Catholic digital media at a crossroads

Herald Malaysia

4 days ago

The Church's digital presence reveals a deeper call to communion, truth, and reform Jul 29, 2025
The Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, underway in Rome July 28-29, is a milestone for online evangelization.(Photo: digitalismissio.org)
By Jess Agustin
This week in Rome, Catholic content creators from around the world are gathering for the Church's first-ever Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Influencers. The event signals recognition from the Vatican that the internet is now a mission field.
As the Church affirms its growing digital presence, it must also confront a sobering reality, one many Catholics face daily online: the spread of disinformation, polarization, and conspiracy-driven content across platforms.
These narratives are pushed by individuals, as well as influential websites and media outlets posturing as Catholic voices, and yet often distort Church teaching and undermine the very Gospel the Jubilee seeks to uphold.
In recent years, the Catholic media landscape has undergone a troubling transformation. What once served to inform the faithful, foster prayerful discernment, and strengthen the Church's global communion has, in many corners, become a battleground, no longer a space for faith and dialogue, but of accusation.
A doctrinal gatekeeping has emerged. To deviate even slightly from the 'correct' view on contested issues is to be labeled a heretic or outcast.
This atmosphere of distrust has impacted bishops, priests, theologians, lay personnel, and entire Catholic institutions. Those who promote dialogue on issues like ecology, synodality, human rights, social justice, or pastoral care for marginalized groups are often accused of 'watering down the faith' or pursuing a hidden agenda.
This is not limited to obscure websites. Some of the loudest and most influential platforms are well-funded and boast large audiences, leveraging partial truths and inflammatory rhetoric to trigger suspicion and fear.
The harm extends far beyond North America and Europe. In the Global South — where faith pervades daily life and the Church is a vital social pillar — these narratives have far-reaching consequences.
Grassroots Catholic organizations in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Cambodia have seen their funding frozen or partnerships quietly canceled, based on suspicion over 'forbidden' causes such as women's health or educational initiatives that merely mention reproductive topics.
These programs, aligned with Church teaching and supported by local bishops, were derailed by accusations circulated online. The consequences were tangible: canceled anti-poverty programs, closed shelters for abused women and children, halted emergency responses, and fractured trust between local Churches and their northern partners.
In one heartbreaking and well-documented case, funding was pulled from a shelter caring for young women, some with babies born from rape or incest. The shelter's implementing organization, funded by a Catholic agency, had signed a joint civil society statement that included a single reference to women's reproductive rights. The rest of the statement focused on discrimination, poverty, and domestic violence in Timor-Leste.
A North American 'pro-life' website flagged the women's group, prompting an online search 'investigation' by the bishops' conference secretariat. The program was defunded despite full compliance with Church teaching and endorsement by local bishops.
As Pope Francis warned, media that claim to defend the faith can end up advancing 'an ideology that divides, lacks love, and seeks to replace the true Gospel.'
When Church leaders appear on such platforms — through interviews, statements, or alignments — they risk deepening polarization.
Over the past two decades, this parallel media culture has grown more brazen, casting itself as a last bastion of orthodoxy. Some outlets, framed as defenders of 'tradition,' have become ideological echo chambers fueled by rage, conspiracy, and personal attacks.
This model is potent because it works. Indignation drives clicks. Provocative headlines sell ads. Anger is monetized. Truth becomes optional. When faith is formed not by the Gospel but by a steady diet of fear and mockery, the result is not discernment but distortion.
Things worsened in the later years of Pope Francis' papacy. The attacks turned vicious. Some bishops and cardinals used these platforms to the point of threatening schism.
In a 2021 meeting with Jesuits in Slovakia, Pope Francis decried 'a large Catholic television channel' that consistently criticized him, calling such media 'the work of the devil.'
Even financial mismanagement, defamation suits, and removal from major social media platforms for spreading disinformation failed to stem their influence. One major outlet eventually folded due to ethical lapses by its founder. Some US platforms even went so far as to endorse Donald Trump in 2024, disregarding his long record of deceit, immorality, and opposition to Catholic teaching.
The result is a fragmented Catholic media environment. On one side are official channels, diocesan news outlets, and pastorally grounded media. On the other hand, partisan platforms backed by sympathetic clergy, rallying an 'ultraconservative' base that casts suspicion on the rest.
This divide threatens the Church's unity and credibility. They name and shame bishops involved in social issues, discredit theologians, cast suspicion on the Vatican, and treat every word from the pope as a battle line.
And it is not one-sided. Some Catholics denouncing toxicity fall into the same traps of mockery and condemnation. The cycle feeds itself.
The harm isn't just rhetorical. These narratives break trust, stall necessary reforms, and make the Church less like a community of faith and more like a battlefield in a culture war.
Do we believe in a Church that welcomes questions, wrestles with difference, and finds strength in naming its wounds? Or a Church that must always be defended and policed — where any deviation is stamped out?
In a May 12 address to the Vatican press corps, shortly after the conclave, Pope Leo XIV declared: 'We must say 'no' to the war of words and images. We must reject the paradigm of war. Communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture.'
Building on Pope Francis' critique of divisive media, he called on Catholic communicators to 'foster communion especially in an online world where suspicion moves faster than truth.'
We may be on the cusp of a return to Catholic media's true calling: to illuminate, not inflame. That calling will be tested this week in Rome.
The Jubilee of Digital Missionaries offers more than a celebration. It is a crossroads. The Church can either form faithful witnesses who understand the digital world as a space for communion, or continue ceding ground to influencers who claim to be custodians of doctrine but distort the Gospel.
We need content creators who ask hard questions. We need reporting that amplifies the voices of the poor, not the power games of clerics and influencers who side with the powers that be. Not media controlled by watchdogs of orthodoxy, but created by voices grounded in Gospel courage, who name injustice when others look away.
We don't need louder defenders of orthodoxy. We need missionary disciples in the digital world who see fidelity not as gatekeeping but as truthfulness, who know that Catholic unity is not born of doctrinal purity tests, but through courageous encounter with buried truths, excluded voices, and wounds the Church has yet to heal. It is not upheld by those obsessed with defending orthodoxy, but by those striving to live the Gospel amid the messiness of real lives, who embody the Beatitudes — in tone, in method, and mission.
The future of Catholic media won't be saved by branding or algorithms. It hinges on choosing witness over outrage, communion over conquest, and truth over virality.
At its best, Catholic media doesn't just inform. It helps people think clearly, act justly, and return to the all-embracing, transforming love of Jesus.--ucanews.com