Cardinal Czerny: Church’s digital mission may become an ‘ecclesial ministry’
July 02, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: The prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development wrote in a recent article that the communication theory of the Canadian Jesuit philosopher Father Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) can help Catholics better understand the Church’s digital mission—and suggested that the Church might recognize the mission in the digital world as a “true ecclesial ministry.”
Cardinal Michael Czerny—also a Canadian Jesuit—said that last October, synod participants learned that “the digital mission is not merely a tool for evangelization, but it is ‘a space, a territory… a new world for the Church of communion and mission.’ This discovery (astonishing for the majority of Synod delegates) triggered in all of us—beginning with Pope Francis—deep and lively feelings of faith, hope, love and zeal.”
“A great majority of Church leaders and Church members have no idea about the digital continent waiting to be evangelized and ministered to, or of what digital missionaries and pastoralists—whether priest, religious or layperson, male or female, young or adult—are and do,” Cardinal Czerny continued. “Traditionally, missionaries have always been sent by their bishop or superior who accompanies them from afar and occasionally visits them.
On the other hand, “today many Catholic influencers (wherever ‘on earth’ they reside, whatever their age and background) need to meet their respective bishops to begin to dialogue and to discover the ecclesial dimension, the indispensable basis, of their ministry,” Cardinal Czerny added. “The digital mission is born of the faith and of the Church, but in spontaneous and dispersed ways. Now both the Holy Father and the Synod are asking for the digital mission to be recognized and incorporated into the visible Church, and become a true ecclesial ministry and mission.”
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