The church comes to the fore in the section entitled “Concrete Proposals.” Pius XI began, notably, with the role of local pastors. He praised the Legion of Decency and its Pledge throughout the encyclical. Thus he proposed that “all Pastors will undertake to obtain each year from their people a pledge similar to the one already alluded to which is given by their American brothers and in which they promise to stay away from motion picture plays which are offensive to truth and to Christian morality.”8 He also suggested that each diocese employ the “Catholic press” to bolster this effort, specifically by “the prompt, regular and frequent publication of classified lists of motion picture plays.”9 Bishops should also set up an office for monitoring these lists, the administering of the Pledge, and the “existing motion picture theatres belonging to parishes.”10
At the center of each of these “concrete proposals” is confidence in the efficacy of the local community upon the cultural engagement of its members. To the twenty-first-century reader, such faith in this efficacy carries an air of nostalgia for Christendom. We rarely if ever have sustained experiences of the kind of local communities that would make such an effort feasible or even coherent. This is the standard of human communion for the church: relationships centered on Christ and in the sacramental life of the church embodied locally in parishes and extra-ecclesial social structures.11
In his 1929 encyclical, Pope Pius XI made familiar comments about the moral effects of various media in the context of education. According to Divini illius Magistri, books provided unprecedented access due to their low prices, the cinema was the realm of unmitigated and often immoral display, and radio had immense and unequaled power of communication.12 He wrote, “These most powerful means of publicity, which can be of great utility for instruction and education when directed by sound principles, are only too often used as an incentive to evil passions and greed for gain.”13 Media appeared in this encyclical for obvious reasons, as education involves necessarily the formation of young people and the use of particular media therein.
While the Incarnation is absent from the explicit argument of Vigilanti Cura, Pius XI referenced Christ generally throughout Divini illius Magistri. He named Christ as the ultimate teacher, beginning the encyclical by noting Jesus’ “tenderness and affection for children.”14 Jesus also commands the church, “Teach ye all nations,” which extends to all of the faithful and even those “outside the Fold.”15 Here he implied the image of the Good Shepherd, placing Christ at the center of the church’s educational mission, a mission that is particularly focused on steering young people away from objectionable media. Christ is also the image of virtue into which young people are to be formed: “By His example He is at the same time the universal model accessible to all, especially to the young in the period of His hidden life, a life of labor and obedience, adorned with all virtues, personal, domestic and social, before God and men.”16 Although Pius XI did not discuss the relationship of Christ as God made flesh, as God incarnate, explicitly, he did include Christ throughout the encyclical as his theological grounding for the church’s educational mission.
As in Vigilanti Cura, the efficacy of the church looms large in Divini illius Magistri. Somewhat more familiar to contemporary readers, Catholic education is presented as divinely mandated and especially urgent for the salvation of souls. Education, as well as the means of communication that participate in and aid it, is a matter of cultivating true communion, sustained by the sacramental life of the church. Divini illius Magistri picked up on the social structure envisioned by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, emphasizing the different levels of society, or more properly, the three interrelated kinds of society: “Education is essentially a social and not a mere individual activity. Now there are three necessary societies, distinct from one another and yet harmoniously combined by God, into which man is born: two, namely the family and civil society, belong to the natural order; the third, the church, to the supernatural order.”17 The family is central to Christian education and has right to educate its children: “The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.”18
The encyclical then connects the rights of the family and the church in terms of education, emphasizing that civil authority has a role in education but only as it befits the mission of education established by God within the church and family. Between church and family is the fabric of the local community. Early in the encyclical, Pius XI writes, “We implore pastors of souls, by every means in their power, by instructions and catechisms, by word of mouth and written articles widely distributed, to warn Christian parents of their grave obligations.”19 Coupled with the “concrete proposals” of Vigilanti Cura, this warning to pastors is all set against the backdrop of “the dangers of moral and religious shipwreck” found in books, radio programs and film. To steer young Catholics—all Catholics—away from such perilous content one needs the church, instantiated in the thick matrix of local pastors, the local parish, and the family.
Near the middle of the twentieth century, television coupled the intimacy of the family radio with the visual elements of film, bringing the moral dangers of the earlier media into the very heart of the home. In 1957, Pope Pius XII addressed film, radio, and even television in Miranda Prorsus. Pius XII extended his predecessor’s comments about motion pictures into various forms of electronic media. He conveyed the persistent worry from the Holy See to extol the virtues of such media and enumerate their dangers: “From the time when these arts first came into use, the church welcomed them, not only with great joy but also with a motherly care and watchfulness, having in mind to protect her children from every danger as they set out on this new path of progress.”20 Miranda Prorsus continued the project of Vigilanti Cura insofar as it pays close attention to the ways in which these media shape the morals of media consumers. The church, therefore, has the solemn duty of ensuring that those entrusted to its care do not find themselves in the near occasion of sin by virtue of any given film, radio, or television program.
In assessing the situation before him, Pius XII understood the possibilities and promises of media technology to go beyond education and formation, the foci of his predecessor. He connected the media to the mission of the church itself: “Much more easily than by printed books these technical arts can assuredly provide opportunities for men to meet and unite in common effort.”21 While Miranda Prorsus continued to assert the role of bishops and priests in steering the community toward proper use of the media, the emphasis on each medium considered—television, film, and radio—was broader and more universal in its ecclesial vision. Pius XII went on, “Since this purpose is essentially connected with the advancement of the civilization of all peoples the Catholic Church—which, by the charge committed to it, embraces the whole human race—desires to turn it to the extension and furthering of benefits worthy of the name.”22
Miranda Prorsus also placed more emphasis on the responsibility of individual media consumers. This seems like a natural evolution in emphasis, given the shift from film to television as the medium of central concern. The difference, according to Miranda Prorsus, is that “Television shares, in a sense, in the nature and special power of sound broadcasting, for it is directed towards men in their own homes rather than in theatres.”23 As essentially public, film lends itself to a more communal effort, introduced and encouraged by the parish priest. Television, on the other hand, concerns the daily choices of individuals and families, free from the accountability of publicly entering a theatre.
On the surface, these relatively early encyclicals on media appear to sacrifice any theological account of media or technology itself for an intense insistence on the morality of particular products. That is,