Catholic Influencer Culture and a Paradigm of Vulnerability¹

My experience with online “influencer” culture began when I joined a congregation of religious sisters dedicated to evangelization through modern media. Although I’m no longer with that religious community, the twelve years I spent with them shaped my approach to media, particularly through the spirituality of their founder, Blessed James Alberione. Alberione, an Italian priest born in 1884, exhorted the sisters to evangelize “with the quickest and most effective modern means.” [2] As a novice, I took this exhortation to heart and became active on social media—especially on X (formerly Twitter). I was active for several years when I began sharing about memento mori, the traditional Catholic practice of meditation on one’s inevitable death. I quickly gained tens of thousands of followers on social media and my work eventually received national attention, including a front-page article in The New York Times.[3] At this point, I became what one might consider a “Catholic influencer.” 

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My early media work in the convent was shaped by two of Alberione’s guiding criteria: 1) to reach as many people as possible and 2) to do so effectively. As a young sister, I tended to prioritize the first—broad reach—while giving less attention to the second. Over time, however, my online encounters with individuals led me to recognize the greater importance of effectiveness in communication, particularly in presenting the faith in ways that resonate within today’s cultural context. This growing awareness was one factor that led Sr. Danielle Victoria Lussier and me to found a new religious community, the Sisters of the Little Way of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. Our mission centers on reaching those on the fringes of the Church—especially those wounded, abused, or scandalized by members of the Church. Effectiveness in communication—not merely reach—is now our guiding principle and we believe that this approach requires a paradigm of evangelization that prioritizes digital methods rooted in the principles of the Gospel. In what follows, I will examine the reasons for this need and propose what such a paradigm might entail.

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The Media and the Church

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 Before articulating the contours of any paradigm for evangelization, it’s important to first situate the discussion within the broader historical context of the Church’s evolving relationship with media. The Church’s relationship with technological progress and emerging media has undergone significant development over the centuries. A particularly pivotal moment came with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century—a technological advancement that many historians link to the rise of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Perhaps this historical association contributed, at a deep, perhaps even subconscious ecclesial level, to a perception of new media as potentially destabilizing or threatening to the Church’s life and authority. Such a legacy may explain the Church’s historically cautious stance toward media innovation. In the early 20th century, visionary figures like Blessed James Alberione urged the Church to move beyond this caution and to recognize the evangelizing potential of modern forms of communication. Movements such as these led the Church to greater openness to new forms of media. In 1957, Pope Pius XII referred to media as “gifts of God” [4] and this phrase was repeated in the Vatican II document Communio et Progressio. 

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More recently, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ marked a return to a more cautious, yet balanced, approach to technology. Drawing on the thought of theologian Romano Guardini, he warns that “Science and technology are not neutral; from the beginning to the end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on distinct shapes.” [5] Yet Pope Francis avoids a reactionary stance, writing, “Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way.”[6] In this way, Pope Francis avoids naive optimism while acknowledging that these profound technological changes are now part of our world. His view represents a mature and realistic recognition of the opportunities and risks technology presents.

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Pope Benedict XVI added another important layer to this conversation by referring to the internet as a “digital continent”[7]—a powerful metaphor that calls to mind the missionary journeys of the past. Perhaps this metaphor still resonates with those who remember life before the internet and experienced digital media as something new—a space to enter. But for younger generations, this metaphor may no longer hold. Canadian philosopher and media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, once said, “It is inconceivable that a fish could discover water or that anybody could discover anything that was totally surrounding his senses.”[8] Younger generations are the fish swimming in water that they barely recognize as water. For them, the digital continent is not so much a space apart as a reality that now inhabits our lives and our world in an intertwined way that we can barely even begin to recognize, let alone describe. All the continents of the world are submerged in the digital continent; it’s the water we breathe. Thus, digital evangelization cannot be seen as merely another form of evangelization; it is a new layer of the world’s reality—and therefore of evangelization itself—that we cannot, even if we would prefer to, excise or ignore. Digital technology has not just reshaped communication, it has also impacted how we experience reality, including the Church. And just as the ground shifted beneath the Church after the invention of the printing press and the subsequent Reformation, the ground has shifted once again. 

