Address for Festival of Church’s Social Doctrine…
Wh@tever: Francis Shares Profound Message about the At Sign, Tension, and ‘Relational Voracity’
Just this past Thursday, Nov. 23, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio — the man otherwise known by his stage name ‘Pope Francis’ — gave an address to delegations of the Italian Catholic Weeklies Federation, the Italian Periodic Press Union, the Coral Association, and the AIART Media Citizens Association.
Himself a master at clear, succinct, consistent, and direct communication (irony off), the false pope shared with his audience three key concepts for fruitful communication: formation, protection, witness.
As part of his address, he encouraged his listeners to…
…promote an “ecology of communication” in territories, schools and families, among yourselves. You have a vocation to remind us, in a simple and understandable style, that beyond the news and scoops, there are always feelings, stories, flesh and blood people to be respected as if they were your own relatives.
(Antipope Francis, Address to the Delegations of Catholic Communicators, Vatican.va, Nov. 23, 2023)
“Simple” and “understandable” communication! Now that is a noble goal indeed.
One day later, the Vatican showed just how much Francis leads by example. In a message to participants in the 13th Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Francis had some profound thoughts to share about the famous @ symbol used in the digital world today. Try to make your way through the following word salad:
The theme you have chosen this year, “#soci@lmente liberi” (#soci@lly free), recalls some very topical issues, especially regarding the digital culture that influences relationships between people and, as a consequence, society. The symbol @ used in the word “socialmente” in the past indicated a unit of measurement and subsequently assumed accounting value, before arriving at its common use in electronic mail to mean “at”. From its history, therefore, comes an indication for living freedom in the social media today. It signifies the “at” that indicates closeness, proximity, contact, an intimate expression of freedom, to “keep” in one’s heart. The network we want is created “not to entrap, but to liberate, to protect a communion of people who are free. The Church herself is a network woven together by Eucharistic communion, where unity is based not on ‘likes’, but on the truth, on the ‘Amen’, by which each one clings to the Body of Christ, and welcomes others” (Message for the 53rd World Communications Day). In this tension and in this entrustment, personal and communitarian freedom are expressed. With regard to the speed of information, which provokes relational voracity, the ‘amen’ is a sort of provocation to go beyond cultural uniformity to give fullness to language, with respect for every person. Let no one be the promoter of a communication of rejection through the dissemination of messages of hatred and the distortion of reality on the web! Communication reaches its fullness in the total donation of self to the other person. In this relationship of reciprocity, the web of freedom develops.
(Antipope Francis, Message to Participants in the 13th Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Vatican.va, Nov. 5, 2023; underlining added.)
How’s that for simple and clear communication?!
For old time’s sake, let’s not forget that the author of these lines is the same master communicator who wrote the following uplifting words ten years ago in his first so-called ‘Apostolic exhortation’:
A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation. Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure. People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space.
(Antipope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, n. 222)
Got it?!
But perhaps we should not be too hard on Bergoglio here. After all, in between all the talk about the @ sign and tension and fullness in his message to the Social Doctrine Festival, he did emphasize that unity is based on “truth”, right? So there!
Indeed, except that in his message for World Communications Day 2018, he had already redefined the very nature of truth, from the agreement between the mind and reality to something a bit more pragmatic, in line with his ideological agenda. Here are the details:
Oh well.
For as much grief and annoyance as the false pope causes on most days, sometimes he is just downright amusing.
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