Frances Forde Plude

Communication Theology: A Basis For Social Communication – A Focus On Ministry Formation

By Paul A. Soukup, S.J.

[This is an excerpt of a paper presented at the Bishops’ Institute for Social Communication Bangkok, Thailand, May 7-9, 2001.]

Contemporary communication and the changes it introduced into society affect priestly formation and theology as well as everything else. To better demonstrate why seminaries–and indeed all theological faculties–should attend to communication, this essay will examine how a “communication theology,” that is, a theology attending to, and suffused with, communication, contributes to our understanding of God, the Church, and human life. It proceeds in three steps: (1) an outline of some implications of communication for theology, (2) an outline of implications of communication for priestly ministry, and (3) an outline of the implications of a communication theology for human living. 

1. Some Implications of Communication for Theology

Taking a communication perspective on theology does not mean inserting a communication course or a media course into a curriculum. Rather, a communication perspective offers its own insights into the topics of theology first, and then into how that theological understanding can address the contemporary world. This section will briefly examine how this might happen in four areas of theology: systematic theology and Christology, revelation, ecclesiology, and moral theology.

A. God’s Self-communication

Dei Verbum and the works of theologians like Karl Rahner speak of the history of salvation as God’s self-communication, the gradual unfolding of the mystery of God, freely bestowed on us that we might come to know God. At the same time, we can say that we who are created in the image and likeness of God participate in that self-communication[1] through our own human communication. From a kind of theological anthropology, an examination of human communication can lead us more deeply into the mystery of God while, at the same time, that mystery shapes our communication.

All communication begins with the Trinity which forms a communion of divine persons,[2] completely and perfectly one with each other. God desires to share this divine union with creatures and in the mystery of the divine will wishes a communion with us human creatures. And so, God creates in the first act of self-communication and then chooses to perfect that communion with creation by entering it in the mystery of the Incarnation. The whole history of salvation is the gradual unfolding of this plan and of this self-communication. God offers us a covenant that we might experience union. God will fulfill that covenant that we might know the fullness of the divine self-communication.

In communication terms, the Incarnation, then, becomes the extension in history and in creation of the communion of the Trinity. It is not so much the transmission of a message as it is the practice of communication, the “ritual” or day-to-day living which forms us into a fellowship.

In this we see the absolute gratuity of communication, a communication motivated by love. We also see communication as a gradual unfolding of the mystery of a person, in this case the divine persons. This communication cannot occur all at once, nor can it ever be complete, but rather exists in a dialectic of revelation and hiddenness. As God creates us for communication–to receive the divine self-communication–our capacity for communication prepares us to glimpse the mystery of God: a communion of persons, freely offering us a share in that communion, addressing us as persons, gradually unfolding to us in a personal sense.[3]

This kind of theological anthropology of communication helps us simultaneously to understand ourselves and to understand God. It also calls for a real reverence for communication since communication marks out the creative action of God. Finally, it proposes both a goal and a standard for human communication, a communication modeled on that of Christ.[4]

B. Revelation

Applying the concepts of communication to theological truths can deepen our understanding of them, particularly by allowing us to broaden what David Tracy called the “analogical imagination.”[5] Re-reading Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s decree on revelation in this light, invites us into a renewed meditation on God’s action and our reception of it. We also analogically apply communication concepts to God’s revelation and predicate them simultaneously to human communication and to divine revelation. 

The decree begins by acknowledging the imperative to communicate. Quoting the opening of the First Letter of John, the decree sets out a motivation for communication: to share the divine gift–what we have seen, what we have heard, what we have touched. It continues by noting that God’s deeds and words are mutually related. The Word of God is the action of God, and Christ is both mediator and the fullness of revelation (#2). Most analysis of communication separates mediation from message, treating them as distinct. But this is to regard communication as purely instrumental and such practice misses the deepest human communication in which each person reveals the self. Word and action can be joined, as Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / deals out that being indoors each one dwells; / Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, / Crying What I do is me: for that I came.”[6]

As the nature of God is revealed as communicating, so human nature follows, becoming both medium and message. The decree continues (in #4) to outline the role of the Holy Spirit: revelation is the act of the Trinity. The Spirit is the communicative force which cries out within us, in sighs too deep for human speech (Romans 8:26). The Spirit is the communicative force of memory, reminding us of all that Jesus taught (John 14:26). Much along the lines of an oral culture’s need to maintain the integrity of its messages through its communication practices, the Holy Spirit guarantees the integrity of God’s revelation (see 1.9).

Dei Verbum goes on to examine the human response to God’s revelation: the obedience of faith (#5). In this, it reminds us that all communication not only demands but receives a response. “One cannot not communicate” is the phrasing used by communication scholars.[7] Even silence is a response, a kind of communication. This framework invites us to see our human response to God’s self-communication in broader terms, in terms of the whole of a person’s life. The fact that revelation comes to us in both Scripture and Tradition (#8) reinforces this by calling to mind the modalities of communication–text and word and action. So, too, our human response to God involves the whole of our communication. In its role as servant and custodian of the Scriptures, we can think of the Church as a textual community, a term communication research applies to groups organized around a particular text. All Church activity–prayer, liturgy, contemplation of doctrine, theology, works of charity–begin in the Scriptures and take its form there (#9). 

The fact that the Church has teaching authority and receives a commission to authentically interpret the Scriptures (#10) highlights the communicative nature of the Scriptures. These exist as a collective communication, not as a private communication. As such, the Scriptures call to mind the community dimension of communication, as we have seen in oral cultures or in the cooperative work of creating texts. This acts as a corrective to a common contemporary belief that communication is individual and private (born perhaps of private, silent reading); that belief is so strong that it causes people to overlook the collaborative production of most communication products.

A final point: Dei Verbum tells us that the mystery of salvation manifested in Jesus is narrated in the New Testament (#17) and consequently is revealed to us. A communicative perspective would ask how a written record, a mediation, can do what the “original” does. To begin to analyze this we can turn to theories of signification. Every mediation, like every translation, is simultaneously an original[8] and therefore acts on its recipients by itself and in reference to its original. Such a perspective allows us to interpret the action of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures in terms of the ways in which God’s self-communication has imaged itself in human communication, so that the operation of signification through the Scriptures places us into a relationship with what is signified.

This way of approaching theology through communication builds on a theological anthropology that asks, in a kind of transcendental method, about the conditions for the possibility of communication. The very things that make communication work prepare us to receive God’s word of revelation. 

C. Ecclesiology

In several essays, Avery Dulles has argued that “the Church is communications”[9] and that a “theology of communications is the study of how God brings about the convictions and commitments connected with religious faith.”[10] In this perspective communication is a part of ecclesiology, since the study of the Church encompasses the historical extension of faith and the sustaining of faith in the lives of the members of the Body of Christ. In an earlier work, Dulles set forth the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, noting that the Council embraces at least five models of the Church: the Church as institution or hierarchy, the Church as herald, the Church as sacrament, the Church as communion, and the Church as servant.[11] In the 1989 essay, he correlates these models with characteristic kinds of communication. We can see the value here in that no one model alone provides a complete description of the Church; similarly, no one kind of communication will satisfy the communication needs of the Church.

The institutional or hierarchical model of the Church favors mass communication since the centralized organization of a hierarchy matches well the centralized organization of mass communication, with one center broadcasting the identical message to all. Dulles expands the model with this schema:

Hierarchy

Doctrine

Print

Submission, acceptance

This model draws attention to one aspect of the Church; it also shows how communication can match the needs of that model and at the same time fall short of other needs. For example, the new communication technologies like the Internet undermine the hierarchical organization of the mass media and may not serve a hierarchical model of the Church as well as mass communication can. 

The Church as herald highlights the Church proclaiming the Good News of Jesus and speaking with a prophetic voice to the world. Here the favored communication is proclamation, which can take on many media forms, though it favors the direct address of the human voice. Person to person contact is its chief characteristic.

Who communicates?

What does it communicate?

How?

With what response?

The sacramental model understands the Church as a sign or sacrament of Christ, who in turn is the sacrament of God’s covenant. Communication takes places through persons and events since Christ is a sacramental sign by what he is and does (cf. 2.1 and 2.2). As the Body of Christ, the Church continues Christ’s presence in the world.

God and the Church

Salvation

Sacramental action: liturgy, etc.

Sanctification

The Church can also follow a model of communion or community or dialogue. Dulles notes that this model has its foundations in secular-dialogic theology, a theology that finds value in the world and calls for the Church to engage the world that it might learn from it. This perspective has its ultimate grounding in the fact that God is both creator of the world and redeemer and therefore can speak a word of salvation in any of creation. The favored communication method in this model is dialogue, a dialogue that helps to bring about the communio of the Church. This model may find the interactivity of the World Wide Web a fruitful kind of communication for its activities.

Church and world

Mutual knowledge, fellowship, life, truth

Dialogue

Deepened respect for each other

Finally, we can describe the Church as a servant since it imitates Christ, who came not to be served but to serve. The Church takes its place in the world, present as a servant through action for others, works of justice, works of charity, and so on. The communication best characteristic of this model would be actions rather than words.

The entire Church

Love for neighbor

Actions of service

Varies

Correlating the different models of the Church with various modes of communication invites both a deeper understanding of the Church and a more communicative response by the Church. It also dramatically proposes a communication strategy with multiple prongs so the Church can be present in the world and to its own members in a variety of ways. Finally, it corrects an ecclesiological error that favors only one kind of communication, thus leading people to misunderstand the nature of the Church itself.

D. Moral Theology

Though not their only purpose, many of the Church’s documents on communication outline a moral theology by which people can judge communication products. The principles emerging from these documents illustrate yet another way to add a communication perspective to theology. Communication documents of the last 50 years consistently remind us that communication and communication media are gifts from God[12] and, as such, make a claim on humans in terms of how they are used. Pius XII continues in this line by identifying a dual role for communication: it shares in God’s creative power and it shares in the process of the self-communication of God. These theological claims exert a concomitant moral claim, following from a kind of natural law theorizing. The nature of these modes of communication as gift from God, as sharing in God’s expression, leads us to better understand how humans should use them.

More recent Church documents go beyond this to acknowledge the possibility of sin and to remind us that Jesus teaches that communication is a moral act,[13] thus binding people to an integrity of action. In this kind of moral perspective, human communication is a journey from Babel, the site of communication’s collapse.[14] The Catholic attitude, though, follows St. Paul: where sin exists, grace exists even more (Romans 5:20). And so, a moral communication is possible, if one first understands the nature of communication and the ways in which it fails.        

This perspective suggests that moral theology might pay more attention to communication in every situation. While Church documents focus on mass communication, the failure or perversion of communication accompanies many moral lapses: infidelity in marriage, deception, injustice, theft, and so on. Moral theology might find in communication a new tool of analysis.

This brief overview suggests that communication can address various branches of theology, not as something external to them, but from within. Each example–systematic theology and Christology, revelation, ecclesiology, and moral theology–offers a slightly different methodology so we can more readily see that communication can form the basis for a broad theological formation.

2. Implications of Communication for Priestly Ministry 

This kind of communication theology suggests at least two implications for priestly ministry, one drawn from the culture and one drawn from the priest’s roles in Church and society. A communication theology insists on inculturation, but here this refers not to regional or ethnic cultures, but to what Pope John Paul II referred to as “a new culture” in Redemptoris Missio (#37c): the culture of the media. Today’s culture, especially for young people is a digital culture, a mass culture, marketed to them, and one which has its own theology. This culture, like every other one, does pose and answer theological questions: “What does it mean to be saved?” “What must we do to be saved?”–questions answered all too often in advertising that tells us which products to buy, how to dress, how to act so we can be saved. In the theology of advertising and pop culture, one finds personal worth in products and consumption.

This popular culture is the seminarians’ culture and the culture of those to whom they shall minister. A communication theology demands that they know this culture and know how to effectively express themselves in it. We do them no service to deprive them of contact with it, telling them that television watching is bad or that the Internet is harmful. They need to take the time to study their culture, to understand it, so that they can more powerfully proclaim God’s word to it.

The situation for priests and future priests becomes more complicated, though, by two undeniable facts. First, this popular, media culture coexists alongside of ethnic, regional, and traditional cultures. Second, people in today’s world live in more than one culture just as they participate in many activities, each defining them partially. A man can be a father, a plumber, a Catholic, and a member of a trade union; a woman can be a wife, a teacher, a coach for a children’s sports team, a catechist, and a political activist. Each of these social activities brings with it a set of cultural expectations and behaviors. With a growing split between culture and religion, religion becomes one activity, among others. This is the situation in which today’s priest works. He ministers to people living within several cultures, all of them touched by the mass culture of the media. And so, he must become expert in these multiple cultures.

Secondly, a communication theology calls attention to the multiple roles of the priest. Just as a complete ecclesiology describes the Church in multiple models, with no one model sufficient to describe the complexity of the Church, so too will a complete understanding of priesthood acknowledge that the priest simultaneously fulfills parallel roles. We traditionally describe Christ in terms of his multiple roles of priest, prophet, and king. As those who represent Christ, priests too have different functions. Without trying to be complete, we can say that the priest is called to be a sacramental minister, a holy person, a teacher, an evangelizer or missionary, a representative of the Church, a community leader or community former, and a representative in the civic community. A communication theology tells us that each of these roles will stress a different kind of communication. 

The priest’s sacramental and holiness roles remind us that people cannot separate their social communication from their personal communication. Here the priest takes Christ as model, Christ who showed a unity of actions, words, and life. The priest is formed by the Word of God so he can express that Word. Just as in the Eucharist, we become what we eat (Augustine), so in the Word of God, we communicate what we hear. Priests, above all, follow Christ, the perfect communicator, and “utterly identify [themselves] with those who receive [their] communication and give [the] message not only in words but in the whole manner of [their] life” (Communio et Progressio #11).

The priest’s roles as teacher and evangelizer lead him to use all the means of communication at his disposal,[15] from interpersonal communication all the way through to the mass media and digital technologies. To do this, he must learn proper expression according to each: rhetoric, images, words. As today’s audience is increasingly sophisticated, so too must religious communication, even if it is a sophistication born of simplicity.[16] Ultimately, the priest serves as a mediator of the Word and thus as a “translator” of revelation (cf. 2.2). The forms of proclamation seem the most suited to these roles.

The priest, in the role of community leader or former, follows the communion or dialogue model of the Church. The communion of the Trinity inspires him to foster this same equality in the communion of the Church. Priestly communication should facilitate God’s self-communication so the entire Church can enter into the covenant offered by God in Christ Jesus. The same spirit of dialogue also characterizes the priest’s communication with the civic community in which the local community of the Church finds itself.

A communication theology points out that a real danger for a priest lies in the confusion of communication styles in the various roles that he serves. To substitute the proclamation style for dialogue can isolate him from those who need him to listen and can thus harm the communion which he must foster. Equally, to substitute dialogue for proclamation can cause him to fail in his prophetic duty. In his communication, the priest must learn discernment.

3. Implications for Human Living

A theological reflection on human communication proposes yet another way to consider what a communication theology offers to seminary formation. Milan’s Cardinal Carlo Martini sketches a Biblical meditation on communication in a pastoral letter of 1990,[17] from which this section takes its lead. His method opens a way of reading the Scriptures in terms of communication, that we might see communication in the light of the Scriptures. Here we consider what we learn about our human communication from the communication of Jesus.

Cardinal Martini begins with Mark’s account of the healing of a man who could neither hear, nor speak (Mark 7:31-37). Mark tells us the people brought this man to Jesus, who took him apart from the crowd, placed his fingers in the man’s ears, and, spitting, touched his tongue. Then he prayed “Ephphatha, be opened!” The man’s tongue was loosened, and his ears opened, and he began to speak and proclaim God’s praises.

The healing story has three parts: the inability to communicate, the signs and gestures of healing, and the miracle and its consequences. If we apply this to ourselves, we too enter each of the three moments.

From what arises our inability to communicate? Though we may not lack the ability to hear or to speak, we experience a blocked communication. Cardinal Martini suggests four causes of our inability. (1) We hold a mistaken notion or ideal of communication. Looking for a perfect communication, we become frustrated with our own limitations. We expect too much from others and condemn their (and our own) limited steps to communicate. (2) Our communication arises from a desire to possess the other. We communicate, not to share, but to take; and this makes the other person constantly be on guard and so, less willing to communicate. (3) We use our communication as an expression of our will to dominate others. Rather than seeking any kind of communion, we seek power. (4) We are in a hurry to communicate, looking for an instant response, an immediate bond with others, a completeness of information. These communication blockages affect us as persons, but they also describe the symptoms of blocked communication in the Church or in any other institution.

In the second part of the healing story, we see the signs and gestures of opening. Jesus takes the man away from the crowd and in so doing offers him a measure of respect. He heals not to performs signs for the people much less to entertain them. The first step of his healing, the first step of unblocking communication lies in respect for one another. Next, Jesus contacts the man through all available forms of communication, symbolized in his touch. Then he speaks the words, symbolizing the restored communication. These signs and gestures of healing take God’s self-communication as their model: respect and love; contact or taking initiative; the word of address. In the third part, the miracle, we see not only the healing but also its consequences: the man returns to the community, now fully integrated. He and the others praise God. This, too, proposes a model for our communication as we connect human community and divine service.

