Summaries: Communication Theology Sessions At The Annual Convention Of The Catholic Theological Society Of America (CTSA)
For over a decade there was an annual Seminar in Communication Theology at the CTSA convention. These seminars had the support of UNDA-USA, the Association of Catholic Communicators. The organizers of the seminars were Father Bob Bonnot, a CTSA and an UNDA member, and Dr. Frances Forde Plude, a CTSA member and a Communication Professor. They usually arranged a pre-seminar meeting, months in advance, to plan for the CTSA event. All these meetings brought theologians and communication theorists and practitioners together to dialogue about the intersection between Theology and Communication. This contributed to a growing body of thought in Communication Theology, exposing CTSA members to concepts discussed, and allowing input from all audience participants.
Below are summaries of these seminar sessions – reports written by Bonnot for the CTSA Proceedings. Permission has been granted by the CTSA Proceedings to share the summaries.
1993: Richard Liddy, Peter Drilling, Celia Ann Cavazos,
Lonergan’s Notion of Theology and Communication
Aetatis novae (1992) calls for "ongoing theological reflection upon the processes and instruments of social communication and their role in the Church and society."(#32c) CTSA's sister organization for broadcast communicators, UNDA-USA, requested this workshop. UNDA-USA First Vice-President, Bob Bonnot, moderated the discussion. Panelists included Richard Liddy (Seton Hall University), Peter Drilling (Christ the King Seminary), Celia Ann Cavazos (Diocese of San Antonio catechist). Frances Forde Plude contributed a paper.
Bonnot, noting that the convention fell between Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, observed that communication is rooted theologically in Trinitarian communio and Incarnation. Lonergan's functional specialties and the dominance of mass communication processes in American culture provide further context.
Liddy shared Lonergan's conviction that without communication the other specialties in theology (research, interpretation, history, dialectic, foundations, doctrines, systematics) are "in vain, for they fail to mature". Similarly, communication "will bear no fruit" without the other specialties. For Lonergan 'communication' refers to the whole area of pastoral theology. It is the effort to hear the Word of God out of in the conflicts of the past so that we can truly communicate God's Word in the present and for the future.
Lonergan ties communication closely to conversion. When someone talks or writes "over your head" conversion is necessary, for conversion grounds the common meaning which, through communication, constitutes human community. Intellectual conversion is especially important. It enables one to understand simple people better and what their difficulties in understanding might be. Liddy exemplified such conversion in terms of "church". The unconverted see church as a "society," a "body" "out there" while the converted grasp "church" as "a community ... constituting itself through the communication of a particular message, 'the outer communication of Christ's message and ...the inner gift of God's love" (Method in Theology, 361-3).
In Chapter 14 of Method in Theology, Lonergan relates the communication process by which the Church continually re-constitutes herself to the wider process by which human society constitutes itself. He argues that theology's grasp of what is taking place in the Church must link up with other disciplines that study what is taking place beyond the Church.
Plude confirmed the need to link theology with other disciplines, including her own which studies communication processes in different cultures and the varied ways codes of meaning are expressed. Great progress has been made in this field as in theology. Plude asserted the need to move beyond "a theology of communication" or "theology and communication" to "communication theology," as in "liberation theology" or "feminist theology". Theologians need to discover communication realities within theology itself and theological realities within contemporary communication processes. She expressed appreciation for the work of Dulles (The Reshaping of Catholicism, Ch.7), of Häring (his analysis of the impact of mass media in Free and Faithful in Christ), for Tracy's explorations of "public discourse," and for Soukup's review of the literature (Communication and Theology, 1983).
Plude challenged theologians to identify communication concepts within the theology of Trinity, sacrament, and scripture. She asked how modern communication technologies alter human communication modes and thus impact the search for religious meaning and its expression? She pondered the role of "public discourse" in theology.
Drilling translated Lonergan's notion that the church labors "to persuade people to intellectual, moral, and religious conversion ..." (Method, 361) into more relational, interpersonal, and communicative terms. He proposed that the objective of Christian ministry is "to invite persons, individually and communally to communion and conversation" -- with God and with others.
Drilling distinguished Christian ministry (Rahner's 'pastoral theology,' Lonergan's 'communication') in terms of word, sacrament and care: ministry of word initiates and promotes divine-human conversation (interpersonal, intimate, truthful, responsible and loving); ministry of sacrament initiates, promotes and restores divine-human communion (a sense of belonging to one another, being at home with one another, sharing intimate, creative and healing life); ministry of care creates the conditions for ministry of word and sacrament.
Drilling traced how the ground of Christian ministry moved from power to communication. Earlier ministry was grounded in the juridical notions of power (of orders or of jurisdiction). Pius XII grounded ministerial action in the more theological notion of the Mystical Body of Christ. (Mystici corporis). Vatican II (Lumen gentium) grounds ministry in the self-communicative activity of the divine, trinitarian communion of persons. In this theology, the church is a people consisting of equal persons with diverse gifts but all united through mutual self-giving, thus made one with the unity of the Trinity itself. This mutually self-communicating people constitute a sacramental presence of Jesus in the world, ministering through word, sacrament and care to enable church to enter into communion and conversation with the triune God and one another, thereby beginning a world order constituted by communion and conversation. Communication is at the heart of God, of Church, of ministry, of world.
