Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2022.

Degree Name

Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL)

Director

Rossano Zas-Friz

Abstract

This study seeks to consider the lived experiences of those vulnerable in the culture of digital communication, especially to suggest the possibility of healing and recovery through the practical application of Ignatian spiritual conversation in the new horizon affecting religious life. For this purpose, this study explores the practical implication of Ignatian spiritual conversation in culture of digital communication by employing a hermeneutical methodology, the triple operation of the description of the phenomenon, critical analysis, and constructive interpretation.

This study highlights the in-depth understanding and practice of authentic conversation, observing the vulnerability of self-isolation and cognitive bias experienced by networked selves as new subjects created in the digital communication culture and the multifaceted religious phenomenon of networked religion, a new horizon for their spiritual life. Interdisciplinary understanding of psychological counseling, the philosophy of dialogue, and biblical and systematic theology attested to authentic conversation’s healing, relational, and sacred dimensions. Ignatian spiritual conversation can be an applicable model of or alternative to those authentic conversations that help overcome the networked self’s vulnerability in the micro perspective and has an inner transformative potential through the constructive fusion of networked religion and Ignatian spirituality in the macro view.

This study provides a theoretical foundation for an interdisciplinary understanding of Christian/Ignatian spiritual conversation. More practically, it will be instructive to pastors so that they will be more sensitive to and able to minister to the needs of elderly and generation MZ who are vulnerable due to self-isolation and cognitive bias, exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, this study presents a good map of the new deinstitutionalized and post-authoritarian religious-spiritual situation represented by those who are spiritual but not religious.

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