'Get Real!' - Pope tells Christian Facebookers - World Communications Day Message 2011 Seeing the Person behind the 'face' The neuropsychological disorder prosopagnosia or 'face blindness' is an impairment in the recognition of faces -- an inability to see clearly, who the person is (Greek: prosopon, Latin: persona) behind the face (interestingly, translated by the same word 'prosopon/persona'). In his new book, The Mind's Eye, the Neurologist Oliver Sacks spends some time talking about conditions like prosopagnosia, relating the rarer and more dramatic examples (e.g. one where a man infamously "mistook his wife for a hat") to other more universally experienced 'everyday life' difficulties (everyone sometimes has trouble recognizing faces, for example). Surprisingly, perhaps, Oliver Sacks' recent observations have much in common with those made, at about the same time, by the Pope. In his message for the 45th World Communications Day, released on Monday 24th January, the Feast of St Francis de Sales (Patron Saint of Journalists), Pope Benedict XVI draws attention to what might be considered a new kind of 'prosopagnosic' phenomenon, a form of the disorder particular to our digital age and, in the Pope's judgemment, of special relevance for Christians and their abilty to evangelize using the internet. The problem? People can't see the real Christian behind the face which he or she wears on social networking sites such as Facebook. This type of 'prosopagnosia' is not in the eye of the beholder. It is brought about by the Christian choosing to hide behind their prosopon/persona (originally meaning a mask worn by actors) and failing to reveal to the world their true 'face'. The usefulness or otherwise of social networking sites to the Christian Faith as a means of evangelization has been the source of much debate and The Pope and the Congregation for Social Communications have, in recent years, been wading right into this debate, coming down, a little more than marginally, on the social networking 'side of the fence'. In previous World Communications Day Messages, for example, the Pope has exhorted the faithful, particularly the young, to evangelize the "digital continent" and, last year, he effectively encouraged priests to 'get tweeting'. In the latest message, the Pope again "invites Christians, confidently...to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible". But, there are also words of caution. For the Pope, the use of social networks is not only an "opportunity" for the Christian but also a "risk" and one such risk is this construction of "a false image of oneself", a "parallel existence". The problem of not revealing the person is of even more significance for Christians and Christianity than one might at first think because Christianity is not, first and foremeost, a religion of rules and dogmas but a Person. So when Christians (the word means 'other Christs') fail to reveal themselves, whether it be on social network sites or 'somewhere' else, they fail to reveal Christ to the world. "When people exchange information", explains the Pope, "they are already sharing themselves, their view of the world, their hopes, their ideals, it follows that there exists a Christian way of being present in the digital world: this takes the form of a communication which is honest and open, responsible and respectful of others" (emphasis added). That concern for depth, truth and authenticity, for what is real betrays, perhaps, Pope Benedict's Augustinian orientation. He speaks of the danger of living in a virtual world, "the danger that we may be less present to those whom we encounter in our everyday life". Man's tendency not to be present, expressed biblically in God's question to Adam: "Where are you?" (Gen 3:9b) is a theme taken up by the Pope again in his recent Light of the World interview with Peter Seewald. Among the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world there are, says the Pope "many who inwardly are not there". It is appropriate that a Pope should have returned to this subject (of the nature of the person), at this time, in order to challenge us about what it means to be a person living in the digital continent. After all, it was Christianity and the early Catholic Church who gave us the concept of the 'prosopon', making use of the Greek word for mask. When the concept of the person is under attack -- as is the case in so many different ways in 2011 -- expect the Church to defend it. ENDS 
Donal O'Sullivan-Latchford Family and Media Association Phone: 086 330 9724 Email: info@fma.ie
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