January 1994 Print

by Garry Potter

From time to time you learn from the news about some poor soul who tries to cross a highway on foot, is hit by a car, and then is repeatedly hit and run over by others because if any driver dared to stop or swerve, he would cause a crash. The pedestrian might have survived the first impact, but by the time it’s all over nothing will remain except the need for a closed‑coffin funeral.

Such incidents may be seen as symbolic of the inhumanity of our technological civilization and the inexorableness of developments which cumulatively are hailed as “progress” only because we lack the manhood to stop them, thereby letting them be­come inexorable. We would rather depend on our machines, like slaves, than on God, like men.

That we come to depend on our machines because they create the illusion of “saving” time and labor, and that because we depend on them instead of God they thus stand between us and Him, is an important subject‑‑arguably the most important of this age. However, it is not our concern at this moment, not as such.

What concerns us is the newest development of the age. In fact, it is so new it is not quite here. We are talking about the news and information “superhighway” promised us for the very near future. For anyone who already on occasion is so over­come by today’s unremitting flow of news as to suffer “information overload,” the promise of the coming superhighway offers the likelihood of being intellectually and emotionally run over as surely as any pedestrian trying to cross the Beltway in rush­hour traffic will be hit.

The present lines argue that no one need be run over; the coming superhighway may be less deleterious to the Faith and faithful than have been the news, entertain­ment and information media provided by today’s more limited technology. Indeed, the assessment in this corner is that with the advent of the promised news and infor­mation superhighway, Catholic ideas based on traditional Catholic teaching advanced by Catholic commentators who are clear about what to believe will stand a better chance of affecting the lives of many other men than at any time since technological developments first made mass communication possible. As far as that goes, if the superhighway proves to be as promised, the Faith and eventual restoration of the culture which arises when men practice it may now face a better prospect than at any time since the years following the 13th century declined into the Renaissance and consequent, so‑called Reformation

We shall come presently to the justification for this optimism. Before then, what is the actual situation created by mass‑communication media in past and current stages or technological development and especially on account of the way they disseminate news.

The answer, quite simply, is that the news they disseminate in such volume has become contemporary man’s princi­pal substitute for religion. Think about it.

Our European and Latin American ancestors in the Faith would not know from day to day what events took place in even the next village, much less in the capital or on the other side of the world, and they would not have been much interested in knowing. Today, most men will begin to feel uncomfortable, cut‑off, even disor­iented, if they go more than a few hours without a report of doings in places hundreds and thousands of miles away. When our ancestors were not thinking of themselves, their family, the men they knew personally, of what did they think? Most often it was of God, angels, saints, a sermon recently heard at the parish church, and so on. Often, they would pray. The evidence of this abounds. Look at Millet’s famous l9th century painting, The Angelus. At the sound of the village church bell, peasants in a field have stopped work to pray. When men stop work today, they turn on the news to find out the latest from Moscow, Sarajevo, Mogadishu. Why is the news, the unceasing flow of information from faraway places, so important to them?

For one thing, it provides them with a constant sense of something transpiring beyond their own horizon. Thus, it lifts them out of the routine of their daily exis­tence and at the same time offers the illusion of their being in touch with a reality greater than themselves. All this is very reassuring, to boot, especially when the reported news events concern war, revolution, famine and other terrible things. After all, one is not directly affected by the events. One is hearing or reading the news in comfort.

 

That brings us to another dimension of the news that makes it the principal mo­dern substitute for religion. It explains why the news is so much preoccupied with violence and death, with murder and rape and other criminal assaults, with fatal accidents, massacres, earthquake and flood victims, and so on. To the consumer of the news concerning these things, the death is always of someone else, the injury is done to another. He, himself, has survived. Thus, the news, as did religion formerly, gives him a sense of immortality.

Now, how will the news and information superhighway enable true religion­—the one true religion—to penetrate the consciousness of the news consumer, displacing the false religion which is now its substitute?

The answer is that there is a vast difference between having within the range of your remote control 20 television channels and 500, a difference that is more than quantitative between collecting a library of 2,000 volumes and having available via your PC the entire contents of the Library of Congress. There is a difference between occasionally suffering information overload and being bombarded by so much that you are reduced to stupefaction. Most modern men, unsustained by moral commitment or firm conviction, will be overwhelmed by everything the superhighway makes avail­able, because it will be everything, or at least more than is useful, needed or desir­able for one man in a lifetime. In such circumstances nothing will be more valuable—perhaps even in the marketplace–than an identifiable point of view.

Accordingly, celebrities may be paid to share with media subscribers who are fans their own choices from among everything the news and information superhighway makes available. However, no matter how zealous the fan, no celebrity can always be to him be an infallible guide to anything, not to books, music or movies, much less to life.

Only the Faith is an infallible guide, and it is what men will need and want once they start speeding down the news and information superhighway. This means that Catholic commentators who can offer an insight or two on subjects of interest (like the insight offered here on the news as a substitute for religion) and, above all, who keep the promise made by this magazine in an ad in the October issue—to be “a cure for dizzying times” will have a brilliant future. Of course, the promise will only be kept by upholding Catholic truth undiluted.

If it is kept, it does not mean the restoration of Christendom will follow immedi­ately. The world once heard Jesus Himself, and still rejected Him. However, the near future seems to offer the opportunity of capturing the attention of more men looking for answers and susceptible to accepting Christian ones than has existed for a long time. And, once again, making converts will be the first step to restoring Chris­tendom even as it was the first in building the original model starting two millennia ago.

 

Mind you, none of this is to say a medium like The Angelus must itself become but a part of the superhighway instead of remaining a magazine. Everything on the superhighway will always be a flickering electronic image, even if it is stored on a disc for periodic retrieval. The guess here is that serious men will always want something like a magazine provided it is serious, because it can be kept on a shelf like a book, or in a desk drawer like a gun.