Let Me Put It Another Way: Digital Media and the Future of the Liturgy

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Notes

James White, Roman Catholic Liturgy: Trent to Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 99.

Media theorist Clay Shirky puts it well when he says that movable type did not cause the Protestant Reformation, but that the Reformation was not possible without it. See Here Comes Everybody (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 67.

For an example of this concern, see Pope John XXIII's 1959 Apostolic Letter Boni Pastoris, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/motu_proprio/documents/hf_j-xxiii_motu-proprio_22021959_boni-pastoris_en.html (accessed July 10, 2012).

White, Roman Catholic Liturgy, xiii.

On gamification as a way of life, see Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).

Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html (accessed July 28, 2012), 12. The text as quoted is the generally accepted way in which the original Latin text should translated. It is notable, however, that the Vatican's current official English translation reads “fully conscious, and active participation.”

Stuart Brand, “Discussion from the Hacker's Conference, November 1984,” Whole Earth Review, 46 (May 1985): 49.

Daniel Solove, The Future of Reputation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

John P. Martin and Joseph A. Slobodzian, “Jury Convicts Lynn of One Count, Deadlocks on Brennan,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 2012, http://articles.philly.com/2012-06-24/news/32382871_1_priests-cardinal-anthony-j-bevilacqua-district-attorney-seth-williams (accessed September 13, 2012). Mark Morris and Judy L. Thomas, “Bishop Finn Is Found Guilty of Failing to Report Child Abuse Suspicions,” Kansas City Star, September 6, 2012, http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/06/3800269/bishop-finn-verdict-guilty.html (accessed September 13, 2012).

Amanda Lenhart, Teens, Smartphones & Texting, Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, March 19, 2012, p. 12, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Teens-and-smartphones.aspx (accessed June 18, 2012).

Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (accessed August 26, 2011).

eMarketer Digital Intelligence, TV, Mobile See Gains in Viewing Time, December 12, 2011, http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R = 1008728 (accessed May 18, 2012).

Karl Rahner, The Christian Commitment, trans. Cecily Hastings (New York: Sheed and Ward,1963), 146f.

S. Craig Watkins, The Young and the Digital (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009), 168. On related issues, see also Howard Rheingold, Net Smart (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 44–49.

Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Knopf, 2010).

On the complex relationship between privacy concern and self-disclosure online, see Adam N. Joinson, Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Tom Buchanan, and Carina B. Paine Schofield, “Privacy, Trust, and Self-Disclosure Online,” Human–Computer Interaction 25 (2010): 1–24.

Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1973); and Jaques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1965).

Jack McDevitt, Echo, Kindle E-Pub Edition (New York: Berkley/Penguin, 2010), chap. 19, p. 1.

Several compelling exceptions that deserve wider attention include Richard Gaillardetz's exploration of mediated relationships in Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community, and Liturgy in a Technological Culture (New York: Crossroad, 2000); Vincent Miller's exploration of consumerism and gadgets in “The iPod, the Cell Phone, and the Church: Discipleship, Consumer Culture, and a Globalized World,” Getting On Message (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 173–91; and Albert Borgmann's reflections on technologies and focal practices in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

This article was developed with the generous support of the Louisville Institute and their Sabbatical Grant for Researchers program.

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James F. Caccamo

James F. Caccamo is an associate professor of theology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is coauthor of the multimedia resource Living Worship: A Multimedia Resource for Students and Leaders.