THE HANK CENTER
FOR THE CATHOLIC INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE
Catholic Media Ecology: Realists, Influencers, Neighbors
01
Michael P. Murphy
.Kind greetings, and welcome to Nexus: Conversations on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, a digital-age journal that amplifies and publishes scholarly dialogue taking place in the Hank Center here at Loyola University Chicago. We are pleased to report that Nexus is achieving what we hoped it would: providing fresh insight and sturdy scholarship in relatively fast, farm to table “turnaround” time...
02
Bo Bonner & Michael P. Murphy
Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 proclamation that “the medium is the message” has long been considered properly for what it is: a prophetic statement. McLuhan’s insight that the world, because of its “electrically computerized dossier bank” had become “one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early mistake” certainly was observable in the late 1960’s; but few could have predicted how fully operative, just 60 years later, this worrisome observation would be.
03
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, Sisters of the Little Way
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. At this point, I became what one might consider a “Catholic influencer.” ...
04
Brett Robinson, Ph.D.
I first met Marshall McLuhan’s son, Eric, in Rome in 2016. Eric was speaking at the invitation of the Vatican about his father’s intellectual legacy and how it might shed some light on the social media revolution unfolding at the time. We shared a nice dinner at Trattoria Polese, a few hundred meters from Saint Peter’s Square, but Eric seemed exasperated. He explained that his father Marshall, the well-known Catholic scholar of media and culture, had been invited by the Vatican 50 years earlier to weigh in on the new media of his era, television. But as far as Eric knew, Marshall’s interventions were ignored, “probably left in a drawer somewhere,” he said. Eric feared that his recent intervention at the Vatican also fell on deaf ears...
05
Luigi Russi
In this piece, I would like to begin by remembering the nature of learning as precisely a journey from fragmentation to resolution. This act of memory will afford, I hope, sufficient footing to engage in a principled reflection on the way in which the Church can be a catalyst for learning amidst the digital cacophony, folding the partiality of fragments into a journey of discipleship...
06
Bo Bonner
In a perfect world, I would do ________.” Many a thought experiment begins with such a conditional statement. If everything else could be equal, what host of reforms might we enact for the sake of the common good! But the fated refrain soon comes: “Get real! That would never happen,” and “we have to live in the world as it actually is.” If our present collection has as a foundational concept digital realism, then this most human of commonplaces regarding the “real world” is of paramount importance to consider...
07
Fr. Aaron Morris
Courage Dear Heart,
Fear no wild worldly woe!
Before dazzling Cathedrals
Were catacombs,
Dark dreary—yet full of life!...
08
Noah R. Banasiewicz, SJ
For the past fifty years, evangelization has been the primary concern in the Catholic Church’s reflection upon its mission in the world. While the Church has sought to proclaim the Gospel since its conception, shifts in the religious landscapes of Europe and North America have rightly left the Church distressed and in search of an appropriate response. This concern has occupied the forefront of Catholic thought, receiving extensive attention from the pontificate of Pope Francis and the three that preceded him.
09
Renée D. Roden
Today, many people are turning to social media and other digital platforms as Catholic "influencers," hoping to spread the Good News. Responding to an age marked by religious disaffiliation, these individuals see digital tools as a means to fulfill Christ’s call to go and “make disciples of all nations.” The ambition behind this endeavor is indeed a holy one, yet it is prone to manipulation and distortion given the realities of the digital environment...
10
Noah Bradon
The digital revolution has dismantled the gatekeepers of old, democratizing influence while leaving a credibility vacuum in its wake. Trust is no longer conferred institutionally but individually, and follower count is often conflated with authority. In this ever-shifting landscape, the Church faces an urgent challenge: how can we communicate our reason for hope when traditional measures of trust fail?...
11
Aaron Lewis & Josh Michael
We are perhaps unlikely and peculiar contributors to an academic journal about Catholic digital influencers. The platform of our ministry is not a social media app — it’s a pop-up garden that we established atop 10,000 square feet of asphalt in the alley behind our apartment. But over the last five years of parenting this outdoor community center, we’ve learned that not even gardens live outside the reach of digital culture...
12
On the Technocratic Paradigm, Automation, and Our Human Future
Interview with Eugene McCarraher
Professor McCarraher is a denizen, in any case, of a particular media ecology and has much to say about religious, intellectual, moral, and economic life as it traffics in various media environments. He has written for Dissent and The Nation and contributes regularly to Commonweal, The Hedgehog Review, and Raritan. His work on The Enchantments of Mammon was supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor McCarraher’s latest book in preparation is tentatively titled Automated Vistas: Visions of Automation from Ancient Greece to Silicon Valley and will be published by Yale University Press...
13
Noah R. Banasiewicz, SJ
If we wish to grasp the varied ways that the current media environment is shaping human perception, understanding, and relationships, we must turn to media ecology. While many may recognize the subtle, implicit pressures our media environment imposes upon our ways of thinking and feeling, media ecology provides the language to name those dynamics more explicitly and describe their roles more concretely....