by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
It is one thing for a hermit in a remote monastery to use the internet to do research and publish books of videos. But it is quite another thing for a Catholic in a city to shut himself up in his apartment, forsaking all human interaction with those in the city, because of his constant use of social media.
The difference between the two is that one has forsaken human company for God, and the other has forsake human company for himself.
The first is an act of religion, the second is anti-social behavior.
Much has been written on the destructive nature of the internet on the grounds of pornography, but little on the grounds that its use frequently leads to dehumanization.
You cannot control humanity and enslave the masses easily without the internet. With social media it has become easier, and with cellphones very easy. So many persons have such poor habits of self reflection — because they do not pray nor do they examine their own consciences before God — that the allure of the latest app or method of electronic social communication is enough to remove them from all human society.
Over my nearly 40 years of vocation I have seen so many Catholics who are devout become inactive and neglect the works of mercy in their own neighborhoods and cities. They have bought the lie that sharing information is all that God requires of us. And the result of this slide into the virtual world is the dissolution of the Church.
The Corona Plandemic targeted the remnants of parish communities by banning the mass and sacraments. The TV or VIDEO mass in live streaming was presented as an equivalent substitute. This is completely and in every respect contrary to the Faith.
The Virus Mass — that is the mass with rubrics changed to suit the paranoia desired by the Plandemic — will be the next horror. It violates the authority of the Church, who alone governs what goes on in the Church. It violates the authority of Christ Who by His resurrection assured us that He was the Source of all Life and Health, and Who in ascending into Heaven assured us that He has receive authority and power over everything, even infections. But Who yet gave us the sacraments in the form which requires human contact and personal testimony without hiding who we are.
The virus mass would never have been considered acceptable without the advent of the TV Mass, the Internet Mass and the addiction to social media. The masquerade mass is like Social Media, where you can hide who you are and pretend.
None of this is Catholic, human, humane or rational.
God is Truth and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And as Saint Paul teaches, to worship God spiritually, we must worship Him rationally.
This also means we must live among human beings in person and in the real world. It is an obligation of Christian faith, because Our God is the God of the real world, not the gods of social media, such as Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Adam Mosseri, or Sundar Pichai. None of whom is even a Catholic.
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Absolutely. One thing that still stands out to me in the book Iota Unum is that V2 might not have gone off the rails so badly if it wasn’t for the constant presence of the media, which somehow put pressure one everyone to care too much about giving the impression that everything was fine.
Social media (especially chat rooms) has gone berserk but out of lockdown there is still a lot of social contact. Social contact while good (we are all social animals) can lead to heavy drinking, smoking, drug taking, fights etc. which is not good. It has been reported that domestic assault has risen phenomenally since lockdown, which proves there is a downside to everything. I feel that used properly for information, study, research, etc. on almost every subject you could think of is exceptional & has improved peoples interest in all manners of topics – religious, political, educational, sport etc. that they seldom showed any desire to learn about before acquiring a cell ‘phone, iPad, video or laptop.
I must say that I don’t agree with hermits, monks, cloistered orders having these appliances as I am totally old-fashioned in my thinking that their purpose is to pray, pray, pray for us who have to engage & wrestle with everyday life – the costly begetting, rearing & education of children, working for firms who only offer minimum wages that are not sufficient for the young to get married & leads to cohabitation, contraception etc. Cloistered orders (Men & Women) don’t have these concerns & any research they want to do can easily be done the way their predecessors did in the past by reading books – antique & modern, which most religious have stacks of, or asking libraries to order their needs. If they want to publish books for monetary return they should not join a cloistered order. The number of Bishops & Cardinals on the publishing circuit making a mint gives bad example when they don’t specify a charity to gain from their output.