Digital Contraception

I wonder if I should just stop there, with that phrase - "digital contraception" - attached to this image, and allow us time to ponder this picture?

In this crowd of "popearazzi", (if I might coin a phrase,) an older woman, face radiant like Moses on the mountain, gazes without obstruction on Pope Francis, who appears to be looking at her. She's not touching him but is clearly touched. The younger woman, hand actually grasping the Shepherd's hand, holds in her other hand a smartphone, through whose 3 x 5 screen she stares at a pixelated image of the actual man five feet away from her. Granted, she too is touched. Both are joyful and smiling, but there is something sociologically intriguing about this image. Which of these two is having an actual, personal encounter? A 'communion of persons' for only a fleeting moment?

I think we all know where this is going. And you may have strong feelings about it.

Some history. Facebook launched 11 years ago this year. YouTube is just 10, and Twitter is 9 years old. The first iPhone debuted only 8 years ago. What a decade it's been. The digital revolution is in full swing. A tsunami of smartphones brimming with social-sharing apps has washed over nearly every continent and seems to be omnipresent, popping up even in the most remote of Third World villages. It's important we talk about its effect on us as persons, called to interpersonal relationships. I hope to do this in a circumscribed manner. So let's shift gears for a few paragraphs and then we'll return to this pregnant phrase, pardon the pun, of "digital contraception."

Decades before the digital revolution, in fact, shortly after the sexual revolution of the late 60's, the Theology of the Body debuted. It's a biblical and philosophical reflection on the human person by St. John Paul II; a glorious life-giving vision of the potential of human love. It speaks of how our sexual complementarity as created by God is meant to be a fruitful sign, imaging the gratuitous gift-giving nature of God Himself, Who lavished on creation from the very beginning a design of communion and complementarity that, when embraced, is creative and efficacious on many levels. It's an extensive catechesis on the human person as imago dei, a being fully realized in relationship, in family, for God in His deepest essence, as St. John Paul II wrote, "is not a solitude. God is a family."

Those who have reflected upon this beautiful teaching of the Holy Father, who have opened their hearts, minds, and bodies to its life-giving truth, can certainly attest to this fruitfulness in their own lives. When one receives the teaching, which in essence is Christianity itself, the gospel "reloaded", then the walls come tumbling down. Illusions are blown away. Misconceptions about who God is and who we are get a proverbial facelift and our faith is lifted! One finally sees within one's masculinity or femininity, not a confused and solitary shuffling around for meaning and purpose that we must construe by ourselves, but a divine dance. A holy communion. A divine romance.

Circling back... Today, the life-giving joy that flows from living the theology of the body shines all the more brighter as we live and move and breathe in this increasingly suffocating, contraceptive culture. When I speak of contraception and of a contraceptive mentality in the present culture, it isn't merely the biological block. It isn't merely latex or a pill that is the issue. That exterior contraception is really the manifestation of a deeper interior contraception. An emotional contraception. A kind of spiritual contraception that holds back the heart and soul of one person from another. We see it everywhere. We struggle with it at multiple levels. In our frenetic activism we've failed as receivers. We've neglected to become that naked heart to the real and raw encounters of everyday life.

In his beautiful reflections on our common home, Laudato Si, Pope Francis wrote "We were not meant to be inundated by cement, asphalt, glass and metal, and deprived of physical contact with nature." (Laudato Si, 44) Can we add our little gadgets to this list?

Pope Francis advised us that "the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life... a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything." (Laudato Si, 113)

These naked hearts, open to encounters with the real world of persons and signs and wonders often feel as though they are the person who escaped from Plato's dark cave of self-inverted shadows and they've seen the light. They return to the cave changed. They try to express what they've seen and heard and touched with their hands but everyone in the cave is touching screens. 

The walls of smartphones that we've seen in the photos and videos of the recent visit of Pope Francis are certainly not intrinsically evil, or even sinful, but they sure seem strange. In a certain sense, these phone walls can be just as much a block to the life-giving call of humanity to love as other forms of contraception. I think you all know what I'm talking about. You all have experienced it in your own lives, in restaurants, movie theaters, workplaces, sidewalks and even busy streets.

Dozens of times per day, people hold up a very thin wall in front of faces. A 3 x 5 screen that aids us remarkably in communicating with others, yet too often hinders the communion with the real flesh and blood right in front of us.

Again, Pope Francis' insights here are spot on. In the Joy of the Gospel, he wrote that some people "want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command. Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness." (Evangelii Guadium, 88)

During the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States, watching video and looking at photographs from the various places he went, I was struck again by this reality of "digital contraception". I fall into the same struggle, I wrestle as much I'm sure as anyone with the wonder of these little gadgets but it leaves me wondering. Many of us touch these screens so many more times a day then we touch other people's hands and little heads of children, and blades of grass and the bark of trees. Our touchscreens have left us out of touch with the very real world we've been placed in by God. I think we need once again to possess our possessions rather than have our possessions possess us. Let's all make a promise to be more present, to be more of that naked heart who can really receive the other person in front of us. For as C.S. Lewis once wrote,

"Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses." 