Cavazos explored catechetics as a case study of how theology matures in communication. Catechesis examines the meaning and value of everything created, including the products of human efforts, to show how they illumine the mystery of God and are illumined by God's Word. But Catechesis must also adapt to the age, culture, and individual needs of specific audiences, if it wants to not "go over their heads," but rather get through and convert persons.
Cavazos presented catechesis as the "resounding" or "echoing back" of the Divine Word as it penetrates human life. She sketched several criteria of catechesis: it must be Trinitarian and Christocentric; it must communicate the message in its entirety; it must adapt to the circumstances of those being catechized; it must interpret present life or experience in the light of revelation. She noted the historical use of communication media in catechesis. Contemporary media occasions an "event," concretizing concepts and enabling a shared experience which bonds persons and gives rise to symbols which evoke the experience for still others. Thus the image/symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe grounds a deep, strong, steadfast, non-clerical, faith and a less institutional, more communitarian, church drawing persons to creative service and missionary responses. Similarly the movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" enables young adults who could not speak doctrinally about "sin" to name obstacles to their living the Gospel message. Today's media culture requires that catechesis and theology move beyond an argumentative modality that appeals mainly to the mind toward the symbolic media environment that engages persons more fully. This need is urgent; we have no choice if we are to develop ministry adequate to our mission of passing on the faith to current generations.
Edmund Arens (Frankfurt) observed that German culture is not yet so dominated by electronic media, but noted Habermas' emphasis on parables as symbolic action with a cognitive dimension. Mary Marrocco (Ontario) expressed the frustration of attempting to catechize baptized persons who have never been converted, endorsing the need for communicative theology that converts persons. Charles Montenot, SJ, (Fordham) confirmed the impact of media on catechesis in the Bronx. Bishop Joseph Galante (San Antonio) argued that Catholics must learn to use the media more effectively to present the one who calls us to conversion and enables us to enter communion and conversation – Jesus.
1994: Paul Soukup, S.J. Frances Forde Plude, Paul Philibert, O.P.,
Theological Reflection and Communication Studies
"The very structures of theological discourse are so linked to the structures of communication that we cannot responsibly do theology without a careful consideration of the theories of communication." So summarized Philibert after presentations in which Soukup challenged the U.S. theological community to develop a distinctive approach to theology that seriously considers the mass media and Plude proposed that communication theories will impact theology much the same way as liberation and feminist studies have. "If we remain frozen in texts and hermeneutics, we will miss opportunities to communicate," Philibert said.
Soukup's paper on "Theological Reflection and Communication" argued that theologians should address contemporary communication products and processes as fully as their religious and academic forebears did the media of their eras (Augustine with rhetoric for example). If anything, the demand for such reflection grows with the increasing influence of communication on culture (the "chief means of information and education" for many according to John Paul II), especially in North America. After exploring that influence, Soukup suggested three fruitful areas for reflection: (1) the culture and the inculturation of religious communication; (As liberation theology grew from the experience of people in Latin America's oppressive culture, communication theology should grow from the experience of people in the global communication culture); (2) how should the Church communicate today – by sharing information? by telling stories? by using mass media? and (3) the ways in which different models of the Church lead to different communicative practices. Soukup observed that all Christians, communication professionals, and theologians should carry out this reflection, each group according to its particular capacities. He concluded by sketching the possibilities for theologians moving from Scripture and theological concepts to communications and culture, and vice-versa -- through a re-reading of the Scriptures, through imaginative applications of theological categories (incarnation, Trinity, etc.), and through the use of film and television as points of departure ("snapshots" of our world) for theological exploration.
Plude proposed that the "word" informs both theology and communication both as content and as vehicle of transmission. What happens when "the word" is altered – when the communication content and the transmission technologies change, as for example in Incarnation? The introduction of printing clearly influenced both the rise of democratic thought and Reformation. Communication studies can help theologians and church grasp and respond to the dramatic communication changes currently underway.
Plude surveyed six communication scholarship themes and trends generated by four decades of communication research and scholarship: (1) linear message models, including message distortion; (2) propaganda studies and consciousness formation; (3) media agenda-setting, especially through "the news;" (4) media economics, the rise of information "gatekeepers" and public policy; (5) communication and culture formation through the telling of stories (anthropology); and (6) semiotics and linguistic analysis. Plude reflected especially on the impact of new communication technologies in promoting human interaction and cooperative alliances; and offered practical suggestions for theological inquiry to enrich the integration of theology and communication.
Plude especially argued that interactive, two-way technologies represent an epistemological turning point in communication research -- moving from dyads to forums. She identified three specific effects of the interactive two-way communications revolution: (1) the flattening and decentralization of organizations; (2) the participatory character of communication flow with feedback loops, giving rise to 'shared minds' within these forums; and (3) the importance of access by all to the instruments of communication, enabling "power with" and reducing "power over." She proposed this "communication revolution" as a metaphor for a communio theology of church (elaborated by her in The Church and Communication, Patrick Granfield, ed., Sheed & Ward, 1994). She finds links between these new-technology changes and theological texts in Newman, Congar, Rahner, Lonergan, Dulles, Kasper, Schillebeeckx, Komonchak, and Häring. In her view, theologians and communicators must collaborate. The impact on theology will parallel that of liberation and feminist theories.
