The Internet and Your Faith: Beware and Be Wise Says the Pope

The Holy Father recently said that young people were being “numbed” by the Internet, adding that the technology was creating an “educational emergency — a challenge that we can and must respond to with creative intelligence.” The Holy Father said that these modern communications technologies should set off “an alarm bell” as it is blurring the boundary between truth and illusion. 

The internet and other modern means of communications - while undoubtedly presenting tremendous possibilities for authentic human progress - often give man a false sense of power and freedom. Here is what I mean: when one turns on his computer and goes onto the internet, a couple of things are at play. First, man is in control of the reality before him and he is able to manipulate it in a virtually infinite number of ways. Second, the information before him is virtually infinite - man could never exhaust it in his own lifetime - and therefore he receives a false sense of “knowledge” because “all” knowledge is seemingly “at his fingertips”.


The reason I bring up these points is because they represent a paradigm shift with regard to man’s encounter with reality. When man encounters the natural world, he encounters that which preceded him and will perdure after he returns to the dust of the earth. Second, there is wonder before the reality of creation in as much as man cannot fully account for it. It is not the product of man’s doing. This is where the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) becomes an important hermeneutic for the understanding of who man is as man. Second, the increase of information creates the tragedy of the fragmentation of knowledge so that synthesis becomes all the more difficult and the interiorization of knowledge a dream to be found only in the days of yesteryear. As an example, the advantage of a physical library over the internet is that - for better or worse - somebody or a group of persons applied a criterion by which the quality of books were measured and upon which measure there admittance to the library was secured or rejected. 

Why this long digression on the dangers of the internet? As a Catholic blog, it should be said that the primary duty of priests and clerics is to preach those doctrines and morals which give glory to God and are necessary for the salvation of one’s soul. Revelation and therefore a knowledge of the Creed, the Sacraments, the moral life and the life of prayer is necessary for salvation. Without this knowledge, one would not be able to direct all of his actions to his last end, God, in whom lies eternal bless through the vision of his glory.

Herein lies the inestimable value of the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas, The Catechism of the Council of Trent which Cardinal Ratzinger once called “The greatest Catholic Catechism”, and finally the beautiful Catechism of the Catholic Church. I encourage all who read this site to make time for these priceless syntheses of the Catholic faith.

We should thank God for the great works above cited as they treat of the Christian religion in a way that is most conducive to our growing in the knowledge of the faith. They help us to avoid the many pitfalls of other books, the internet and various publications; e.g. a multiplication of useless questions, the treatment of essentials in a less then desirable order and thoroughness, etc... 

Saint Isidore, patron of the internet, pray for us.