dated, but very thought provoking, dense too, but that might be the translation from Italian, what happens when real presence of Jesus, Virgin Mary, occasionally guardian angels breaks into timevia the internet More specifically, via the weird, wild west of the lates and earlys internet.
his anthropological method involves a seriously flawed attempt at “a view from a distance, ” he intervened in the question of divine presence constantly, and almost always in negative fashion, this is ironic as he calls out the assumptions people have about the neutrality of technology and science.
Dude is not Ranke. But hewronglyimagines hes handled his subject quite evenhandedly, Oh and also his historical accounts are not great whenever he departs from the history of Marian apparitions.
he argues that God/Mary/Jesus are absorbed into technology when accounts of their appearance offline gets circulated en masse online.
apparently there are loads of online communities devoted to Marian apparitions, sort of preReddit threads on miraculous happenings related to places like Medjugorje, which form the subject of the book.
That absorption constitutes an obsolescence of God, which is about the bleakest conclusion he could have mustered, Its ironic that he concludes this in the language that he does, Orsis History and Presence makes a similar conclusionincluding a chapter called “obsolescence of the gods”about the imposition of absence via formations of modernity and the category of religion, but his approach to the question of religion could not be more opposite Apolitos, and his conclusion is not so bleak the gods arent dead or transformed into pixels.
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But really though, what is happening when someone claims that an online picture of Jesus winked at them Or that online Mary is speaking to them Or that offline Mary is dictating their email thread to the listserv In, a devout Catholic woman from Vermont began having religious visions and hearing the voice of the Virgin Mary.
To spread word about her mystical experiences, she turned to the Internet, As Paolo Apolito records here, she is only one of many people who use the Web as a tool of religious devotion.
Every day, thousands of Catholicsfrom Italy and Latin America to the United States
and Bosniause the Internet to describe and celebrate apparitions of Mary, to exchange relics and advice in chat rooms, to make pilgrimages to religious Web sites, and to practice the rites of their faith online.
But how has this potent new mix of technology and religiosity changed the way Catholics view their faith And what challenges do the autonomous qualities of the Internet pose to the broader authority of Catholicism Does the democratic nature of access to digital technologies constitute a return to a more archaic and mystical form of Catholicism that predates the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council
In working through these questions, Apolito considers visions of Mary on the Web over the past two decades, revealing a great deal about religion as it is now experienced through new information technologies.
The Internet, he explains, has made possible a decentralized community of the devoted, even as it has absorbed God into the shifts and complexities of electronic circuitry.
And this profound development in religious life will only accelerate as use of the Internet spreads around the world.
An indispensable guide to the future of Catholicism, The Internet and the Madonna offers a compelling glimpse into the spiritual life of the connected soul.
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