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114 Recent Books
(xii–xiii) Presence and communication are essential to Christianity; if
those human realities change, then Christianity must change as well.
After introducing the general problem, Spadaro offers chapters on the
theology of grace, on ‘the mystical and connective body’, on ethics and on
liturgy, concluding with some reflections in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin.
Spadaro’s book highlights, in quite disconcerting fashion, the close
connections between the gospel’s promise of universal communion and
changing technologies of communication. A clear example, now historical,
that he gives is Marshall McLuhan’s account of how the invention of the
microphone drastically simplified the experience of liturgy. Previously, the
priest’s voice was one element among many in ‘a context made up of
sounds, colours, scents, orientation, objects and movements’, only
discernible by those who were near; the microphone creates ‘a direct
relationship between the celebrating the individual, between the centre
and a point in the congregation’, diminishing the importance of space, and
creating ‘a sound bubble’ that overpowers the other senses (p.72). The
official theology was unchanged, but the lived reality became radically
different.
More contemporary examples, from technologies still in development,
are properly tentative, but no less provocative. The Christian concept of
being saved is often linked with the idea of sin being effaced. How is this to
sound in a world where no information, once it has been posted, can ever
be definitively and securely removed from the web? ‘Save’, moreover, is not
the only example; ‘sharing’, ‘community’ and ‘conversion’ are also concepts
with a rich theological heritage that are now being unpredictably modified
as a result of new usages in a digital context.
It has to be said that Spadaro’s book does not effectively address the
questions he evokes so provocatively. Such answers as he gives are
defensively conventional. Can we participate in a liturgy transmitted to us?
No, says a document from the US bishops’ conference: to celebrate
sacraments requires ‘physical’ and ‘geographical’ presence, contact with the
reality rather than ‘an image or an idea’ of Christ’s saving presence (p.79).
Spadaro is content simply to mention that ‘many affective relationships,
even the most ordinary ones, are mediated by machines’ (p.80), leaving
unresolved, and even unspoken, the implication that the conventional
episcopal position just ignores the new question about what, in a digital
world, can count as real and personal participation.
Such indirectness can only be frustrating to the Anglo-Saxon mind,
but, particularly in a theological context, it has its place. Faithful Christian
theology cannot but be conservative in the root sense, even when we are