Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ethical issues emerging from digital religious communication, with a specific focus on Catholic presence in digital environments. For this purpose, it will concentrate on the concept of "inculturation" and apply it to the larger context of "digital culture".

Paper long abstract:

In recent decades, the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) profoundly affected the religious dimension, in particular the communication practices of the Catholic Church, as attested by the various documents produced over the years (cf. Internet: a new Forum to proclaim the Gospel, The Church and the Internet, Ethics on the Internet, etc.). The communicative practices and strategies adopted by individuals, associations, parishes, dioceses and by the Vatican itself in digital environments can be identified as digital religious communication (DRC), an area that includes a large part of the communicative relations between the Church and the faithful, as well as between the Catholic world and civil society at large.

The DRC raises urgent questions about the nature of the communicative action emerging from it. Since the communicative dynamics in question develop in digital environments, it is necessary to verify whether, and to what extent, the programs that open and structure these environments can condition the nature of the communicative relationship and the very content of the religious message. The actors of the DRC, in fact, can run the risk of betraying their original communicative intention without realizing it. The aim of this paper is to address such issue by studying the main ethical concepts elaborated over the years by the Catholic Church about the DRC concerning the Catholic presence in social media. For this purpose, the paper will also concentrate on the concept of "inculturation" and apply it to the larger context of "digital continent/world/culture". The expected result is a tentative assessment of the ongoing processes of negotiation between the ethical principles adopted by the Catholic Church and the medial dynamics of digital platforms. Such investigation is part of a more extended study on the mutual influence of Catholic communication and ICTs.