Real Presence Amid the Shallows: Eucharist and Friendship in a Digital Age

Abstract

This article contends that Christ’s eucharistic offer of friendship, and the habits of attentiveness such real presence demands, must shape the church’s mission in a digital milieu that tends to shallow attention and relationships. It makes this argument in dialogue principally with the theology of Bernard Lonergan and the pontificate of Pope Francis, while aided by the cultural commentary of Nicholas Carr, Sherry Turkle, and Marshall McLuhan. First, I consider how Lonergan’s focus on human knowing and choosing anticipates the recent turn in the Catholic magisterium under Pope Francis that considers the formative effects of digital communication technologies. Second, I show how Lonergan’s account of bias helps explain the shallowing effects of these technologies, for both cognition and community. Third, inspired by Lonergan and Pope Francis, I propose how practices of friendship—informed by Christ’s own friendship extended through Eucharistic presence—can foster habits of real presence able to counter the shallows of our digital age.