters on peace and on the economy -- submitting drafts of their documents and inviting members of the church community to comment upon them.
Pottmeyer concludes: "The important goal of global dialogue, on which the future of humanity depends, will not be served by a relapse into pre-conciliar one-way communication". (p 102).
Recently a national referendum has been conducted in Germany where thousands of German Catholics have signed their names to papers, indicating their desire to communicate with Church authorities on various issues, especially the ordination of women and mandated celibacy for priests. Many, including Pottmeyer, would agree that we cannot develop church teaching only by conducting public opinion polls. The German referendum movement, however, signals a desperate desire on the part of the general church community to dialogue with church leadership. Networked by modern communication technologies, with wide coverage by the mass media, this desire to dialogue can no longer be ignored.
Structures that facilitate dialogue include consultative boards, wider lay participation in decision-making, and bishops’ conferences in nations around the world. As people of all faiths become more interconnected through communication technologies, it will be important to encourage thoughtful forums where the theology of communio can facilitate consensus.
Communication Theology Bridges
I would like to conclude with some reflections of my own about areas where I see the possibility of some bridge-building between theologians and communication scholars and practitioners. Many, many so-called bridges could be cited.
As we move into the 21st century, I plan to invest a percentage of my own communication research, writing and speaking into this bridge-building enterprise. As part of this commitment, I am working with the U.S. bishops to develop a national, telecommunications strategic plan, and working with local dioceses and religious congregations to adapt to emerging communication and information technologies. To be credible in today's mediated or wired world, systems of belief must link to communication principles and practices.
Interactivity in Communication Styles
As I mentioned above, there is a comfortable fit between the Vatican II communio theology and
modern interactive communication infrastructures. Over one hundred years ago, with the invention of the telephone, we began to be a wired world. You simply cannot stop people from interacting with one another. Our mass media have created shared experiences globally and now our interactive tools (computers, cellular phones, faxes) link us in two-way modes. We can talk back!
Some of my own research in this area -- connecting with the thought of Lonergan, Dulles, Rahner and others -- is in The Church and Communication. My chapter probes: emerging theories of discourse; how communio ecclesiology and discourse theory converge and interact; case studies; the implications of freedom and autonomy; and new roles for the laity.
The noted communications scholar Everett Rogers claims that interactivity calls for a whole new epistemology of communications. (Rogers, 1986). We have, in the past, concentrated in our research on the content or on media effects. Our analytical focus needs to move to "communication-as-exchange," to the process of interaction. Once communication interactivity becomes institutionalized, organizational hierarchies become flattened. This has happened to large corporations like General Motors and it is having an impact on governmental and religious bureaucracies. Communication flows are now horizontal to a large degree. Vertical (top-down) communication becomes less relevant. Major information-as-power shifts occur.
It seems the theology and the technology here are moving in tandem. It is a "bridge" area where much more thinking between theologians and communicators will be helpful in assessing how to handle all of it.
Storytelling and Narrative Theology
Theologians are aware of the differentiation between propositional theology and narrative theology. The first elaborates propositions as doctrines, the second recognizes that, as Terrence Tilley says, "the great (religious) stories ... are celebrated in various sacraments, narrated in many texts, and sung in different hymns" (p 12). He adds: "For a Christian narrative theology, the first task is to uncover the stories which show what the Christian key-words mean... (p 11). "The second task of a Christian narrative theology is to transform creatively (when necessary) the narratives of the tradition, ... recognizing that new ways of expressing the tradition must be discovered."
Elie Wiesel said God made us because God loves stories! The sacred scriptures are stories and the German scholar, Edmund Arens, has reviewed the parables of Christ in the light of the Habermas "Theory of Communicative Action". As I mentioned above, Tilley and Angela Ann Zukowski have developed these theology/communication connections in a paper delivered at the Communication Theology Group at the Catholic Theology Society of America (CTSA) after a meeting at the University of Dayton to brainstorm the concepts.
In a wonderful book entitled The Producers' Medium, Horace Newcomb analyzes television as, primarily, a body of stories -- entertainment stories, advertising stories, and news stories. Another critic has defined our TV sets as the "cool fire" we gather around to share stories. There is an obvious overlap between narrative theology and our mediated storytelling.
God's Self-communication
Karl Rahner has interpreted divine revelation or salvation as God's self-communication. The Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is a short expression for this mystery, according to Sachs (p 11). Catherine Mowry LaCugna's study of the Trinity has renewed theological interest in this mystery and we have begun to discuss bridges that look at the Trinity as the self-communication of God, both in the Godhead mystery and in salvation history. This was explored by Randy Sachs in his CTSA presentation.
"The Cloud of Unknowing"
A famous spirituality classic speaks of prayer as moving into "a cloud of unknowing," a wordless communication with God that goes beyond concept. My own interest in contemplative forms of prayer has moved me to explore the need for silence in a media-overload world. I have worked with Trappist monks, including the writer Abbot Thomas Keating, in what is called "centering prayer" practice. I believe much can be done to build bridges between the theology of spirituality and communication studies. This is one area, as I mentioned above, where our Communication Theology is, quite naturally, linked to Eastern forms of meditation.
Additional Conceptual Architecture
In conclusion, I will mention only briefly my perspective on areas that need attention as we move forward in bridge-building between theologians and communication scholarship and practice. There is continually a need to remind those in both fields that we are talking about the whole intellectual structure of communication studies, not just mass media, or new technologies. And our project needs to be ecumenical, working with theologians from Protestant, Jewish, and Eastern religious thought, and practice.
It will be interesting to study "communication flows" within and outside of churches. What can we learn, for example, about the way communication flowed on the discussion within the Catholic Church on preparing a pastoral on the concerns of women? This process was finally dropped for various reasons, not unrelated to the communication process.
We also need to be more inclusive, culturally, in our Communication Theology development. I have a feeling communication studies can assist greatly as we recognize the need for deeper understanding of Islamic culture. We invite all interested parties to join us in this venture.
As Edna St. Vincent Millay puts it:
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts ... they lie unquestioned,
uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric...
References
Arens, Edmund, Christopraxis: A Theology of Action, Fortress Press, 1995
Dulles, Avery, S.J., Models of the Church, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978
-----, Models of Revelation, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985
-----, The Reshaping of Catholicism, N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1988
Johnson, Elizabeth A., C.S.J., She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1993
-----, "A Theological Case for God-She," Commonweal, January 29, 1993, p 9
Neuhaus, Richard John, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, Eerdmans, 1984
Plude, Frances Forde, "Interactive Communications in the Church," in the Church and Communication, Patrick Granfield, Ed., Sheed and Ward, 1994
-----, "How Communication Studies Can Help Us to Bridge the Gap in Our Theology Metaphors," New Theology Review, November 1995, pp 13-20
Pottmeyer, Hermann J., "Dialogue as a Model for Communication in the Church," in The Church and Communication, Patrick Granfield, Ed., Sheed & Ward, 1994
Rogers, Everett M., Communication Technology, Free Press, 1986
Sachs, John R., "Trinity and Communications: The Mystery and Task of Self-Communication," unpublished manuscript, 1995
Soukup, Paul A., Communication and Theology: Introduction and Review of the Literature, London: World Association for Christian Communication, 1983
-----(Ed.) Communication and Lonergan: Common Ground for Forging the New Age, Sheed and Ward, 1993
----- (Ed.) Mass Media and the Moral Imagination, Sheed and Ward, 1994
Tilley, Terrence, Story Theology, Liturgical Press, 1985
Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Cult of Pluralism, 1981