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In the 1980s, revelations of clergy abuse in Canada and the United States began to emerge. Amplified and accelerated by digital platforms, a groundswell of abuse reports emerged in the early 2000s that could no longer be ignored. As these revelations spread globally, they sparked widespread demands for accountability and reform, both within the Church and from the broader public—demands that the hierarchy and internal structures of the Church were, unfortunately, unprepared to meet. The repercussions of this digital reckoning continue to deeply impact the Church’s authority and public witness in the world. Any discussion of the definition of the ideal role of Catholic influencers must begin with an awareness of this context. In the eyes of many, the Church’s presence in the world is now linked with its failure to protect the most vulnerable—those very “little ones” Jesus commanded us to cherish (Mt 18:10). Any authentic conversation about digital evangelization must acknowledge this reality. The care of the vulnerable has always been essential to spreading the Gospel message. Today, it is absolutely critical. 

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The Catholic Influencer

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The word “influence” originates from an astrological term from the 13th century meaning “emanation from the stars that acts upon one's character and destiny.” [9] This etymology likely also explains why celebrities are often called “stars.” Not surprisingly, in popular culture the ideas of an 'influencer' and a 'celebrity' are closely intertwined. However, in light of the Church’s theological tradition, it is important to distinguish between influence and celebrity when considering the role of Catholic influencers. Typically, influencers are defined by metrics: views, followers, and likes. Success is measured by the size of an audience or the virality of content. Yet this approach obscures a deeper and more important question: what does it mean to be a Catholic influencer in light of the Gospel?

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We’ll explore this question by considering first what makes an influencer a “Catholic influencer.” The most obvious answer would be: their content. However, Marshall McLuhan’s famous insight—“the medium is the message”[10]—challenges this assumption. His insight is that the way we deliver content shapes its meaning more than the content itself. If Catholic influencers use the same platforms and strategies as secular influencers and behave in virtually the same ways, then the real “message” isn’t as much what they’re saying—it’s how they’re saying it. Given this, the definition of a Catholic influencer becomes more complicated. It’s not just about how many people you reach or the content you share but how you reach people and what that communicates. 

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For example, Catholic influencers, including religious and clergy, are not always online simply to share the Gospel. Financial considerations are often present in the background. Many popular Catholic influencers rely on content creation to support themselves, their families, or their ministries. Though not inherently wrong, this approach often blurs the lines between faith-sharing and product marketing. Indeed, many Catholic influencers promote not only faith-based content but also products like mascara or sandals—items with no explicit connection to Catholicism.[11] McLuhan’s insight becomes especially relevant here because if we use digital media in ways that prioritize metrics, marketing, and monetization—even for good causes—then this may end up becoming our message more than the content we share.

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McLuhan once argued that we often deliver catechesis as if it were a nut we give a person to swallow without first breaking the shell. This manner of catechizing, according to McLuhan, “doesn’t give [people] a taste for doctrine but only makes them swallow it.”[12] In other words, we can’t know, based on views alone, whether someone is really “cracking the shell” to get to the heart of our message. Similarly, when our primary goal becomes delivering content to the largest possible audience, the faith-based message risks being swallowed by a medium that prioritizes performance, marketing, and entertainment. If we uncritically adopt the strategies of other influencers, we may believe we are effectively preaching the Gospel, when in reality we may be distorting both ourselves and the message we hope to share. Evangelization requires intentionality. Without it, we risk being used and “evangelized” by the very media we think we're using for evangelization. 