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Originally posted here for the TOB Institute

Stumbling on the Way of Beauty

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
- Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring

It was a signature grace for me to teach for the first time this summer a new elective course for the Institute; Theology of the Body and Art: The Way of Beauty. This was a five day head and heart immersion into the great transcendental that's synonymous for the God Who is Beauty. He, in His Trinitarian Splendor, first captivated me as a young man and drew me into this Way, through the sounds and scents of the pine woods and streams I'd walked in my youth, through the lives of the saints, the varied writings of authors like Thoreau, Plato, Chekov, Sheen, Lewis and Tolkien. He was singing to me in the music of Van Morrison, John Williams, Palestrina and Purcell. But above all He was drawing me in through the sacramental encounters with Christ in those sweet clouds of incense surrounding His Mystery in adoration.

I'd been longing to intentionally walk this Way of Beauty with others for decades, to shed light on its path and to reveal Beauty not as a decorative diversion but an essential need. Now, with the release of the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I'd been given papal orders to do so.

Pope Francis wrote in Joy of the Gospel that "Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the 'way of beauty'... Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus..." (Evangelii Gaudium, 167). This way has been acknowledged and alluded to by every modern pope back to Blessed Paul VI, who said to artists at the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart... unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands... Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world."

In teaching this course, however, in opening up this “school” of the contemplative gaze, of wonder and awe, of the listening heart before creation, I didn't quite realize that I’d be the one schooled the most. As it turns out, from the first pages of our meditations, pondering our own posture before Christ as either Martha or Mary, the overactive doer or the contemplative receiver, I discovered I was more the former. The whirlwind of work, the rollercoaster ride of family life, the splintered directions that social media (even when intentionally used) can take you on, all of these were taking a toll on my heart. Those first few days, those initial steps on the Way of Beauty course turned out to be a kind of detox.

So much more than gazing at beautiful paintings or sculpture, pondering poetry or story, this Way took us into the deep of our relationship with Beauty Himself. It asked the question "Is it enough for me to simply sit at His feet, or do I feel that incessant urge to be busy and anxious about 'many things'?" We moderns too often are distracted by the glitz and glam of gossip or the latest gadgetry, as our fingers nimbly flip through our newsfeeds on our smartphones like hands in a bowl of popcorn. Is there ever enough? With all that is happening in our present culture in the realm of faith and marriage and family life, there is so much work to be done! And yet, our good shepherd, St. John Paul II, was advising us (me) to stop.

“Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of ‘doing for the sake of doing’. We must resist this temptation by trying ‘to be’ before trying ‘to do’. In this regard we should recall how Jesus reproved Martha: ‘You are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.’” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 15).

Beauty, we learned, is arresting. It holds you still, draws you in, heart first, through the senses, and then Beauty wants to teach you something invaluable. Something essential, which is at the same time deeply disquieting; you are not necessary. You, and I, and this entire world in all of its varied intoxicating glory, is an extravagance, a superfluity. We don’t have to exist. We are gift.

The pure gratuitousness of the world can be a stumbling block for our pride. As we pondered in the course, it can even lead some (perhaps too full of a misdirected sense of their own importance) to despair. Sartre said in one of his works "If man is terrified at the bosom of Nature, it is because he feels trapped in a huge amorphous and gratuitous existence which penetrates him completely with its gratuitousness: he has no place anywhere, he is just put on earth, aimless, without any reason to be there, like a briarbush or a clump of grass." (Sartre, Jean-Paul, Baudelaire, Gallimard, Paris, 1947)

In our utilitarian age, where things only have worth if they have a use, beauty can not stand. The German philosopher Josef Pieper wrote “Man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy... what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.” (Leisure, The Basis of Culture). But when one discovers that at the heart of the universe, of God's plan for creation is this paradigm of pure gift, then this truth is a liberation. The conclusion is, I don’t have to own, grasp, take, clutch at life, at goods, at others as if they are essentials who define me. I also don’t have to save the world, fix everything, establish my worth or my existence through something I have done or accomplished! There is only one thing necessary, one thing essential; our openness to Him. And He is Gift. And He has made me to be gift, and to see all as gift.

Since teaching (and taking) this course, I have stepped back into the Way of the Busy, the maelstrom of modern life. But honestly, something has changed. I’ve caught the fragrance of the Beautiful; I’ve literally stopped to smell the roses, and discovered that this seemingly wasteful act is in fact the entire point. The tyranny of the immediate has loosened its grip. The tentacles of technology have receded into the shadows, as I begin to take a bit more ownerhip of my time and leisure. 

I still stumble, but I am learning to keep my head up and heart open. One of the lessons learned is that this Way of Beauty is above all an invitation. If one accepts, they are taken by the hand into a quiet place. It's a place where one sits still, allowing the senses to slowly engage the reality that surrounds the heart. If one refuses, they quickly fill their senses with the busyness of the day, or with experiences that might please the senses, though only at the level of the senses. The quiet place is the better part. The place where rich veins of inspiration are tapped, revealed, and pour into us with the water of His rejuvenating grace.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner once wrote, “Entrances to holiness are everywhere. The possibility of ascent is all the time. Even at unlikely times and through unlikely places.” (Mishkan T’filah, prayer book).

If we've stumbled on our way, allowed our gaze to fall into a nest of distractions, come, let us rise up. The Way is always present, this door is always open.

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This reflection first appeared at TOBinstitute.org 

 BILL DONAGHY has been hounded by beauty since he first heard John Williams’ score for Star Wars in 1977. He works as an international speaker & curriculum specialist for the Theology of the Body Institute, where he has been hard at work developing the Institute's new elective course on Theology of the Body & Art: The Way of Beauty, beginning June 21, 2015.  A husband, father, sinner & lover of bacon; Bill cannot pass by the glimmering glance of beauty without a gaze in wonder and awe. Consequently he is late for work. A lot.

A Techno-Fast for Lent!

"Hi, my name is Bill, and I'm a technoholic."

"Hiiii Biiiill...."

I grab my cell phone between 6 and 12 times an hour to send or receive a text, e-mail, update/check Facebook, or to micro-blog through Twitter.

I have ten pages of apps on my iPhone, from the Mass readings to the Church Fathers, CNN to Craig's List, and games galore. I listen to music on the way to work, at school, and on occasional walks around campus. At home, Apple TV allows us to stream our music and photos over the television, and surf YouTube as well. I have taken well over 10,000 pictures since I got the iPhone nearly three years ago. I love to blog, and listen to podcasts. And I need to let it go.

A man is enslaved to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.

- George MacDonald

Let me say straight away that it is good. The wonders we have created by our hands... amazing! But what is the one thing necessary in this life? What is the summum bonum that the saints and mystics have pointed to and that to which the dying man reaches while lying in his bed at the end of his days? Tools of communication, or a deeper Communion?

At the end of the day, it's all about relationships, isn't it? And as much as these tools can help facilitate communication and convenience (trust me, I am their biggest fan) they cannot replace the warm face before me, my wife and son, the students I am privileged to guide, the person on the street, the cashier at the grocery store. Flesh and blood, immortal souls each with their own story. Fr. Benedict Groeschel once said "Forget the TV... give me a person any day. People interest me!"

I was talking to a good friend today who, coincidentally, is also fasting from technology for Lent. We're excited about this 40 Day Dare. "It's all about silence this Lent for me" he said.

God speaks in silence. Silence is His native tongue. The world, the stars, the flowers move in silence. I have opened myself up to too much noise. I feel myself slipping sometimes, reaching into my pocket for that phone, checking it incessantly, like the Ring.... the Precious!

"I feel like butter scraped over too much bread.... I need a holiday! I want to see mountains again, Gandalf. Mountains!"

- Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings

Can you become possessed by your possessions? Can the device made to serve you become your master? The mystics say that slavery is to give yourself to anything less than God. To make anything other than God your god is to become a slave to that thing. So I'm signing off for awhile, to "front only the essential facts of life." My plan is to drink the coffee slowly and attentively, to read Louis de Montfort, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. To spend more time before the Tabernacle than a computer screen. To give time to God and family and others, not in splintered, fragmented bytes but in a whole-hearted, long and loving gaze.

So into the desert we go! Off the grid for 40 days! See you on the other side!

Lord of the Ringtones

Are we addicted to our gadgets? Have iPods become our igods? I was struck by this article on a few levels... and I'm not gonna lie, at first glance, we were nervousss, preciousss... that they wanted to take it from usss, preciousss!

The main point addressed was captured here: So, the answer seems simple: Like the One Ring, mobile electronic devices are too powerful for mere mortals to wield without corruption. They inevitably lead to disturbance, disruption, and disaster. Or do they? ... On the spiritual side, anyone can reference prayers, sacred texts (in the traditional sense), and fellowship with co-believers anytime, anywhere. (One of us spent the Jewish holiday of Purim tracking the reading of the scroll of Esther on his iPhone, complete with special noise-making software. The other enjoyed Lenten prayers using this iPhone app.)

Hmmmm... read on!

Vatican Meets iPhone

As a Catholic Nerd with an iPhone, I am very excited about what's coming this Sunday, in honor of this year's World Communications Day.... check it out here. If this doesn't justify you making the switch to the world's greatest phone / ipod / game device / calendar / internet browser / e-mail / camera / mosquito repellent (yes, there's an app for that), than I don't know WHAT will. Here's the snazzy new website the Vatican has just launched.

"The site and its applications were developed by Italian Father Paolo Padrini, a diocesan priest from Tortona. He also helped develop the iBreviary application for the iPhone and the Catholic Facebook application called Praybook, which allows users to access and share with others traditional Catholic prayers and texts from the Liturgy of the Hours."

- from the CNS article "I would like to conclude this message by addressing myself, in particular, to young Catholic believers: to encourage them to bring the witness of their faith to the digital world."

- Pope Benedict XVI