Sending Forth Digital Missionaries
The Final Report from Study Group 3
Meta, the social media giant formerly known as Facebook, announced earlier this year that it would no longer support the use of its Quest VR headsets for its Horizon Worlds platform. Horizon Worlds is a massive virtual “space” in which users interact with one another through digital avatars and can create “worlds” of their own, virtual spaces that can be used for meetings, activities, and even events like concerts. Horizon Worlds was considered to be the flagship of Meta’s foray into the “metaverse,” the expanding array of virtual worlds dedicated to gaming, building community, and other activities. It was the initiative on which Meta had staked its fortunes and changed its name. Although Meta later partially backtracked, stating that Horizon Worlds would continue to be available via the Quest VR headsets even if no new software for the platform would be developed, the move was yet another signal that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s investment in the metaverse was a costly and unpopular mistake—Real Labs, the unit of Meta responsible for the VR headsets and Horizon Worlds, has lost $73 billion since 2021, and laid off ten percent of its staff in January.
The failure of Horizon Worlds suggests that—apart from massively popular games like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox—there is currently little hunger for a “metaverse” in which participants meet in a virtual space and interact via avatars. That is in striking contrast with the continued, rapid growth of text-based and video-based social media apps like Threads, Instagram, and TikTok. Even so, I think most people experience the reality of the web and social media as something like a “place,” or better, a constellation of “places.” These places are in some sense real even if we enter into them—via the medium of our phones or computer screens—while remaining in whatever physical locations in which we happen to be situated.
This same insight is expressed in the final report of one of the study groups established by Pope Francis as part of the synodal process: “Digital spaces are as real as the physical environment in which we also live.” The report adds, however, that this digital environment is therefore “a legitimate place for evangelization, because, like with any human place, people gather there to make connections and to find information.” This conclusion has guided the work of Study Group 3, which has been focused on the theme of the mission of the faithful in the digital environment.
Pope Francis established ten study groups in 2024 to tackle topics that the delegates gathered at the two meetings of the Synod on Synodality would not be able to address. The final report from Study Group 3 was one of the first to be made public, alongside that of Study Group 4, focusing on the formation of seminarians. Study Group 3’s report does a good job of identifying and describing the opportunities and challenges faced by “digital missionaries” who seek to evangelize in the virtual spaces created by digital technology. At the same time, however, the report is not entirely clear about who counts as a “digital missionary” or even what “mission” means in the digital environment; indeed, the document’s treatment of digital missionaries as a distinct group within the Church seems to be in tension with the Synod final document’s insistence that all the baptized participate in the Church’s mission and are therefore “missionary disciples.”
Because the digital environment is “a place where people live, search, and form community,” it makes sense to speak of this place as embodying a culture. As the report states: “[The digital environment is not merely a set of tools to be mastered; it is a culture.” Digital culture embodies particular ways of doing things, communicating with one another, and viewing the world, and Catholics need to understand this culture if they are to effectively evangelize:
[T]his digital culture requires the same intentionality, formation, and missionary spirit that we bring to any cross-cultural ministry. Just as missionaries throughout history have learned languages, understood customs, and adapted their approaches while maintaining the integrity of the Gospel, all the baptized are called to understand this new culture while remaining rooted in the truth, goodness, and beauty of our Catholic faith.
The report points out that the digital environment is a place where many people go for spiritual seeking and encounter. Many people increasingly turn to the internet and social media as places to find God. One valuable insight from the report is that listening to others is an important dimension of digital evangelizing. Digital missionaries should not only proclaim the Gospel but also listen attentively to the spiritual longings of online seekers, foster dialogue with those who hold other religious beliefs, and try to welcome those who are often marginalized or dehumanized online. This model of evangelization is quite different from that of many online Catholic influencers who focus on “preaching at” others or even tearing others down.
Another implication of the claim that the digital environment is not merely a set of tools to be used but also embodies a particular culture is that the technologies and platforms we use are not morally neutral. They form our character and behavior both for good and ill and implicate us in broader social structures that can deepen inequalities and further the exclusion of marginalized groups.
Study Group 3’s report repeatedly warns digital missionaries to be mindful of the ways that social media and other digital technologies can foster polarization, hateful rhetoric, and misinformation, and it encourages them to resist these temptations. These tendencies, exacerbated by social media algorithms, don’t just affect us at a personal level but have a profound impact on political and cultural life. The report also explains that access to digital technologies remains unequal, and it likewise cautions against the dangers of “surveillance capitalism,” the digital collection of our personal data by both corporations and governments. Importantly, the report insists that challenging these aspects of the contemporary digital environment is an essential dimension of digital evangelization, although it would be helpful if it was more concrete about how Catholics could help create alternative types of digital “places” that embody a different sort of culture.
