Problems of Social Media: Jeopardize intellectual life
By Fr. Pasquotto - Information reaches people very superficially and without order. This negates the life of study, which requires time, reflection.
Note from the translator: A series of sermon by Fr. Luiz Fernando Pasquotto, IBP, in 2016. The original in portuguese can be read here .
Sermons: Problems of Social Media:
Changes your self perception (link)
Crafted to be anti-theocentric and favor depression (link)
Jeopardize intellectual life ←
Moral issues and fair use (link)
4. Due to the very structure of Social Media, information reaches people very superficially and without order. Little or no time is left for reflection, comparing opinions, etc. This negates the life of study, which requires time, reflection, memorization of fundamental concepts and deeper understanding of them, etc. Consequently, the person is left with a thought pattern without abstractions, very concrete and childish. Cannot adequately understand analogies, comparisons, etc.
If someone were to try to learn medicine after watching some news about health, we would all see how superficial that person is and doesn't know what he's talking about. On the internet and on social networks we see an equally pretentious behavior in very important questions of philosophy and, above all, of theology. People without any training, who claim to provide solutions to serious problems in the Church. How often the personal opinions published or the solutions presented are incoherent, theologically untenable, and capable of leading to absurd practical consequences. And the person doesn't even realize it, simply because he doesn't have any basis to give an opinion, let alone to reflect on what he's saying. And the worst thing is that after being warned of the wrong and harmful things that he defends, he remains obstinate in his own opinion, because he is self-centered and, without realizing it, has many wrong ways of thinking, which he has acquired by living in the modern world, and that have not been corrected by a good intellectual and spiritual formation. Without realizing it, it has acquired a modern rather than a Catholic structure of thought. They are the blind leading the blind.
Furthermore, the prayer life and the intellectual life go hand in hand. After all, when we retire to meditate and pray, if we don't have anything in mind that has come from study and serious careful reading, what are we going to meditate on? What shall we lean on to lift our souls to God? How is it possible to ruminate on truths in our intelligence if our stomach of memory is empty of it?... Here too, the immature use of social networks greatly harms prayer, and without prayer it is impossible to acquire virtues, reform, love God more and to save.
5. Social networks destroy the separation that must exist between the private and public spheres. This separation is a necessary condition for any civilized society to exist. Even in private life, there are things that are more intimate than others: the bedrooms are more hidden in a house, after the living room and the kitchen. The laundry room is in a less visible part of the house. It is in the wilderness that man lived with no separation between the public and the private. In many Indigenous tribes, all the families lived in a single hollow, big enough for everyone. It is obvious that this started with a malfunction of intelligences (how people should behave with each other, etc.) and led to all sorts of moral problems.
Even in private life, there are things that are more intimate than others: the bedrooms are more hidden in a house, after the living room and the kitchen.
It is the modern philosophy, applied in the architecture and urbanism of the cities, that preaches the end of this separation between the public and the private: the facades of the houses must be transparent, made of glass, and the interior of the room must be visible to the people who pass on the street. Modern architects call it sincere architecture… as opposed to the hypocrisy of facades that do not expose the interior of houses… An absurdity. Another very current example is that of gyms. In themselves, gyms are a disgrace. It is evident that they are just as objectionable as beaches and swimming pools. The same principles apply. Everything in the gyms, as on the beaches, reeks of a “viscerally anti-Catholic naturalism”. And now its facades are made of glass, so that everyone can see what is done in the gyms from the street.
The consequence of this is that public life is no longer the place where major discussions and debates take place about politics, the common good of society, the major issues that will determine the course of social life and the country. The public sphere has become the showcase of private life, and our society behaves like savages. We expose our private life in public. A wildness. And the big problems that concern the political life of the country are ignored by the majority of the population, because they are interested in talking about private futility, about illusory simulacra created by the people. People are empty of principles that allow us to judge the facts of politics through a Catholic perspective. It is easy, therefore, to deceive the people with a ready speech coming from the right or the left, and make people go to demonstrations in the streets, giving them the appearance that they care about the future of the country, that they are participating in the government and thinking who are really aware of the problems and changing policy… while not reforming themselves and being herded left and right like cattle.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.