But these concerns and the other raised by Fr George address only the limitations of the internet as a tool. They do not, in my view, make the internet an inappropriate vehicle for disseminating information about the Gospel or the internal life of the Church. And I dare say Fr George would agree with me since, in spite of the limitations that he describes, he too makes use of the internet to advance his own views about how the internal life of the Church should be structured.
But it is not only with the internet that we see a convergence of medium and message. This is also the case with the Church. Much more so than with any other communication technology, the Church is both messenger and message. We both proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are also the message we proclaim. Try as we might, I’m not sure that we can separate the message from its messenger.
Certainly in the case of Jesus Christ we see a harmony of Message and Messenger. In the Church something similar happens. Reasonably people look to the life of the Church for evidence that the Gospel is true.
Reflecting on Jesus’ words (“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” Mark 9.42), St Augustine asks “And who is not terrified . . . by the threat of punishment uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord himself?” (City of God, 21.9)
Like it or not, the Scriptures, the fathers and human experience all tell us that any dissonance between the Gospel and the life of the preacher harms not only those who listen to the sermon but the one who preaches the sermon. Granting that everything Fr George says about the internet is true without qualification, “comments posted still stand and fall on their own merits” as you rightly point out.
While it is comforting to blame the internet, the real problem is (again as you point out) “is the lack of truth, lack of ethics, lack of integrity, and lack of Christ.” But if this is true, then I need to disagree with Chris’s analysis on one point.
Yes, there that has become the norm for many in the Church. This being true I would have to disagree with you on one point. Yes, “ravenous wolves forsook their sacramental duties and instead of laying down their lives for the sheep, used their sacred positions to abuse, mistreat, and scatter the sheep.” But it is easy to forget that these men came from within the Church and that, in a certain sense, we got the leaders we deserved.
What I mean by this is that while these men’s sins are their own, it is also true true that in many of our parishes the Gospel is not preached because no one wishes to hear the Gospel. We are all together to self-satisfied, more willing to defend Orthodoxy the proclaim Christ. As a brother priest expressed it to me one day. “I’ve come to realize that in the parish we talk a great deal about ‘the parish,” that is about St X’s Orthodox Church. We talk somewhat less, but still quite a lot, about Orthodoxy. And about Jesus Christ, about him we speak very little if at all.”
So here is the question: Do we want lay and clergy leaders who tirelessly and fearlessly proclaim Christ? And, as a secondary question because the medium is the message, do we want parishes where Christ is not only tirelessly and fearlessly proclaimed but where the Gospel is the reason for our gathering?
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
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