One of the strengths of an extended Catholic family is the great richness of surprise, learning and conversation it affords, even at odd hours of the day or night.

When I was in my early 20s, I recall a very memorable and spontaneous encounter with my priest uncle, Fr Paul Joseph Duffy SJ (1947-2018).

I seem to remember the welcome cool and rest of an antipodean Christmas night, with windows open, a table with cups of tea and mince pies, and the bleary hours of Boxing Day night. I think a few of my cousins were propped up on stools as well.

My uncle was my father’s youngest brother and he had been a provincial of the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus. He was trained as a sociologist and political scientist. His visits to our house would often occur after his day of pastoral visits and duties and after many of the household had staggered off to bed.

This Boxing Day chat became a sort of mini-tutorial during which Fr Paul spoke about the importance to Christians in understanding both the opportunities and the risks of contemporary media and culture. My uncle then told us about the contributions to this by the great Canadian Catholic writer and media commentator, Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).

Marshall McLuhan was another Catholic polymath. His writings were striking, eclectic and prophetic. His studies included reflections on grammar, numbers, advertising, symbolism, television and the wider cultural implications of culture and communications. He had an abiding devotion to the Blessed Trinity, as revealed in language and human interaction.

My uncle Paul was a writer, teacher and scholar in ethics, politics and culture. In the early 1990s, he gave some important lectures to the Thomas More Centre (TMC) on Catholic Social Teaching and a course that introduced ordinary people to the science of sociology.

Fr Paul liked to prompt us to think about communications. For a time he was the Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture at Saint Louis University in the United States. In 1991, he wrote and published a book that he hoped parishes could use to apply their minds to the question. The book was titled, Word of Life in Media and Gospel (St. Paul Publications, NSW, 1991). I plan to recover some of Fr Paul’s ideas for our TMC work today.

Fr Paul introduced many of Marshall McLuhan’s key vivid aphorisms, such as “the medium is the message” and the concept of the “global village”. One of the takeaways from that evening, apart from the Christmas treats, was McLuhan’s lens called the “media tetrad”  – four questions about the impact of a particular form of media or communication: what does it enhance; what does it destroy; what does it inverse and what does it retrieve from common cultural practice?

I was recalling all of this last night.

Some of our TMC team embarked on a new venture of presenting a conversation that appeared as a live-stream on both YouTube and Facebook.

It was for me, at least, a slightly strange and steep learning experience. Thanks to our TMC I.T. wizard Gabriel Tipnis, the “lighting, camera and action” were managed and he can tweak this towards even better quality in the future. It was Gabriel’s idea that we should start to reach out to our friends and supporters in more innovative and casual ways: as casual as an Awkward Digital Alien (ADA) like myself can be! Gabriel and my uncle Paul were quite right.

It was great to guess who had tuned in and to receive such interesting questions via our texting function. The live event was recorded, and we can see from our page that others are catching up to what became a relaxed “village” meeting of our hubs.

Thanks too to our TMC YouTube host, Mark Makowiecki, who explained with his genial intelligence how his TMC Interviews series was progressing and what he was planning for the month ahead. Fascinating topics and personalities are already available through the TMC YouTube channel, and this can expand in depth and quality with more subscribers and the development of our growing hubs and the seeding of new ones.

We also spoke about the cultural interest in podcasts, which are sound-based and favoured by women, and the YouTube-verse that seems to be primarily inhabited by males – up to 90 per cent in the TMC's case (the statistics are interesting – most of our viewers are blokes who live in the USA, then Sydney and then Queensland).

With that in mind, we are converting our media to more podcasts, firstly through Mark’s channel and shortly with some other podcasts specifically designed for women and for a wider audience.

Another lovely moment in the TMC Live session was the visit to the studio of one of this year’s YPAT alumni, Melbournian Daniel Toncic. Daniel works in the construction industry but has been inspired by his week at YPAT to explore his faith, life and vocation more deeply and has also shown that he has a gift for hospitality.

One of the predictions made by McLuhan was that electronics can bring people together in shared values and culture. That happened during our live session. We received questions and best wishes from our wider community and that was a moment of delight and encouragement.

Thank you to Gabriel, Nicole, Mark and Daniel for yet another milestone in building the TMC.

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre