On December 4, 1963, during the second session of the Second Vatican Council, the fathers voted 1,960 to 164 on the document *Inter Mirifica*. It received more disapproving votes than any other document of the council – even more than its controversial cousin *Dignitatis Humanae*.

The document discussed how to use media well and sought to provide a framework for the Church as humanity entered the information age.

Unfortunately, despite the ubiquity of communication technology and its obvious power to shape human society, the Church has largely forgotten what she wrote in *Inter Mirifica*. The way the institutional Catholic Church actually uses social media does not reflect what that document says. That must change.

When I worked in my diocesan communications office, most of our time was spent on the Catholic newspaper – in 2016, no less. Our social media strategy reflected the old-media focus of the Church. We posted Bible verses, saint of the day, and events in the diocese. It was the newspaper transposed to a Twitter feed. Most communications offices in the institutional Church operate this way, all the way up to the Vatican. They post quotes from the bishop’s homilies or other things that are clearly not written for the platform.

This causes a kind of blindness in their audience. People read it, and they know it is not for the platform. So they skip over it. They know the bishop – or Pope – is not posting himself, so he is definitely not reading comments or replies.

These platforms are designed for conversation, but these posts are not conversational. Few will engage because they know they are not being spoken to. They are being spoken at.

We intuitively understand that film and television as media have rules, and that when people do not follow them, the creation is less effective. Plots have structures, scripts have dialogue conventions, different camera angles convey different things. The same is true with social media. There are rules and conventions that make messages in that medium more or less effective. The institutional Church at large seems indifferent to what those rules are.

But *Inter Mirifica* – in quite strong language – declares the Church must use media well. It says it is the Church’s “birthright to use and own any of these media” and to use them for formation (*IM*, 3).

The reasons why the institutional Church is neglecting social media are likely the same reasons why *Inter Mirifica* was so controversial at the council. I see three reasons.

One is the fear of controversy. Bishops, for the past couple of decades, after being hit by legal injunctions because of the abuse crisis, are terrified of social media because of its potential to cause controversy. The second reason is the Church’s natural slowness to adapt to new things. The third reason is the critical error of not taking social media seriously enough.

The fear of legal action is unhealthy. Evangelisation is often messy and it comes with inherent risk. Where would we be if St Paul was afraid of the legal consequences of evangelising? The slowness to adapt is more excusable. It is a prudential characteristic of the Church to be slow to adopt new things, which is part of what makes the Church great. That said, social media has been around for more than a quarter of a century now. It is about time we found a place for it.

The third reason is the least excusable. The institutional Church does not take social media seriously as a method of shaping cultures and evangelising them. It is not, as the tech oligarchs would have us believe, the dawning of a new world where every aspect of human community takes place in digital spaces. But it is pretty important.

More than one-third of the world uses a Meta product – Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram. The same is true of YouTube. These media have replaced legacy news for people under 45. Few in the Church would deny that a diocesan newspaper is a worthy endeavour, but the energy spent on such a publication dwarfs the time spent communicating well on social media.

Social media is a powerful tool for pre-evangelisation. It lets the multifaceted personality of the Church shine through and, when done well, builds relationships at scale. The grammar of social media is personality. To be effective, your personality must inform your content. Some in the Church, such as Bishop Barron, understand this. He is one of the few bishops I have seen reply to comments directly.

Since personality is so key to the platforms, not every bishop needs to be on social media. But if he chooses to be there, he should do so with his full chest.

The personality element of social media is key to understanding the cost of not engaging.

Pope Leo’s comments on the digital world underscore the importance of an in-person experience of the faith. We have many people who live their lives online and have little to no contact with the Catholic Church.

We need clerical and lay Catholics, tethered to their parishes and dioceses, on social platforms to pull digital natives off the digital continent and into the real world where Christ is present.

Not every bishop is cut out for that task, and that is okay. But to best serve his flock who are living their lives through a screen, he needs to make a more deliberate effort to pastor those members of his diocese who are publicly talking about Catholicism online, to make sure they remain tethered to reality.

There are young people with hundreds of thousands of followers talking about the faith on social media. They reach more people in a day than some bishops have Catholics in their diocese. A Church that takes social media seriously takes those people seriously and invests time in them one to one.

The cost of not taking up this task is to keep Christ out of the conversation already happening on social media and to cede control of that conversation to the world, the flesh and the devil.