This past Christmas, my nephew presented me with the gift of an Amazon Fire Stick, a wireless gadget which attaches directly to an HD television and opens the viewer to a host of media from gaming apps, to streaming services such as Netflix as well as programs uploaded by private individuals.
I am grateful that I was bitten by the technology bug early in life. And so, I am not intimidated (as many are) by new devices which provide myriad possibilities for discovery even at this stage in my life.
So it was that I accessed the Fire Stick and found the most fascinating documentary which explained how Hollywood uses CGI (computer generated imagery) to create virtual worlds in which actors play out there roles against a backdrop of extraordinary special effects. The program further detailed how CGI has been employed in the creation of universes commonly referred to as Virtual Reality (VR).
Other terms for VR include cyberspace, artificial reality, augmented reality and, most recently, telepresence.
While the names of this new technology differ, the concept underlying them remains the same, namely, using computer technology to create a simulated, three-dimensional world that a user can manipulate and explore while feeling as if he were in that world.
Computer experts (usually referred to as “geeks”) differ regarding what actually and precisely constitutes a true Virtual Reality (VR) experience.
Without getting bogged down in the technology itself, VR allows us to encounter and to interact with worlds and universes which do not exist in real space and time. They do not exist in reality but are constructs of data-bits and programs which create a simulated reality in which we can immerse ourselves.
Now, you’re probably asking “what has this to do with a blog about the Catholic Church?”
Well, here’s what.
As I learn more and more about CGI and VR, I have begun to reflect upon the similarities which exist between them and much of the abstract moral theology of the Church.
Pope Francis really opened the doorway to this reflection. I read the speech he delivered at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall last year at the opening of the academic year of the various Roman Universities.
The Holy Father stated that very often the Church’s teaching and discipline regarding marriage is too abstract for the average person to understand, appreciate or identify with.
Pope Francis suggests that these theological and moral abstractions of marriage attack marriage as it is lived and experience in the real world by real persons. The Pope stated: “This excessive idealization, especially when we have not reawakened confidence in grace, has not made marriage more desirable and attractive, but all the contrary.”
For his part, Cardinal Kasper has written that the moral “ideal” is an “optimum” — implying that it is unreachable by many. He states: “oftentimes, we have to choose the lesser evil; in the living life there is no black and white but only different nuances and shadings.”
And so, I wonder whether or not the abstract moral and theological teachings of the Church regarding marriage are not unlike the constructs we encounter in CGI and VR worlds which can be conceptualized but do not exist in real space, in real time and in real life.
Is the Church’s idealized image of marriage a kind of CGI or VR which has no bearing in real life but exists only in the world of theological and moral abstraction?
Do we not agree that abstract entities do not exist in space or time; that they are typically intangible and cannot be perceived by the senses? They are things that do not exist.
Also, do we not believe that everything we observe with our senses occurs in time and everything we see exists in space; yet we can perceive neither time nor space with our senses, but only with the mind?
If so, must we must also agree to question whether or not the Church’s moral and theological understanding of marriage is an abstraction which finds no little or no counterpart in the real world of human experience?
It seems to me Pope Francis, Cardinal Kasper and many Bishops are raising that same question and wondering whether the Church’s discipline and practice depends exclusively upon this idealized understanding of marriage rather than on its experience and expression in the real lives of married people.
I am beginning to think that the Holy Father and most of the Bishops are correct.
Why did it take me all these years to take note of this?
Perhaps because I was precluded by my seminary formation and indoctrination from even considering another point of view and the possibility that real people may not share the VR which the Church has made of marriage. All the while, the reality was staring me in the face and I was oblivious to it.
And all this because my nephew gave me a Fire Stick as a Christmas gift.
I must tell him not to give me anything for Easter!
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