Folia Theologica 21. (2010)
Barbour Hugh O.Praem.: The Cosmology of Catholic Communications: Postmodern Kerygma? A Reflection by a Disciple of SS. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
THE COSMOLOGY OF CATHOLIC 159 nature of Man as a sensing being can be directed by the images broadcast through the air and from the heavens, and the result can be predicted for the most part, since, as we have learned from St. Thomas, most men live by their passions, and only the wise dominate them. Now if these latter, the wise, themselves direct the media of communication as the angelic intelligences move the forces of nature, then they can have a powerful effect on the movements of the human soul, even if they cannot ultimately move the free human will. This is why it is so very urgent a matter that the good, those who seek, as we heard John Paul II saying, to impart remembrance, wisdom, and true joy to their neighbors, be those who make use of this intermediate science, this media scientia which can link the natural capabilities of technology with the ultimate supernatural end of Man. It is in this sense then that the media of communications are not merely such as "means" to communicate, the Latin neuter plural substantive media, but also a "link" a "mediator" as in its adjectival use in the expression media scientia. Just as nature is the original book which tells all men who see and hear it of God's Providence, how much more should human art, the technology of communication tell of this Providence to those who see and hear its productions, based as they are in the workings of that same natural cosmos? They are the work of intelligent spiritual beings, just as the works of nature are governed by the angels for our good and God's glory. In effect, the media of communication offer the Christian the opportunity not only to imitate the great spirits of heaven in preaching the Good News as messengers, but now, by their cosmologically intense technology, they give us the power to act with a universality and speed which are truly to be compared with the manner in which these angels may work in the government of the bodily cosmos. This is what St. Albert and St. Thomas would have seen in our technologies, and given their naive scientific faith in judicial astrology and sympathetic use of images, it does not seem that they would have been surprised in principle to see that of which contemporary Man has become capable in harnessing the forces of the natural world. Thus the Catholic who works in communications at the beginning of the twenty-first century can see in his or her work the replacement of the moral influence of the equivocal causes of the heavens with media of communications. These media have the power through the intelligences which direct them of moving the passions of masses of people
