There are almost as many dangers in traveling through cyberspace as there are advantages. Those who move in this dimension of interpersonal communication must turn to Our Lady not only for necessary protection, but also in order to have in their hearts that Word in Whom is to be found the ultimate reason for Creation and the foundation of all truly human communication.

Cyberspace has become a popular “place” where crowds gather to “chat”, to exchange ideas, to seek answers— in short, to communicate. The “information superhighway” of the Internet runs through cyberspace connecting the various parts of a “virtual world” which unfolds within the microchips of computers and cell-phones. By means of it, the real world can be “traveled” in an instant with a few simple clicks of the mouse. To an ever-growing number of people, communicating via cyberspace provides many advantages, ranging from “Googling” for important facts and information to sending virtual “documents” across the globe instantly via e-mail. Despite some very attractive advantages, however, cyberspace is no child’s playground. When one enters, he or she is almost certain to encounter considerable moral and spiritual danger. In fact, the “disadvantages” to one’s moral health are so prevalent that the Pontifical Council for Social Communications issued a document entitled “Ethics in Internet” (February 22, 2002) which alerts Internet users to potential drawbacks. The recurrent concern the Council expresses in this document is the tendency of “virtual” communication to depersonalize the very trait which distinguishes the human person—the ability to communicate!

The Council’s warning might at first sound anachronistic, when, in fact, most would agree that the volume of communication taking place in the cyberworld of the Internet is astronomical. That would be a reasonable judgment if communication were to be reduced to “quantity” without consideration for “quality”. However, distinctions are to be made. Aristotle, for instance, divided the species of the brute from that of the human person, noting the lack of reason and speech in the former and their presence in the latter, though both of them have bodies. Put simply, brutes make noise, humans talk.

The ability to communicate is a property that flows from human nature, and involves a union of persons. Only a person can externalize what is interior to him and make it present in the interior (mind) of another. The verbalization of thoughts is a means by which persons become interiorly (spiritually) united. Communication utilizes what is material to signify that which is immaterial: sound waves and visible symbols signify words, and thus thoughts and concepts which make no sound and are beyond the senses (existing in the intellect of the person thinking) become audible and visible. In material form, one person’s thoughts may be perceived and interiorized by other thinking persons. In this regard, the material body functions as the medium by which the immaterial soul— that, namely, which makes us persons—can communicate. No wonder, then, that intimacy between husband and wife is called “knowledge”. Similarly, as the late Pope John Paul II describes in his Theology of the Body, the human body should be seen not primarily as a means of the sexual but rather of the personal expression of the interior man. What is material in the human person, it is understood, always has an ethical content.

The corruption of communication begins in a moral choice. At the beginning of human society, Adam and Eve shut down their capacity for true communication when they chose to disobey God. Eve, the woman, became a depersonalized object of lust and domination— a tragic reality which manifests today, even in cyberspace (in fact, especially in cyberspace), in the proliferation of pornography, a form of prostitution of the human person. Precisely because man, eternally pre-destined in Christ for immortality in Paradise, lost his original innocence through a real event in space and in time, the fall of Adam and Eve from grace, God the Eternal chose to restore and re-create human existence also in the objective reality of space and time—in history. In the Old Testament, His great plan for man was known only through figures and shadows. “In the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), there came a New Testament, and God’s plan was revealed to us in Person.

St. John knew that communication is the means through which we can be saved, and it is not by chance or mere poetic design that he begins the great Prologue to his Gospel thus: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." In accord with His eternal plan, God had communicated to us His divine Word, in space and in time. Who holds the key that unlocks this divine communication? St. Paul answers: “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4). The late Pope John Paul II said: “In Jesus Christ, the Word was made flesh, and time becomes a dimension of God, who is himself eternal” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, n. 10). Divine communication, then, is the primordial source and foundation to which all communications must refer if they are to be authentic and truly beneficial to man, the whole man, with his eternal soul.

Only by participating in the divine communication can man be restored to his original friendship with God and reclaim his eternal inheritance. In this regard, God willed to communicate to us by becoming incarnate through a woman, specifically, through Mary, the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of God. He continues still to communicate to us through the Church, whose “type” (the ideal after which it is modeled and to which it aspires) is Mary (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 53). In Mary, the divine communication in the Incarnate Word becomes personal. It involves Her freedom, Her fiat, Her personal consent to God’s personal request, sent by the messenger, St. Gabriel the Archangel. It is characteristically maternal for it involves Her motherhood. It certainly presupposes the reality of mediation, as all communication makes use of language, the medium by which thoughts are exchanged. As the mode of the Incarnation is essentially Marian, so the mode of divine communication whereby we are elevated to grace must also be Marian. It is important to reflect on the difference between human and divine “communication”, between communication in the present culture—in its modern, daily, hi-tech, and often morally corrupted form and content— and the true and saving forms and content of the communication offered to us in the New Testament. Consider, for example, the greeting of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Elizabeth in the episode of the Visitation. This communication brings about a transformation within Elizabeth’s person, and within that of the unborn child in her womb, St. John the Baptist. Mary’s presence and that of the unborn Christ within Her communicate sanctification to those who receive Her greeting. This is fundamentally the Marian mode of communication. A lot of Internet sites, on the contrary, transform their visitors into something unworthy of God’s grace; they communicate corruption. How many bad thoughts, immoral images, and idle words have been communicated through cyberspace? How many Internet pages are viewed that lead to occasions of sin? Only with the perspective of the eternal, inherent to the Marian mode of communication, can one fully understand the moral consequences of the many “clicks” one makes meandering through the moral minefield of cyberspace.

The conviction that cyberspace, like all spatial dimensions, must be "Marianized” in order to be fully constructive according to the divine design of communication is the underpinning apostolic and theological principle that must govern the Catholic attitude toward its use. The restoration of personhood took place in the Incarnation through Mary’s personal choice, a moral choice. If Mary literally allowed Herself to be God’s instrument to “publicize” (make public) the divine revelation, then we can certainly derive and dwelt among us”—and we may add, “through Her!”

It is precisely in view of this truth that Marian cyberspace initiatives, web sites and web services—such as the Coredemptrix E-magazine, or the Marian resource www.airmaria. net—should be courageously conceived and launched with generosity. But more so, this Marian conviction should animate the participation of all persons of goodwill in the fundamental activity of communication in all its forms. By personally re-conquering one’s own heart and mind and consecrating them to Christ through Mary, we can become instruments of Mary’s conquest of the present culture to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for the salvation of this generation and of those to come.