Philibert thanked Soukup and Plude for heightening our appreciation of the need for theological reflection upon the mass media. But now, he suggested, communications must enter into the work of theology itself, much as hermeneutics has done. Twenty years ago theologians were much engaged in addressing how hermeneutical questions would enter into theological discussion. CTSA's 1994 convention papers clearly demonstrate the fact that hermeneutics is now integral to the way we now do theology. Developing the insights of Soukup and Plude, Philibert suggested imagination and ecclesiology as two key ways in which communications theory affects theology.
The epistemology of communication research persuades us that the role of the imagination is central to effective theologizing. Meaning detonates not in utterance, but in connections created beneath the surface of logical exchange. The archeology of human interests is mediated by symbols of relation, desire, and transcendence. Imagination is the vehicle of this symbolic exchange. The principal negative force of mass media in our culture is that it destabilizes a healthy ecology of symbolic integrity that should include silence, aesthetic subtlety, and critical evaluative perspectives that take account of the values of the distinct and varied communities within society. We are responsible for insisting upon the integrity of a healthy symbolic ecology of this kind.
Relative to ecclesiology, as Plude has shown, not only the idea of the church but also the reality of the church is at issue when one addresses how gospel and moral tradition are mediated. The first principle of communicative responsibility is reciprocity. Cognitive developmental studies emphasize that moral maturity is rooted in cooperation and peer respect. So, for example, base communities are not only a formula for generating commitment, but also one of the best opportunities for the church to establish realistic contexts in which some evaluation and critique of the mass culture can become effectively expressed in the ordinary lives of Christian people in our society.
During discussion, Richard Liddy (Seton Hall) affirmed the need to integrate new technologies as students have become incapable of reading a book. Yet we must enable our symbols to detonate in their hearts and relationships, occasioning conversion. Fred Jelly (St. Mary's, Emmitsburg) concurred, evoking Harvey Cox's "post-literate era" in commenting that there is an explosion of books, but the more intelligent students will not read! Liddy worried that we may lose something in moving into the world of new technologies.
Kenneth Steinhouser (St. Louis U.), picking up on Plude's original observation that the Incarnation drastically changed the 'technology' of God's communication with us, reminded everyone of the move from scroll to codex and its impact on theology. While such changes of form do affect content, Tradition lives through such transitions. The codex, books organized into chapters and hierarchical society are inter-related. Theologians (content specialists) and communicators (form specialists) must collaborate if the gospel is to be enculturated in our era as in prior times.
Jane Redmont shared her sense of TV as the enemy of the printed and written word, which she honors as 'holy.' Cecilia Ranger (Maryhurst College) observed that the Great Northwest is highly unchurched but heavily computerized, modem-ized and interested in electronic bulletin boards. We must use these new 'meeting places' to get the gospel to such persons as single parents who cannot come to classes because they cannot get or afford a babysitter. Perhaps such electronic gatherings are forms of ek-klesia, calling people out and together.
Pat Parachini, SNJM, reflected that we are not communicating with people in a way people can enter in to. We must learn to meet folks where they are, and many of them are into image. Mary Kay Oosdyke, OP, responded to the importance of interactive communications, expressing concern that as Church we do this poorly – for instance in the interactive parts of Liturgy.
Those present affirmed a desire to continue probing the interplay of theology and communication. The focus is "communication theology" rather than "theology of mass media." CTSA is an important forum for carrying such exploration forward, and several expressed the hope that the issue might get before the whole society. Ladislaus Orsy, SJ, Georgetown, noted that CTSA meets for only a few days a year, so institutions must carry this work forward . Peter Dirr (CTNA) proposed using the media to move ahead, perhaps setting up an electronic meeting for theologians and communicators.
This workshop started from the conviction that communication needs theology to work toward ministry maturation in the Church. It concluded with the strong conviction, succinctly captured by Philibert above, that theology needs communication to be responsibly done in our communication culture. CTSA remains an appropriate forum for pursuing the blend.
1995: John R. Sachs, SJ,
Trinity and Communication: The Mystery and Task of Self-Communication
Looking into the immanent Trinity won't much advance theological efforts to understand communication. But focus on the economic Trinity as God's saving us through Jesus and the Spirit will. Sachs proposed that salvation is realized and experienced (or not) in and through authentic human (self) communication. Jesus' life and ministry of self-sacrificing love consisted of such communication. In him, God's self-communication and human self-communication are one. Hence communication is a critical subject for theological reflection. Some implications: (1) we must communicate ourselves and an experience of salvation, not simply information, even about God; (2) communication must build solidarity with the voiceless, giving them a voice as Jesus did. The Internet offers new possibilities here.
Discussion explored what "authentic" self-communication is when the communication requires the collaboration of many persons, as in many media productions. Telling the truth, avoidance of distorting idols, and inclusion of all pertinent voices were suggested as criteria.
Plude distinguished communication (self-revelation thru personal interaction) and communications (different technologies). She emphasized the dialogic dimension of communication in the economic Trinity. Access is a justice/gospel issue; salvation takes place in daily interactive communication that 'shares meaning;' Communication technology should impact theological anthropology.
