If you are looking for the latest news about Hollywood celebrities, this blog is the last place to look. Frankly, I don’t understand our national obsession regarding the comings and goings and views of movie and TV actors. This obsession has infected Catholics as well: we too often obsess about whether or not this or that actor is Catholic, what actors think about Catholicism and whether or not a movie or show is pro- or anti-Catholic. We place an incredibly inordinate amount of importance on people whose main talent is playing make-believe.

That being said, I just read an interesting interview with actor Jim Caviezel regarding his latest endeavor (a “re-creation” of the 1960s show The Prisoner). Caviezel appears to be a fine chap and of course I enjoyed his work in The Passion of the Christ. But what struck me most about this interview was the following statement he made (emphasis added):

[I]t reflects on the economy, on the world lack of trust. People become so disconnected. There was a time when people would sit down and have dinner together and they would say, “How are you,” and they would have to deal with one another. They don’t have to deal with each other anymore. They deal with their iPods and their Blackberries. And they’re missing a lot of opportunities here, watching people that they could have met earlier who would have changed their life, that’s gone because their head is somewhere else. I’m in Manhattan, New York, and walking across the street with your Blackberry is kind of a death wish, don’t you think?

I find Caviezel’s connection between trust and technology to be very insightful, and I’m impressed that someone who most likely lives surrounded by this type of technology could see this so clearly.

Technology has supposedly “connected” us in new ways, but we are actually more disconnected than ever before. We don’t know our neighbors and we often don’t even know the members of our own family as we keep our eyes on our gadgets instead of on other people. Yet Christ calls us to make deep connections with others so that we can truly share God’s love with them. This can only be done on a limited level on the Internet, and it can never replace the deep connectivity that comes from true interpersonal relationships.