While watching the great race that is the Bathurst 1000, I saw for the first time this advertisement for a mobile phone:
Anyone who is, or has, worked in a primary school in recent years has more than likely seen the development of this phenomenon (albeit not quite so exaggerated), especially when there are Kindergarten students involved. There’s a almost desperate urge to try and capture every ‘Kodak moment’ (showing my age, I know) of a child’s life (says me who took over 3000 pictures whilst in Europe earlier this year). The ever-increasing ubiquity of portable technologies, with ever-increasing data storage capabilities, make such moment capture not just possible, but even expected.
Concerts nowadays are another context in which we see this phenomenon developing. There are both performers and audience members who aren’t really concerned about it, while others question how you can be capturing the moment without compromising your ability to experience the moment.
Back to the school environment (particularly the Catholic school environment), and as a religious educator, I fear about the impact of this phenomenon on our experience and participation in the liturgy. I’ve already heard about and seen situations in liturgical celebrations in schools where capturing a child’s ‘ministerial moment’ has proven to be a distraction, both for those using the cameras and phones, and for everyone else who has gathered to pray.
The Second Vatican Council very firmly declared that participation in the liturgy is not only the source and summit of Christian life, but also (particularly in terms of liturgical reform) “the goal to be achieved above all else” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10, 14). At the time of the council, a major priority amongst those concerned with liturgical reform was changing the prevailing mindset that it was the priest that was the almost exclusive human participant in the liturgy, reducing the assembly to the role of pious spectator. We still face the challenge of spectating during the liturgy, perhaps not so much from pews while praying rosaries, but certainly more through the screens of mobile phones and tablets than in the 1960’s. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often. It does warrant consideration though, given that it can happen in the school context, where the liturgy has a crucial formational aspect to it.
How do we help people realise that there is so much more to gain if we resist the urge to ‘capture’ and instead try to engage in the experience?
It's Crowded in Here 