Joseph Bracken called for a social Trinity to ground a communitarian approach to reality, an interactive style of communication and the possibility of group vs. individual communication, as in collaborative media productions. Might such reflection on the immanent Trinity help resolve many blocks to human communication and resolve the dilemma of one person's sense of self-communication conflicting with that of another? Sachs held that looking to the behavior of Jesus and our experience of Spirit will provide more insight than speculating about the intra-trinitarian dynamics. Michael Warren asserted that religious people tend to be inferior to secular persons in using communication technology. He hoped for more collaborative Church communication efforts.
Redmont reflected that theologians must reflect critically on the culture, and ours is a communication culture. Further, we are living through an epistemological turning point unlike any experienced since Gutenberg. Theologians must reflect on communication. Redmont observed the explosion of new 'high' technologies in our times among the wealthy and the rise of 'high touch' Pentecostalism among the poor. Both are intense forms of communication; both are works of the Spirit. Redmont sees the historicity of Sachs' approach correlating well with communication, which exists inside history. She worried over Sachs emphasis on self-communication, and a loss of the plural and dynamic sense of God that Trinity evokes.
Major conclusions of this session are that communication belongs on the theological agenda; that Trinity is an appropriate "centering point" for such reflection; and that the economic Trinity is fruitful but an approach through immanent Trinity might also illuminate authentic human communication and thus salvation in a communications culture.
1996: Terrence W. Tilley, Angela Ann Zukowski, Edmund Arens,
Narrative and Communication Theology in a Postliterate Culture
Tilley proposed that media have both affect and effect on us. Communication constitutes selves and communities, including religious selves and church. When the language changes, so does what it effects in persons and in communities. Because the media of the day shape our imagination of what family, friendship, and "communio" can be and become, self and community in a postliterate culture are not the same as in a preliterate culture, and cannot be. Theology must take account of this.
Narrative is central to communication. The meanings of words and images, including faith meanings, are indeterminate until set within a narrative. In turn, media shape the narrative. Faith is "first in the feet," in life's journeys which become stories. Doctrinal formulae and moral rules are shorthand for those stories. The sense of self, of communio, and of faith cannot remain the same when a culture goes post-literate and shapes narratives anew.
Theology then must take seriously the images current in today's media and the narratives in which they are set. Images of shattered families and friendships, for instance, shape shattered selves and communities. "Redemption," "transubstantiation," "real presence," and pieties which express such, all mean something different from what they did fifty years ago. Postliterate persons cannot recover those meanings as such. Theologians must attend especially to television's endless, rapid-fire stream of fragmented images. The culture TV creates requires more than a repackaging of old meanings. The change is not accidental, but substantial. Theologians must learn this new language to convey faithful meanings.
Arens responded positively, noting that faith is, essentially, communication, and theology is communication about communication. Herbert Marcuse taught that communication can be used to either effect or distort community. Accordingly, theology needs a critical theory of communication to help people understand the character of true communication.
Zukowski asserted that global and cyber cultures are generating the new narratives by which people live. The Church must dialogue with these new cultures and translate her continuing experience of the faithful love of the Triune God into narratives which make sense in these cultures. Otherwise believers' lips will be out of sync with their hearts. Increasingly individuals will create these narratives themselves, telling in support groups and cyber-chat rooms their own stories of the Triune God-with-us through Jesus to whom they are disciples in the Spirit.
Colella's experience confirms that people use whatever communication tools culture provides to express and "redesign" themselves. Theology must learn how to proclaim and manifest the Good News today by engaging with the leading creators of the new media. At the same time, theology and Church must address people at all stages on the communication spectrum—preliterate, literate, and postliterate. J. Redmont and G. Baum underlined the pastoral challenge of this complex situation. M. Campbell noted students think very differently from their teachers and have difficulty stepping outside of their stream of consciousness.
Discussion touched on Mother Angelica, media literacy, wisdom theology, and the Chinese rites controversy.
1997: Mary Catherine Hilkert, P.P. and Thomas O’Meara, O.P.,
Preaching as Communication Theology
In Naming Grace, Hilkert develops a theology of preaching in terms of an imminent, sacramental imagination, contrasting it with a transcendent, dialectical theology of preaching, typically Protestant. The latter articulates a collision of the divine and the human, the former a correlation of the divine and the human.
Dialectical theology imagines God breaking into the human situation through preaching; sacramental imagination conceives preaching as interpreting or naming the presence of God already there. Hilkert emphasizes the depths of human experience where one encounters the mystery of God. Often today such experience is of suffering. Preaching interprets such experience through Scripture, liturgy, and doctrine. The community not only receives and responds to the preaching; it prepares it. The effective preacher takes account of the community's diverse experiences. Ultimately, what is preached is what the community hears.
Duffy applauded the title of Hilkert's book and judged her approach long overdue, then explored preaching in a multimedia world. The media form both preacher and community. They emphasize entertainment, surrounding us with secular symbols and rituals woven into engaging narratives. Believers must be prophetic, contemplative, and remembering people to discern and preach the mystery of God within this culture. Bernet reflected on Hilkert's affirmation of community as central to the preaching event. She encouraged surveys of parishioner expectations as a way of listening to the community and making it an active part of preaching.
Effective preachers have a deep and energetic faith, clarity of purpose and point, and are themselves alive in the word. They appreciate that God is alive in the people and do not speak down to them. They help people name their experience. Such preachers need to be extended through the media. Doctrine has a role in preaching but not in the mode of doctrine. Doctrinal reaching must be mystagogical, connected with scripture and liturgy.
O'Meara responded that doctrine seems cold, fearful, and authoritarian. Actually the word simply means teaching. Good preaching brings doctrine out of abstraction by connecting it with people's lives, naming the grace there. Accordingly, effective preachers use stories and metaphors from the "thought forms" used by the people to whom they preach.
Discussion explored Hilkert's conviction that preaching names grace resident in the community before the preaching. Many hearers of the word consider the deeply human where grace is found to be purely secular. Preaching must surprise such hearers, evoking from them an "Aha!" Since much preaching today takes place outside liturgy, the structures of preaching are changing. Today's media, with their imaginative creativity and audience appeal, are important thought forms for preachers.
"Naming grace" also articulates well what is going on in spiritual direction, which enables people to name their own grace and thus to preach to themselves. If Lonergan is correct that theology without communication is in vain, preaching is a primary instance of communication theology.
1999: Richard R. Gaillardetz, Mary McCormick,
Ecclesial Reception, Communication, and the Development of Doctrine
Richard Gaillardetz defined reception as "the process by which some teaching, ritual, discipline or law is assimilated into the life of a church". Theologians have been reflecting on tradition since 1600, on reception only since Vatican II. He sketched two models of reception, one within a pyramidal/hierocratic concept of church, the other within communio ecclesiology. While the church conceived herself in early centuries as "a spirit-constituted interdependent web of reciprocal relations among persons and communities," reception was the common mode of sharing. In that context, dialogical reciprocity made sense. As a hierocratic concept of church gained ascendancy, a more juridical notion of obedience prevailed as the proper response to formal teaching.
Gailladartz elaborated on the dynamic between magisterium and sensus fidelium, one of Ormond Rush's 12 loci of reception. There is a triangular process: the community's (A) Expression of Faith (in liturgy, devotion, art etc., as well as in word) is received by the magisterium, which gives it (B) Official Formulation. The community receives this Official Teaching by (C) an Assimilation that transforms the community and gives rise to renewed Expressions of Faith (A). Two moments of reception are involved (vs. one in the hierocratic-obediential model). The starting point is the community's lived experience and testimony rather than official teachings. Both magisterium/bishop and church community receive from, and transmit to, one another. Thus the church functions as a "community of reception.”
In both moments, non-reception can occur. After briefly reviewing some of the contributions from the field of hermeneutics and literary theory, Gaillardetz noted that communication theory has moved from a Transportation model to a Forum model. The latter entails communication as a reciprocal act of sharing in which the listener selectively appropriates what is communicated. The Forum model emphasizes the interactive, dialogical dimension of communication. It is a reciprocal act of sharing. Paul VI opened the theological door to this emphasis in Ecclesiam Suam that proposes dialogue as a transcendent opening of the divine and a constitutive dynamic of the church. Conciliar thought regarding communication matured from the weak Inter mirifica (1962) to the strong Communio et progressio (1972), a document grounded in communio theology.
Gaillardetz concluded that disciplined and intentional conversation between theologians and experts in communication theory can advance theology much as has theology's dialogue with philosophical and literary hermeneutics.
Vince Miller suggested that communication is still seen as a transmission of content more than as a bricolage of symbols to be negotiated. Jane Redmont focused on who gets to participate in the conversation. What publics are significant and get heard? Paul Lakeland noted that outside the communio model there is only one authoritative moment. Bob Bonnot encouraged study of the historic move to juridical obedience as the proper response to church teaching
Frances Forde Plude discussed how interactive communication technologies impact reception. Communication and theology should not be separate fields but one, communication theology (like feminist theology and liberation theology). Obediential reception parallels communication as proclamation while reciprocal reception parallels communication-as-exchange, the model preferred today by anthropology and cultural studies. The interactive dimension of communication, with feedback loops, is as important as the move from verbal to visual communication. The Internet, the telephone, the fax and now computers facilitate interaction.
Equity of access is important. When people can participate, they insist on talking. Such interaction is a metaphor for a more dialogical church. Computers constitute an epistemological turning point, opening cyberspace for the soul for the first time since Dante. The way audiences receive mass media programs parallels the developing theology of reception (seen in the research of Lynn Schofield Clarke). The process is conversation rather than proclamation. Schreiter's New Catholicity reflects this.
Frank Buckley requires students to use e-mail with him and among themselves. This transforms the learning process. Interactivity impacts a community's unity or lack thereof. These notions must get into seminary education and the training of future leaders. (Redmont) Paul Soukup observed that there are many different fields within communication studies. Mass media studies give rise to a transportation model, but classical rhetoric and studies of conversation require a different model. Walter Ong, S.J., articulates what happens to human consciousness when communication technology changes, as from oral to literate to print to electronic. This evolution begs the question of how really open our “democratic dialogue” really is. Who gets to speak? Who uses the Internet (currently 50 million do, 6.5 billion do not!)? In fact, technology enables people to live within self-selected communities, isolated rather than open to one another.
Discussion explored who counts among the fideles consulted to determine the faith of the community. To be Catholic means that we cannot really shut anyone out. Bishop Remi de Roo mentioned that he held a "dialogical synod" in Victoria B.C. and experienced during it many of the notions being discussed. People insist on participating and refuse to be marginalized because they care about the truth. Through dialogue they discover things in the tradition that were never taught. Much lies there unrecognized, much is not 'word.' Orlando Espin commented on the non-reception of popular faith expressions by church authorities. John Thiel urged a retrospective line from the church's current faith expression backward to the tradition. What the people have received and assimilated into their faith life is the tradition!
