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Ireland’s Catholic primate has criticised the way social media is being turned into a harsh and dehumanising environment for some.
Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh told a conference at Maynooth that it is particularly reprehensible when those responsible purport to be Catholic or Christian.
“Sadly more and more journalists, members of the Church and other people with a public profile, have had to stop using social media as they have become victims of vitriol and abuse,” said Archbishop Martin
“Regardless of the age of the victim, it is a shame that aggressive behaviour and offensive language have contributed towards social media becoming a harsh and dehumanising environment for some.”
He added that the sins of bearing false witness, defamation, detraction and calumny are no less grave just because they are committed behind the anonymity of a computer screen.
“They still destroy the dignity of another human person.
“When such negative communications emanate from sources purporting to be Catholic or Christian they are particularly reprehensible.”
Msgr Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications, described social media as “postmodernism on speed”.
It is also a world where “turning the other cheek probably never found another context where it was more relevant”.
The Church, said Msgr Tighe, was “trying to find its way in this new digital world”, remembering that communication is its core activity.
The Church, he said, “is not Rome”.
The central reality for most people was that Church was their local community or “series of communities linked to one another”.
“Digital is real,” he said, advising people to “avoid the dualism” of “a real world and a digital world”.
He recalled how Pope Benedict XVI said people “should ‘try and give the internet a soul’, not that we are the soul of the internet”.
Sources
- Irish Times
- Image: RTE
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