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Returning to our original question—whether high numbers of likes, views, and shares necessarily indicate that a Catholic content creator is influencing others toward Christ—the answer is no. In the Gospel sense, a true influencer draws others toward Christ. Going back to the etymology of the word “influence,” perhaps we can think of a Catholic celebrity as a star that does not necessarily emanate Christ’s light and influence and a Catholic influencer as a person who does. A Catholic influencer, in the truest sense, is someone whose presence and actions reflect the light of Christ to others. According to this definition, anyone can be an influencer in the Gospel sense. In fact, a celebrity with tens of thousands of followers and likes may influence people to Christ less than someone with very few.  

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Catholic influencers and media organizations hold real power in today’s digital world, power can either build up or destroy  (2 Cor. 13:10). Romano Guardini wrote, “Power is as much a possibility for good and the positive as it is a threat of destruction and evil. The danger grows with the growth of power.”[13] Some Catholic influencers now have more reach and visibility than their local bishops. With this power comes tremendous responsibility to influence others to Christ and to use our power to influence people in positive ways. Metrics alone are not a reliable measure of whether influence is positive. Ensuring that we influence others to Christ does not necessarily require good metrics as much as a Gospel-rooted paradigm for online evangelization. As we conclude, we will explore what such a guiding framework might entail. 

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A Framework of Vulnerability 

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Philosopher Bernard Prusak identifies “moral blindness” as one major issue in the culture of the Church that leads to abuse and its cover-up. He notes this moral blindness in both bishops who cover up abuse and abusive clergy. Operating with radically truncated understandings of the wrong of sexual abuse, they focus on the ‘acts’ of the abusers rather than the harm done to victims. This blindness for Prusak is not rooted in moral relativism, but in what he terms “vicious conscientiousness.”[14] He describes this vice as a “lamentable responsiveness to obligations one wrongly believes oneself to have, to the detriment of obligations one really has.”[15] In other words, bishops and abusive priests were conscientious in a sense but their conscientiousness was tethered to an inadequate moral code. In this framework, a person’s conscience is not exercised authentically but is circumvented by a moral code influenced by institutional norms. Prusak contrasts this with the figure of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 10:25-37). The Good Samaritan exhibits moral awareness rather than moral blindness because he was able to respond to the vulnerability of the wounded man. For Prusak, the development of moral sensitivity toward the vulnerable can serve as a bulwark against the moral blindness that led to abuse and its cover-up in the Church.

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Moral theologian James Keenan, SJ, has also explored the roots of the abuse crisis by reflecting on the Good Samaritan parable, conscience, and vulnerability. Responding to the Church’s failure to respond to victims of abuse, he argues, “Should we not look precisely at vulnerability, a reality that we overlooked as our bishops turned deaf ears to vulnerable parents, about vulnerable children and vulnerable adults who were horrendously violated.”[16] For Keenan, like Prusak, the Good Samaritan is an example of someone able to act morally because he first recognizes vulnerability—his conscience is awakened by a prior, affective recognition of the wounded man’s suffering. Keenan thus argues that even before conscience, “vulnerability and recognition are the necessary preconditions for preparing for the moral life.”[17] Conscience then can become malformed if it does not begin in the dynamic of recognizing vulnerability—first in God who came to save us, then in ourselves, and finally in others. In light of this, Keenan proposes an “ethics of vulnerability” in which moral responsiveness begins with the capacity to recognize and be moved by the vulnerability of others.

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Both thinkers converge on the argument that moral blindness—the refusal to acknowledge vulnerability and the resulting distortion of conscience—is a critical factor in the Church’s failure to adequately address abuse. While bishops hold particular responsibility for not recognizing and protecting the vulnerable, we are not vaccinated against the moral blindness that both Prusak and Keenan observe at the roots of abuse in the Church. A professor of moral theology, Keenan observes that some of his highest-achieving students demonstrate a similar lack of ethical responsiveness: “If they had a role in the Good Samaritan parable they would be like the priest and the Levite. Like them, they knew about the law and principles of conduct but in many instances, they do not vulnerably recognize the wounded one.”[18] These observations should stop us in our tracks, especially when we apply them to digital evangelization. We must intentionally counter our tendency toward the very moral blindness that played a central role in the abuse crisis—or, as McLuhan tells us, it risks becoming the true “message” of our evangelization. The digital media landscape is not neutral; it is already historically implicated in the exposure of clerical abuse. Catholic influencers, therefore, must be vigilant to avoid replicating the moral failures that have so damaged the Church’s credibility. A framework rooted in vulnerability offers a crucial corrective to this risk. 

