Helen Alvaré: Church faces opportunities, challenges in digital age

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday spoke about the opportunities and challenges of proclaiming Christ in the digital age. The Holy Father was addressing the Pontifical Council for the Laity, which has been meeting in Rome for its 26^th Plenary Assembly.

The use of modern means of communication was one of the topics at the Assembly. Dr. Helen Alvaré, law professor at George Mason University and a Consultor for the Pontifical Council, shared some of their reflections on the use of the internet. “We talked about how it was . . . to use the internet as a way of drawing people closer.” She said that not only is the internet to a means to keep in touch with people who are separate, it can also be a means to foster “in-person” relationships.

Doctor Alvaré noted too, that Pope Francis “sees the potential of the internet.”

She spoke especially about the role of parents as standing in a unique place “in-between” those who have not grown up with the internet and a new generation that is at home with modern means of communication. The internet does pose problems, she said, “but I think the problems are not in our learning to use it, but in our helping to figure out how to keep our kids away from the really bad stuff. . . . Keeping our kids away from it is a major challenge.”

She said, though, that people have differing views about the internet: “Some people see the internet mostly as a dark forest, with ghosts and goblins. And some people are angry at that view, and see it as a place of opportunity, where all these other dangers can be managed. I think they’re both right.”

“I don’t think that, for what the Church is seeking to do on the internet, we have to worry about some of the dangers that were set forward” – problems such as the lack of depth of discussions on the internet, the inability of people to read or write, or to be able to think through a problem. “These are not our dangers,” Alvaré said. “If anything, our dangers would be the tendency to reduce rich material to a sound bite. And then the other danger for us would be that we remain at a high intellectual level at all times, and fail to communicate with people who really need a more popular synthesis of our teaching.”

Listen to Dr. Helen Alvaré, speaking with Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure: