The conditions attending the exercises of the magisterium of the Church in the twentieth century are such as to present an analogue with the first decade of the Christian Church. There is, on the one hand, the immediacy of interrelationship among Christians and non-Christians alike in a world where information moves at the speed of light. The populations of the world now co-exists in an extremely small space and in an instant of time. So far as the magisterium is concerned, it is as if the entire population of the world were present in a small room where perpetual dialogue was possible.
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light, 1973
Well, on that day when my confessor and I were in conversation, Father Mole showed me the letter which he had just received from McLuhan, and in the postscript of that letter McLuhan wrote this statement, "The modern media are engaged in a Luciferian conspiracy against the truth." Certain statements you never forget. And that was prophetic. Since I've been with the Holy See, from Pope Paul VI to the present pope, John Paul II, the popes have wanted Catholics to change that. Imagine the alternative: "The modern media are engaged in a Christlike, shall I use the word, conspiracy, for the truth."