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Living a framework of vulnerability is a practice that requires both creators and consumers of Catholic digital content to continually discern whether vulnerability—both personal and that of others—is being intentionally acknowledged or obscured. The difficulty is that the digital landscape presents persistent temptations to sidestep a paradigm of vulnerability, thereby reinforcing rather than challenging moral blindness. Influencers experience significant pressure to project certainty, expertise, and authority in pursuit of digital capital—likes, views, and followers. But striving to be perceived as an “expert” in the faith often conflicts with the vulnerability required to reveal limitations, fears, and faults. Influential Catholic figures online, especially those seeking to support themselves through their work, frequently forgo the possibility of meaningful engagement with others for superficial interactions. Dialogical formats, critical feedback, and spaces for mutual transformation are routinely sacrificed for efficient, consumable, and marketable content. Moreover, while tools such as comment moderation, content filtering, and blocking may be necessary at times, they can also serve to shield creators from discomfort, limiting their encounters with those wounded along the “digital highway.”

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One practical metric for evaluating our fidelity to a paradigm of vulnerability is whether we are willing to pay the cost. Are we willing to pay the cost if attending to the vulnerable diminishes our profits or popularity? Our commitment to the vulnerable must supersede our commitment to so-called digital success. The use of “clickbait” headlines that scapegoat vulnerable populations, whether overtly or subtly, is a clear failure in this regard. Any act that shields the self from vulnerability while exposing or exploiting the vulnerability of others is a rejection of this framework. 

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Returning to the figure of the Good Samaritan, the Gospel of Luke tells us he was “moved with compassion at the sight” of the injured man (Lk 10:33). If, as Thomas Aquinas taught, all knowledge begins from the senses, then our digital behavior must also be deeply shaped by our embodied, spatial-relational experiences. To authentically live out a paradigm of vulnerability, we must be moved by the vulnerable in our physical world. If we do not make opportunities for this, we will unlikely be able to respond meaningfully to the wounded we encounter online. The digital cannot be divorced from the incarnational. A genuine commitment to effective evangelization, therefore, must be not only strategic and digital but also embodied, sacrificial, and rooted in lived human encounters.

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At first glance, a framework of vulnerability might risk sounding like a collection of idealistic platitudes—until we recall that it emerges from the Church’s concrete and devastating history of abuse and cover-up, a history rooted in moral blindness. These failures occur when the Church neglects to place the vulnerable—God’s “little ones”—at the heart of its moral vision. In the face of such horror, we may be tempted to look away, to shift focus to more uplifting narratives, and to produce spiritualized content detached from the painful realities of people’s lived experiences. Yet if we dare to live this paradigm of vulnerability and to refuse to avert our gaze, we open ourselves to a deeper engagement with the heart of the Gospel. Only then can our evangelization become truly credible and transformative.

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So, when is an influencer truly a Catholic influencer? In the final analysis, we cannot definitively determine who is or is not a Catholic influencer. As with all things, the truth will be revealed only in the light of eternity. In the meantime, McLuhan’s insight that “the medium is the message” need not be read solely as a warning. Instead, it can serve as an invitation: to recognize that we ourselves are called to embody the Gospel message. True influence is not self-referential or performative; it is cruciform. When united with Christ, we do not simply transmit content—we become vessels of his light. Like stars set in the night sky, we can radiate not just with the backlight of our computers and smartphones but with the light of Christ.