The Digital Cathedral is huge; it’s a web, it’s nearly limitless. In the corner of this Digital Cathedral is the growing TikTok “scene”, if you will. And it’s quite an interesting one.
Popular Catholic TikTok account, aptly named, JohnIsCatholic, posts daily informative and apologetic short videos. One of his more popular videos is titled: “When your Protestant friend says Catholics worship Mary….” It’s a 12-second video, in the style of a comedy skit; definitely recommended viewing. What is the most striking thing, however, is that this short video has over 270,000 likes and over a million views. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Another example is his short 47-second video on the story of Blessed Carlo Acutis, which has racked up over 203,000 likes and, again, over two million views. This is quite an incredible reach and something where I cannot really imagine where else the Church is reaching so many young people (Catholic or not). John is similarly young [asked for an interview] and is from Australia. This is just one example of the popular TikTok accounts run by young people espousing Catholic apologetics and doctrine.
I think the remarkable thing is that such accounts are run by young, ambitious lay people who are making short and snappy videos in a range of styles which is racking up incredible amounts of interaction. This is opposed to, say, Youtube and of course, traditional media outlets. An also striking, almost synchronised effort is that most of the popular Catholic accounts (which are reaching millions) are consistently promoting a “trad” aesthetic.
The use of “trad” is very much an eternally online phrase, but what it refers to is the promotion of beauty, tradition, family, and the Latin Mass. Typing in “Latin Mass” into TikTok introduces you to hundreds of videos, with each collecting tens to the hundreds of thousands of views.
Another consistent theme throughout “Catholic TikTok” is, of course, pro-life activism. It’s also a topic that, as you can guess, attracts virulent attacks from “pro-choice” individuals, mainly through comments, video-responses via coordinated witch-hunts. Right to Life, a UK-based pro-life organization, regularly uses TikTok to make content for their 12,000 followers and beyond to a wider audience. The issue of abortion is one that has seen many Catholic (and non-Catholic pro-lifers) at the end of some quite harrowing abuse.
One noted incident which reached mainstream news outlets in the US was the pro-abortion group “Ruth Sent US” (named after Ruth Allen Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court Judge), which posted a video excoriating the Catholic Church for what it calls “enslavement of women” and encouraged the viewer to interrupt Mass services and to desecrate the Eucharist. They were banned in May 2022 after this video had reached over 2 million views. They reappeared two days later and are still active on the app.
Not many dioceses have leveraged the “create an account” button on Tiktok. In fact, at the time of writing this, I could only find the Diocese of Jasikan in Kenya with an active account.
Although, there’s “hope”.
Fr David Micheal Moses (of the Diocese of Austin) is a rare type of priest. He is a rare type in the sense that he’s only 29, but he also has a burgeoning Tiktok audience. Not many priests are to be found on Tiktok, but Fr David, with his youthful looks, boasts over 28,000 followers. He makes short, snappy, and quite informative videos. He can be found at @fatherdavidmicheal.
The question, however, is, with an ever-increasing technologisation of politics and culture, should we be celebrating the rise of these new technologies, which have untapped and unbounded potential to evangelize? Or should we use the phrase, ‘touch grass’ and escape the Digital Cathedral?
TikTok is an interesting one. The rise of the misogynistic views of Andrew Tate have made him a cause celebre amongst disenfranchised young men. An even more recent example was the TikTok prankster Mizzy, who videoed himself and his pals walking uninvited into a family’s home in Hackney. He was severely condemned and imprisoned, but after his brief stint in prison, he appeared on TalkTV with Piers Morgan and even bagged himself a spot on BBC Newsnight (a week after Andrew Tate’s 20-minute primetime BBC interview).
TikTok seems to hold a decent amount of power and agency, which allows individuals like these to reach millions and the golden shower (albeit infamy) of Mainstream Media attention. The nastiness of online culture will never go away, and it’s great to see young people like JohnIsCatholic, making great short videos which are indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit. Advancements in technology have made new kinds of human interactions possible.
The Vatican document A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media asks, “In fact, the question is no longer whether to engage with the digital world, but how?” Perhaps escaping the Digital Cathedral was never an option. I’ll leave you to judge and to discover yourself (if you wish…). But, as we can all confidently say as Catholics, cyber-spirituality has its limits. And those limits are the zeros and ones which fuel it.
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