It is hard to say. As with any decision to speak or not, it always depends on the particularities of the context and the openness of the audience to persuasion.
In general, I think people spend too much time thinking about how to build online community and not enough on their local, embodied community. The funny thing is that if all Catholics collectively decided to stop participating on a given platform, depending on the platform, that might have a serious impact on the company's profitability. In addition to reflecting on how the medium hedges in what we can say and how we can say it, I think we need to recognize as Catholics that this isn't a real public sphere. I'm typing this comment, for example, on a platform that has commercial interests. And those commercial interests may infect all my writing and responses, such that I may avoid controversial topics if it means losing my account, etc.
In an ideal world, the Internet would disappear. Communal gardens and common pastures would spring up. Handwritten letters and books would replace email and blogs. Face to face conversation would constitute the overwhelming majority of our daily interactions.
Thanks for watching! Let me know if you have any questions/comments.
It is hard to say. As with any decision to speak or not, it always depends on the particularities of the context and the openness of the audience to persuasion.
In general, I think people spend too much time thinking about how to build online community and not enough on their local, embodied community. The funny thing is that if all Catholics collectively decided to stop participating on a given platform, depending on the platform, that might have a serious impact on the company's profitability. In addition to reflecting on how the medium hedges in what we can say and how we can say it, I think we need to recognize as Catholics that this isn't a real public sphere. I'm typing this comment, for example, on a platform that has commercial interests. And those commercial interests may infect all my writing and responses, such that I may avoid controversial topics if it means losing my account, etc.
In an ideal world, the Internet would disappear. Communal gardens and common pastures would spring up. Handwritten letters and books would replace email and blogs. Face to face conversation would constitute the overwhelming majority of our daily interactions.