2000: Kathryn F. Tanner, Mary Hess,
A Cultural Contest and Theological Communication
This continuing group contends that new communication technologies provide a new interactive model for social processes of communication and that this new model has significant implications for how the nature and tasks of the church are conceived, including theology. Kathryn Tanner examined the interactive model and its implications in terms of “A Cultural Contest and Theological Communication.”
Drawing on British cultural studies, Tanner explored three specific implications of the interactive communication model: (1) the church becomes a community of argument over fundamental Christian beliefs and values; (2) contest over the meaning of terms significant to the wider society is constitutive of communication processes that form the church; and (3) God communicates in and through the cultural contests identified in (1) and (2). All this is modeled in Christ.
British Cultural Studies contend that messages are constructed through contests or negotiations between contending forces, namely sender and receiver(s). This involves a certain 'competition,' such as one finds for example in U.S. political processes. In these processes, public debate and policy fights lash specific proposals to broadly shared civic values. Through that process political coalitions are fashioned that hold the society together and move it forward.
This same dynamic is operative in the church. It functions as a community of argument over fundamental Christian beliefs and values. Every member can somehow participate in the argumentation, whatever the particular structure of their church. Power differences abound in this model. The elites (e.g. clergy, theologians) generally hold the power to create messages for popular consumption, but the recipients of those messages (laity, non-theologians) have the ability to refashion those messages, adapting them to their own non-elite interests. The new communication technologies may undercut this control of the elites since they empower many different levels of society and church to generate messages that reach a large public. Still the dynamics of cultural contest will hold. For example, today anyone can generate a website, but visitors to said site are totally free to use it as they wish.
Discussion confirmed Tanner's thesis. One participant noted that the power to disregard has always been present in the church! Another participant observed that meaningful homilies are the fruit of negotiation between homilist and congregation. The group began negotiating the meaning of Tanner's remarks with her!
In a second section, Tanner elaborated on the way that the church’s efforts to communicate to the wider world involve cultural contest and how through that very engagement, meaning is constructed both within the church and in society. The church does not bring to society a meaning it has either received as such from God or completely worked out in isolation from the society, communicating said message in a kind of second moment. Rather the church arrives at its sacred meanings only through interaction with the society with which it wants to share its wisdom. Eucharist is an example. The church best arrives at its meaning by exploring with the society the significance of table fellowship generally in the society. Thus Christian beliefs, values and practices emerge from tension-filled interaction with the beliefs, values and practices of the larger society.
Tanner concluded with the thesis that God communicates with us through this very process. God does not so much tell us something that we are then to tell others, but challenges our beliefs, values and practices, wrestling with us until they are transformed by grace. God is present to us in this very process of meaning-making and cultural transformation. The incarnation can be viewed as this kind of contest between the Jewish-Greco-Roman humanity of Jesus and the Word that assumed it, transforming that culturally shaped humanity into the supreme manifestation of God's love in the world. This process continues endlessly in the efforts of the church to transform the wider world.
Mary Hess responded to Tanner from the perspective of religious education, applauding the cultural studies approach to the reality of communication. She finds it a great improvement over the sender-message-receiver model. It is more adequately descriptive of what in fact happens. She especially appreciated Tanner's look at the power relationships between “elites” and “non-elites,” finding them quite pertinent to the theological contestations going on at the grass-roots level among Catholics.
Picking up on Tanner’s notion of God being revealed, in and through our arguments, Hess challenged theologians to explain how God is being revealed in and through our society's engagement with commercial mass-mediated popular culture. Today’s religious media are irrelevant to many while contemporary commercial pop culture provides them with religious meaning. Theologians need to help us understand what is going on, what God is revealing. Hess pointed to such films as “The Matrix,” “A Galaxy Quest,” and “American Beauty” as relevant examples.
Hess further proposed that much public reasoning is taking place in and through digitally produced media today rather than in traditional institutions of education and research. Mass mediated popular culture is one of the primary places where people are making meaning. Theologians and the magisterium need to engage their imaginations and get involved in the cultural contests raging around them in new and responsible ways.
Joan Mueller inquired “Who is the elite?” in this context. John Farelly noted that our heritage is faith and reason, but faith and culture are much richer and need to be addressed. If, as Hess argues, we have moved from philosophical argumentation to sympathetic identification as the prevailing way of persuasion, then theologians must develop and express their thought in a fresh way. One participant proposed that theologians need to see themselves in a missionary role to the culture, venturing forth from the academy.
2001: Tom Boomershine; Tom Beaudoin, Eileen Crowley-Horak,
Music as an Expression of Theology and Communication
The arts provide special ways of knowing and distinct modes and languages for doing and expressing 'theology.' To Karl Rahner, "theology cannot be complete until it appropriates [the] arts as an integral moment of itself." This session explored music as a particularly apt mode of theology in 'the digital era.' Boomershine dates the digital era from the early 1960s when TV became dominant and Vatican II began. A distinct mode of communication stamps any era and creates systems that facilitate its specific mode. Digital communication is distinctive psychologically in being multi-sensory and sociologically in being highly commercial and consumption-oriented.
