A question came up in our larger community about blogs and how they fit in the Canon Law about publishing and so on. Here is my input on the matter:
I think we need to recognize that while the language of publishing is used across the board for blogs and web sites, the nature of personal blogs and personal web sites is more that of a "presence." On the Internet, people can meet me 24/7. It is my own presence, but in a mediated form. I think this is very important. The Internet has given us not just new means of transmission of ideas (publishing), but a new way of being personally encounterable, apart from the limits of time and space. It is almost a kind of sacramental presence, since it is mediated in sign, and it is very much a "real presence." When people read my blog, they are really coming to know me. In my blog, I am going out to meet them, wherever they are.
My own choir director is a frequent visitor to my blog, and once he commented that he feels almost apologetic that he seems to know me so well, because he knows my thought, he knows my spirituality to a degree through some of the Gospel reflections I have posted, he even knows things about what my family has been through with Katrina, and he felt bad that it was not really reciprocal, since he hardly ever posts comments. And it is true: through my blog, he has come to "meet" me--even more than through the weekly choir sessions. And hopefully what he has really come to encounter is not only me, myself and I, but the particular manifestation the Pauline charism has taken in my life. Hopefully, it is Christ who lives in me who is manifesting himself in some way.
This is not what happens in publishing, unless you are an autobiographical author with a rather significant following. Publishing is a more "detached" form of communication. When I read a book, I do encounter the author in a somewhat distant way (if I am perceptive, that is), but the real point of a book is its content. The author is offering information or a perspective that I am interested in; the author has something to teach me--and this is what I am looking for in the book. Naturally, a book that purports to communicate some aspect of the Catholic faith has to qualify for that--and so there are the various canons that apply.
But in the case of a personal blog or website, I do not think the canons concerning theologians and religious life apply as strictly as they might in the area of publishing properly so called, because what the Internet has done is create a new form of presence. I cannot stress this enough. I think we are offered an opportunity to help the Church and our own congregation understand that the media have truly, as JPII said, become a new areopagus: not just a new place to communicate detached ideas (this is a male model of communication anyway), but a new place to be, to be the witnesses of Jesus that we are supposed to be in ordinary time and space, only now in a hyperspace form. It is almost a technology-assisted form of human evolution, if you think about it. We can bilocate!
Now, there may be members of the community whose capacity for bilocation needs to be restricted for the good of the institute and of souls. We will eventually need to create a kind of gatekeeping system for personal blogs and websites, but it would have to be moderated with great delicacy. (I think the tendency would be for the gatekeeper to become the Great Community Censor, dominated by fear and anxiety and "what ifs" that would effectively smother the sisters' "real presence" and make their blogs ineffectual.) We are not really at that point yet.
These are reflections I have been pondering for years, so I am glad of the opportunity to express them. I am looking forward to responses to these thoughts.
6 comments:
Thank you for such an enlightened treatise on this subject. We have three sisters in my community who blog and (so far) no one has felt a need to censor us. We are also a community in transition... from some of the more medieval (outmoded) restrictions on women both in formation and as professed sisters. The blogging actually helps that process and helps others to see us in a new light. The term gatekeeper is a good one. The doors of Christ must stay open, even when it's uncomfortable for some. We may overstep ourselves in our blogs, but there is adequate room for feedback in cyberspace.
Sister, it does seem as if you are present through your blog. So much so that when I saw you (?), or perhaps another sister from your house (who has a blue tartan scarf), shopping at Jewel on Thursday morning, I wanted to stop you to say "hi" but the funny thing is, while I "know" you, you don't know me!
Amen.
Maureen, I often to the community shopping at Jewel (both the one on State and Grand, if I am walking, and the one on Roosevelt and State if I have the car or the cupboards are really bare), and I do have a blue plaid scarf...but I have been in New Orleans for two weeks, so it wasn't me at Jewel!
LOL, Sister, someone borrowed your scarf while you were in NOLA for the walk up to Grand & State.
Interesting topic! As someone who has studied electronic communication for an extended period of time, I would assert that blogging is not publishing in the sense that Canon Law concerns itself. While the spoken voice of the blogosphere is recorded in text, and so there are the problems associated with written text, blogging as I see it is personal communication left in a place where individuals may on their own choosing read. It's kind of like leaving one's diary open on the kitchen table.
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