My quixotic campaign against Twitter has taken a serious blow. I just found out that John Michael Talbot is on Twitter. John Michael freakin’ Talbot. The man who lives as a monk. The man who wrote “The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality into your Daily Life.” The man who has albums with names like “Meditations from Solitude” and “Quiet Pathways.”

Something tells me that I’m losing this battle…

Bravo to Br. Charles! He has decided to delete his Plurk and Twitter accounts. I give him great credit for quickly recognizing that these technologies were not conducive to his prayer life and walk with God.

When I first started this blog, I was concerned that it could negatively impact my spiritual life. I kept close watch on myself: Was I neglecting my prayer life to keep up the blog? Was my activity on my blog and on the internet in general creeping into my interior life? These are questions we must all ask ourselves regularly.

I still keep a close watch on my attitude, and Br. Charles’ actions serve as a great reminder to all of us of the priority of the interior life over any apostolic work we might engage in.

My quixotic campaign against Twitter continues:

H/t: Justine

Readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of Twitter. Truth be told, Twitter exposes my love/hate relationship with the Internet in general: although I do love the benefits that this technology has brought to the world, I fear how it is remaking culture and our ability to relate to one another. Twitter is simply the most extreme form of this new communications form (currently).

Christianity Today editor Mark Galli has a wonderful article on their site relating technologies like Twitter and the Internet to the Trinity. He writes,

[T]he heart of the Trinity is not fine theological distinctions but a relation of love, a fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit, a super-community that is so unified in love that it counts as one being.

The nature of this love overflows—love begets love and even more beings to love. And for some reason, God—who is spirit—nonetheless wishes to make this love a tangible reality in the things he creates. This starts from “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” to “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” to

“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Rev. 21:2-3)

The movement of God is toward deeper and deeper incarnation, enfleshment. It appears that the glory of our existence as beings created, redeemed, and blessed by God is a tangible, physical existence, in which we live together and love one another in an embodied way…

And so we come to the age of the Internet. For all its obvious flaws, it does seem to bring people together to communicate, collaborate, and create community. As Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine, waxed eloquent recently, “Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide.” He noted Wikipedia as “just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism,” and also pointed to collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, Twine, Wesabe, and of course Twitter. “Nearly every day,” Kelly concludes, “another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action.”

In this essay, Kelly compares the “collectivism” of the internet with classic socialism. Along the way he says things like this:

Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs.

It’s at this point that we spot the great weakness of this technology. The type of community that can quickly and easily be fostered on the Internet is a disembodied one, one in which only minds meet, and that works at cross purposes to the movement of God in history.

This reality should be a clear lesson of the hierarchy of human relations: direct, face-to-face, communications between two people is always superior to ethereal communications, such as you experience in email, blogs, twitter, and even the phone (note, for example, that you cannot receive the Sacrament of Confession except in the physical presence of the priest). New forms of communication can be beneficial when face-to-face communications are not possible, but they should never replace them. Yet how many of us have more contact with people across the country than we do with people across the street?

Some would say that the technology is simply neutral and we should not demonize it. Just don’t abuse it, many would say. But anyone who has been involved with the Internet for any length of time knows how addictive it can become. As Galli observes,

Not a few of us find ourselves addicted to email. It is a wonderful thing to be able to connect with so many people so quickly and efficiently. But like many, I often find myself so drawn to my Blackberry and laptop that I fail to be present with the flesh and blood person who is standing before me. I look at them and pretend like I’m listening, but my mind strains to get back to my email. The technology is obviously undermining my ability to be present in an embodied way to the real person in front of me.

We see the same sort of problem with angry emails that are sent because we’re afraid of actually talking the issues through face to face. Or viewing pornography rather than engaging in a deeper relationship with one’s wife.

Our fallen nature appears to gravitate towards poorer forms of communication and interaction – perhaps because they are easier to engage in and can hide difficult aspects of human relationships. Yet these new technologies are no substitute for the Incarnational nature of real face-to-face interaction. As Christians, we need to work in our own lives to ensure that technology doesn’t replace our embodied relationships – they must have priority in our lives.

From our Holy Father:

I am inviting all those who make use of the new technologies of communication, especially the young, to utilize them in a positive way and to realize the great potential of these means to build up bonds of friendship and solidarity that can contribute to a better world.

Young people in particular, I appeal to you: bear witness to your faith through the digital world!

Employ these new technologies to make the Gospel known, so that the Good News of God’s infinite love for all people, will resound in new ways across our increasingly technological world!

Let’s get to it!

I have a confession to make: I’m not a fan of Twitter. My complaint comes down primarily to one aspect of it: the 140 character limit they place on posts. I just don’t like the fact that you are forced to limit your posts to such a short amount of text. Should you limit Shakespeare? Would you tell Tolkien to reign in his description of the effects of the Ring? Could Brothers Karamazov be as powerful in a tweet? The entire setup of Twitter discourages reflection, as the goal seems to be to post as immediately as possible. Is it not worthwhile to pause and reflect on an event before letting the world know about it?

And now it is discovered that Twitter makes you evil, and the reason is the shortness of it! I knew it!

Frankly, other than a few people like the Curt Jester, I find that very few are talented enough to be pithy in under 140 characters. Most people will just relate the minutiae of their life in boring detail (but perhaps that is how some would describe this blog…)

I just read a great editorial in the Catholic Sun, the Phoenix Diocesan paper, about the use of new technologies for Catholic evangelization. It notes that it is necessary for the Church to be in the midst of these technologies, as they are used by many people.

But it also notes,

[F]or all these new Web sites and their interesting takes on rewriting our English lexicon, they are merely another step in helping us get to a place of greater importance.

Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ communications committee and a participant at the Vatican seminar, got to the heart of the matter: the ultimate focus should be on the liturgy and the eucharistic celebration.

“So the center of faith is not going to be the Internet,” he said. “But the Internet is going to be a wonderful vehicle for people to climb that summit — to the experience of the Eucharist, of Church and faith — and it’s going to be a place that can help that flowing forth as well.”

This is a very important point. As much as blogs, facebook, twitter and other technologies can give one a sense of community, they are not true communities in the fullest sense of that term. As humans, we are both body and soul, and the “bodiless” community that the Internet fosters is not a complete means to meet the needs of human community. Note the terms used to designate the Internet – “ether,” “cloud” – these words reflect a one-sided part of the human experience, and we need to be careful not to let this tool become our primary means of communication and community. There is no “2nd Life” except the afterlife, and in that life, we will eventually receive our (glorified or damned) bodies.

Catholicism, at its root, is a sacramental/incarnational religion. Our salvation occurred when God – a Spirit – became man. It should be remembered that none of the sacraments of the Church – not even confession – can be administered via the internet. The Church resists the Gnostic heresy which wants to separate body and soul, physical and spiritual.

Furthermore, as Catholics, we are not just part of a community, but a communion. The communion that is founded upon the Eucharist and realized in the local parish is the most complete and foundational community that man can be part of. That includes even “bad” parishes. The Eucharist is the bond that unites Catholics into a deep unity that goes beyond mere social commonality, and through the Eucharist, one is intimately connected to his or her fellow Catholics in a way that even a familial bond cannot provide.

Technology can be a wonderful tool, but it must be seen as the means to the end, which is union with Christ and through him union with others through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Nothing – nothing – will ever replace that as the “source and summit” of our life here on earth.

Not even a blog.