Boomershine approached music by analyzing God's dominant ways of communicating with us throughout history and the systems the believing community developed to facilitate God's self-communication. Following Barth, he sees three major forms of the Word - the Incarnate Word, the oral Word, and the written Word (Scripture and tradition). Each form generated distinct communication systems. In each one music played a role.
Music played a role in the life of the incarnate Word at three discernible points. Jesus probably chanted the scriptures in synagogue as was customary. He entered Jerusalem to triumphal, probably sung, acclamation. And Luke presents his mother as singing her Magnificat. Jesus' modality was verbal-oral. He formed his disciples by wandering about Galilee with them, talking. And they spread his word primarily by talking. The early church was basically a network or system for keeping the energy of the Word orally strong, telling others about Jesus.
Though like Socrates, Jesus wrote nothing, his ministry relocated theology from an oral-tribal setting to a literate one. He wandered Galilee teaching but then sent his disciples into the literate Greco-Roman world to share his message. This social relocation led his disciples to record his life and teaching in texts. These eventually became normative. Most believers have experienced Jesus through oral and/or literate media - preaching or texts.
Music enhanced this transmission through chanting or the singing of associated acclamations and hymns. Church leadership complemented its congregation based oral system with literary institutions – scriptoria, libraries, schools – and captured the chants in writing also. Singing the texts remains common to this day, including in the West, until recently. As the printing press made reading increasingly private and silent, people grew accustomed to hearing the texts read with some music before and after. Protestant services became largely sermon and song.
Thus the energy of the Word generated in time oral and literary systems of communication - congregations, libraries, schools, seminaries, universities. Against that history, Boomershine pondered the church's failure to use today's digital media in its worship and teaching and to develop institutions to facilitate that use. He attributes this failure to the church's attachment to the oral and written modes of communication. God however is using the digital media that are transforming education, commerce and culture. One could argue that God may be using digital media in the personal enterprises of such televangelists as Pat Robertson, Paul Crouch and Mother Angelica. God may even be the communicator behind the surprising impact of secular digital artists like Jackson Brown. Brown does not intend to create religious music, yet people report that his music opens them to God. Christian Rock is a digital format through which God is reaching people today, independent of the institutional church.
Turning to music as such, Boomershine opined that the digital era has seen more significant change in music than in any other area of our 'God talk.' Since 1960 the organ has given way to guitar and drums and digital keyboards. These instruments bring out a beat that enables physical movement by the people, involvement, participation. Digital amplification of the voice, as Brother Roger's at Taize in the context of simple chants, allows an intimacy of tone that has transformed the proclamation of the Word: there is no preaching at Taize. Taize communicates theologically through music. Christian Rock establishes social identity for many young believers.
Music, with story and image, is the language of the digital age. Story has emerged as an important dimension of preaching and theology since 1960. Music does not organize its message in terms of concepts and words and arguments. Music gets at something deeper and more meaningful in people, connecting profoundly with the person's life and connecting that life with God. Because of that, Boomershine believes music will be integrated again into the telling of the sacred story, as in singing the Gospel, but now with a beat. (Chant has no beat.) And he believes that as music and other digital forms of communication become still more dominant, the cultural location of theology will shift from university libraries to something new and different, systems God is shaping even if the Church is not.
In discussion, Frank Buckley asserted that we are dealing with a left brain/right brain shift. Mary Carroll remarked on the popularity of Hildegard of Bingen's music and of the Spanish monks' chant. Such music puts people into an altered state of consciousness, enabling an experience that the merely verbal expression of the Gospel, oral or written, cannot. People today want an experience of God, not just words about God. Stephen Martin observed that many young people don’t read books. New college-grad Shawn Wilkins cautioned about leaving truth behind. Boomershine affirmed that the goal is a synthesis that enables today's people to experience what the church holds precious and to know it as they know everything else.
Respondent Tom Beaudoin analyzed music epistemologically. Music is more than a container and carrier of verbal content that helps us remember the words. It is a distinct way of knowing, even theologically. Beaudoin offered four hypotheses: 1) musicality is an irreducible domain of knowledge; 2) musicality is an irreducible domain of theological knowledge insofar as it functions as a source for theology; 3) musicality is an irreducible domain of theological knowledge as a mode of theology, complementing the conceptual-verbal-linguistic mode; 4) musical knowledge can rework other theological domains, offering standard theology such concepts and language as 'overtone' and such distinct logics as, for example, improvisation. As theology has various 'methods,' it likewise has various 'modes.' Musicality is one of them.
Beaudoin developed his first thesis, that music is an irreducible form of knowledge, on whose validity his other theses depend. Referencing Jeremy Begbie, David Sudnow and Richard Viladesau, he positioned music's kinetic images as irreducible to concepts. They are emotions, bodily states, feelings, all non-verbal. A musician has 'handful knowledge.' Her hands know! Beaudoin called for exploration of such knowledge as poiesis, paralleling theology's use of Aristotle's other kinds of knowledge: theoria and praxis. He cited Psalm 49:4, "I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp."
Group discussion reflected on the profound impact singing the Eucharistic prayer has on congregations; on dance as knowledge, portrayed in the film “Billy Elliott;” on traditional organ improvisation, responding to what has happened in the liturgy, as a form of liturgical jazz; and on the music of Bach and Mozart. The session closed noting music's power to communicate across generations.