Cardinal Martini notes that good human communication must take the divine self-communication as its model. Communication is prepared in the silence of God and then gradually unfolds through the time of human history. This communication is progressive and operates in a dialectic of revelation and hiddenness for it can never be complete. And God’s communication is both personal and interpersonal, as it addresses each one of us, calling us by name. Our communication should follow this model. It, too, must be born in silence, in our gradual self-understanding and self-knowledge. We need to recognize that communication takes time, on both sides. We need the time to know ourselves and to give ourselves and we need to allow time to others. Communication will never be immediate. Because we are created in time, we need to remember that all communication has both light and shadow–these are normal and should not cause frustration. Since communication involves conversational or dialogue partners, listening forms a key aspect.

This application of the Scriptures has implications for our lives and for seminary formation. Both personal and Church communication must be prepared in silence, in listening to God and to each other. We must allow freedom to others, setting aside our desires for dominance and power. Here, as always, Christ is our model, Christ who did not cling to godliness, but emptied himself, taking on the nature of a slave (Phil. 2:7). Communication is a process in time, which will never be finished completely. It calls us to patience as well as to understanding. Communication, freed of blockages, requires we know ourselves and that we know others.

Formation for social communication should then include a number of practical steps, which, since we have seen them throughout this essay, I will simply list. (1) We must learn the cultures of the people by listening to them. (2) We must experience those cultures so (3) we can find the means of expression best suited to them. (4) We must identify communication blockages, examining ourselves and our situations. (5) We must learn the instruments of communication available to us. In this, it is good to recognize the means of communication are not neutral. While they are extremely flexible tools, they do carry within themselves specific values that subtly and not so subtly affect how we communicate. For example, mass communication reinforces and justifies a sense of the power of the center–that one person should address many. Just as subtly it undermines the idea of communion and community even as it helps to form one particular kind of community (an audience). (6) We must always be willing to ask for help, to ask for feedback from others so we can know them and, in knowing them, love them. (7) Finally, we must know the message we communicate. We do this through prayer and meditation on the Scriptures and on the self-communication of God in Christ. Social communication formation and communication theology recognizes that as Christ is the fullness of communication, Christ forms the heart of our own communication. God has created us in the divine image, in the image of a Trinity which communicates and which, through communication, gives life and salvation to all.

Footnote

[1] .Pius XII, Miranda Prorsus, #25

[2] .Pontifical Council for Social Communication. Communio et Progressio #8

[3] .cf. Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini. Effata, Apriti. Communicating Christ to the World: The Pastoral Letters Effata, Apriti and Il Lembo del Mantello. Trans. Thomas Lucas, S.J. Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1994, pp. 1-76.

[4] .Pontifical Council, Communio et Progressio, #11.

[5] . David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. New York: Crossroad, 1981.

[6] .Gerard Manley Hopkins. As Kingfishers Catch Fire (poem 34). Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ed. W. H. Gardner. London: Penguin, 1988: p. 51 (Original edition 1953).

[7] .Paul Watzlawick, Janet H. Beavin, and Don D. Jackson. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes. New York: Norton, 1967

[8] .Ulbaldo Stecconi. “Peirce’s Semiotics for Translation.” Fidelity and Translation: Communicating the Bible in New Media. Eds. Paul A. Soukup and Robert Hodgson. Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward; New York: American Bible Society, 1999: pp. 249-261.

[9] .Avery Dulles. “The Church is Communications.” Multimedia International 1 (1971).

[10] . Dulles, Avery. "Vatican II and Communications." In Latourelle, R. (Ed.) Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, 3 vols. (Vol 3, pp. 528-547). New York: Paulist Press, 1989: p. 529.

[11] .Dulles, Avery. Models of the Church. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987: pp. 34-102. (Original edition 1974).

[12] .Pius XI, Vigilanti Cura, #9; Pius XII, Miranda Prorsus, #24; Second Vatican Council, Inter Mirifica, #1.

[13] .Pontifical Council for Social Communication, Ethics in Communication, #32.

[14] .Ethics in Communication, #3

[15] .cf. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, #41ff.

[16] .Augustine discusses this in Book IV of De Doctrina Christiana, where he debates this point in terms of the use of rhetoric–the leading communication technology of his day.

[17] .Martini, op. cit., especially pp. 16-19.