2002: Paul A. Soukup, S.J., Steve Hrycyniak (Sheed and Ward Publishers),
Publishing Project in Communication Theology
The session brainstormed publication possibilities against the background of the developing field of communication theology. Bob Bonnot reviewed the nine years of Program Group sessions within CTSA, the capstone of that effort is having David Robinson as a plenary presenter this year, and the shift now to Research Group status. Paul Soukup recalled the attention given to communication at the Second Vatican Council and in subsequent documents; the history of the international Jesuit Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture from its founding in London to its "virtual" base now at Santa Clara University (http://cscc.scu.edu); his 1983 review of the literature on communication and theology for the Centre; and the series of Cavalletti seminars in Italy that resulted in the Sheed & Ward series of books on Communication, Culture and Theology.
He announced the continuation of that series under his joint editorship with Fran Plude. Fran Plude distributed three items and noted other documentation available, including an updated annotated list of publications. She explained the work of the International Commission on Religion, Communication and Culture and announced the Commission's funding of full doctoral scholarships for five candidates each from Africa, Asia, and South America.
Steve Hrycyniak, Co-CEO of Sheed & Ward, affirmed continuing commitment of that press to its academic series on Communication, Culture and Theology while considering also popular and pastoral titles and formats. He noted that publications that simultaneously appeal to three distinct markets—bookstores, institutions, religious education, and the academy—work best for S&W. He offered S&W's assistance in finding an apt publisher for worthy proposals that do not fit S&W.
Against this background, those present offered thoughts on potentially fruitful directions for the further development of the field in the context of this CTSA Research Group. The following ideas surfaced:
The media make us consumers. Theology needs to help people become agents: how can theology be transformational when interfacing with the media today?
An emphasis on being agents can accent control. The current crisis in the Church manifests a need also for vulnerability, as modeled by Pope John Paul.
Explore and apply the dominant theological theme of communio to communication.
Develop the symbolic mode of thinking, doing theology and communicating in the context of communio, as in the sacraments, liturgy, and eucharist.
Probe Lonergan's emphasis that communication is the apex of theology and a challenge to the other dimensions of theology.
Deepen understanding of the core principles on which people base their lives which shape all communication they receive.
Develop awareness of author, recipient, and observer/consumer.
Schools and parishes need timely instructional resources with good theology.
How can theology help bring everyone to the conversation in a fragmented, "market-segmented" world? Beyond "dialog" (which often means duo-dialog), there is a need for "poly-dialog."
Consider communication across the life cycle and the church's need to do intergenerational communication.
Theology and its expression need to encourage and enable people to express themselves, moving them from consumption to generosity (e.g. "God's Photo Album" and "Letters to Mothers and Fathers").
Consider use of CD-ROMs, hypertext publication, and alternative modes of access to theology's fruits, such as the arts—plays, paintings, performance, creative self-expression. With these ideas and emphases, the 2003 Research Group on Communication Theology in Cincinnati will work on two specific publications: (1) an expansion of David Robinson's plenary challenge to move theology beyond the "Gutenberg Hologram"; and (2) an exploration of communio in the context of Lonergan's emphasis on communication as a major functional specialty within theology—both including pastoral application.
2003: David Robinson, Thomas Hughson,
Moving Theology Beyond the Gutenberg Hologram; Communio as the Context of Lonergan’s Functional Specialties
The objective of this session was to advance the two concepts selected last year for potential publication. The session concluded with both projects queued for eventual publication.
David Robinson, of the University of San Francisco, presented a manuscript of his 2002 plenary presentation with Mary Ann Hinsdale's response, integrated vignette by vignette. This contrasts with the presentation in the CTSA Proceedings 2002 where they are presented as two related, but successive, presentations. Thus, the new Robinson version models a dialogical, nonlinear style of presenting and learning, and points toward the publication of a different kind of theological text or book.
With the group's input Robinson now envisions evolving and communicating his insight through the engagement of so many as five conversation partners from various disciplines around the proposed topic and title of God and Complexity. The work will be formatted in innovative ways to reflect a transdisciplinary approach to the God question and associative rather than linear modes of inquiry and presentation. The exchange will approach God in terms of complex systems marked by self-connecting, self-adapting, and emerging dynamics through which something fresh and new emerges.
The work will reflect and hopefully advance the science-theology dialog of our times. The group included a representative of a major publisher who concurred with the value of the project in itself and the importance of developing an innovative way of communicating theological thought and work through the publication of a different kind of 'book.' One model of innovative layout for presentation of substantive thought is As the Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez (New York: Crown Business, 2001).
Thomas Hughson, of Marquette University, outlined an exploration of communio by bringing to bear on it Lonergan's rich sketch of communication as an intrinsic, essential, partially constitutive dimension of human existence and theology. His exploration will accent the outward mission of communion in plural context, especially insofar as this involves renewal of the diocesan church through communication. Hughson proposes exemplifying the communicative renewal of communion in such specific diocesan experiences as the fate of the Economic Justice for All pastoral, the Common Ground project, and the response of the local church to the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
At CTSA 2004 this Research Group's final session will preview and critique a draft of Robinson's proposed work and will review Hughson's further elaboration of the communio-communication study. Robinson's publication is envisioned for late 2005 and Hughson's for 2006 or later.