Brothers, on Social Media, Do not Judge one another(21st Sunday after Pentecost, 2025-11-02)

“How fellow servants, seeing what happened, were very much grieved, and they told the king all that was done”. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear faithful, last year, the first time I was here in your beautiful country, the Mass was incidentally, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, exactly the same Mass as today, and we have talked about the different reasons why it is sometimes difficult for us to forgive our neighbor. Today, we shall talk about another lesson we can derive from today’s Gospel which is that Spiritual work of mercy of correcting those who err. We will talk about fraternal correction which includes the duty to denounce.

As we can see, if the fellow servants did not tell the king all that was done, would the king be able to fulfill his duty of safeguarding the common good of all? Is there, therefore, a duty for us to denounce the evil that we see?

Some might say: “Oh, definitely, Father. Anything that is true must be made known. People have the right to know all truths.” And so there are people who publishes in social media all truths that they encounter, for the sake of its being true. Is this a right thing to do? Does more information necessarily bring more knowledge? Does knowing more necessarily make us better persons? Is there a possibility that more information can cause more confusion?

When we see our neighbor commit a sin, what are we to do? Our Lord explains it in the Gospel according to St Matthew chapter 18. It is what we call fraternal correction.

But before anything else, what are the requisites that grant us the right to give fraternal correction? There are two: firstly, the sin committed by our neighbor must be a mortal sin; secondly, we must have evidence of the sin he committed.

For his fault to be a mortal sin, it must be of grave matter. And it must also be evident that he committed it with full consent of his will. To have evidence, on the other hand, I must have seen him commit the grave sin in question; or, at least, there are some persons in good moral standing who are eyewitnesses and can directly testify about the grave sin in question.

Can an indirect testimony be accepted? Indirect testimony, also called hearsay evidence, more commonly known as “gossip”, is not evidence in the strict sense. Can it never be accepted? It can be considered if it corroborates all existing facts and hard evidences.

If the two requisites are present, then we can do fraternal correction? What should be our motive for doing so? Only the salvation of our neighbor who has sinned and our own salvation. “Justice” can never be a motive because in such situations “justice” is usually revenge in disguise.

      

Now, if we still feel anger within us, we must postpone fraternal correction until our anger has subsided. The characteristics of fraternal correction are: truthfulness, meekness and affability. And, of course, fraternal correction must be done in private.

Can we use social media, or messaging apps in fraternal correction? No. Why? Because without real human interactions, there may be truthfulness but the other social virtues would be absent, as they cannot be practiced without human interaction. We must bear in mind that to do that which is good to our neighbor, we must practice virtues. Virtues, social virtues in this case, cannot be practiced when we use social media.

      

12. What if our fraternal correction is rejected, or is not accepted? We have to find others, at least two, who also witnessed it. These three persons now can give the corresponding fraternal correction. Same requirede conditions as the previous step: it must be done privately and in a virtuous manner, the same social virtues mentioned before: truthfulness, meekness and affability.

      

13. If this second fraternal correction is still useless, here is when we apply what Our Lord said: “And if he will not hear them, tell the church”. This means we denounce it to the competent authority in the Church: the parish priest in a parish, or in our case, the priest in charge of the chapel.

       

14. This is what the fellow servants did in today’s Gospel. The king, who is in charge of the common good of the kingdom, must know. In case of the chapel, in a community of Catholics, the one in charge of the common good is the priest in charge. In a family, it is the father of the family.

       

15. As before, there must be no anger nor hatred. We must wait for our anger to subside before denouncing. “Justice” cannot be the motive. Recovering what is ours cannot be the motive as well. Instead what should drive us to do this is to recover our neighbor’s soul for God.

16. How do we make sure all these criteria are kept? By denouncing privately to the priest. True, sins that have been confessed are under the seal of Confession. But sins that we know our neighbor will have to confess must also be subject to the utmost secrecy according to prudence and charity so as to facilitate the conversion of anyone who will need converting.

      

17. If someone who has sinned realizes that he is already the subject of ridicule among his co- community members, would that make it easy for him to convert and amend his life? No, in this case the inclinations left behind by original sin may defeat the good intentions of that man.

18. Now, seeing the big dose of prudence, discretion, patience, humility and charity needed in such a task, we can understand why Our Lord numbered fraternal correction among the spiritual works of mercy.

19. Now, the question is: why can’t Catholics nowadays practice fraternal correction as taught by Our Lord? As we have said, Spiritual works of mercy require social virtues; social virtues require a human or natural way of communicating.

      

20. Nowadays, usually the communications between us is not human nor natural anymore because of the proliferation of the use of social media. Social media is just so pleasant to the wounds that original sin left in us, social media knows how to flatter our self-love without our realizing it. Plus, it gives us the power to appear “good” to others while looking “appealing” to our secret pride.

      

21. And because virtue is harder to practice than vices, therefore we can see the majority of people preferring social media with its social vices instead of the boring and hard to practice social virtues.

      

22. “By their fruits you shall know them” said Our Lord in the Gospel. Through social media people hide behind a screen as if it were a mask. Thus, in communicating, people who habitually use social media: 1. commit duplicity by showing a created personality which is not the same with our uncreated but true personality; 2. unjustly suspicious or distrustful of others, which only means that social media users do betray the trust of other social media users;

23. 3. Gullibility, which shows a decline in the use of proper judgement; 4. susceptibility or being easily offended, which can be expected given the lack of human interaction which gives way to misunderstandings; 5. false humility which is a consequence susceptibility; with social media it’s just so, so easy to see ourselves as victims in our own eyes;

24. Lastly, 5. lack of sincerity. Do we really think emojis, a thumbs-up, or animated GIFs can replace a human face which smiles with true kindness and charity?

      

25. In terms of online conduct, social media users cannot be immune from: 1. vain and sinful curiosity. How much that we actually get to know, we know because we really need to know? Or is it just so easy and so enticing to know what can be known in social media? 2. pride and boastfulness. Do we really need to make the whole world know those things about us? And who are we to think that the world will be better by knowing about what we are or what we do or what we have?

26. 3. Envy. Let’s face it, we feel sad because others have what we truly wish we could have, because we think we deserve to have them as well. 4. Falsity or misrepresentation of one’s self. Seriously, would anyone “like” or “follow” someone who does not show himself to be “cool” or “amazing”? But in reality, aren’t we just lying to convince ourselves of our “coolness”? Is it possible that all social media users can really be that “cool”?

27. Lastly, lack of sincerity. Not only to people with whom we interact with in social media. Lack of sincerity starting with our own selves.

     

28. How do we know that many social media users practice social vices, in opposition to the teachings of Our Lord? Because they do exactly the opposite of what Our Lord taught when it comes to fraternal correction. First, in the world of social media the smallest fault is converted to a gigantic sin with cosmic proportions. Even if there is no fault, it’s always possible to find not one but many.

29.  No real evidence is needed, hearsay evidence (gossip) is more than enough. And because “everyone has the right to know the truth”, the “truth” produced by gossip becomes an unassailable fact.

     

29. Instead of correcting privately, the “correction”—bashing actually— is done in front of all although not in front of all: in a group chat where everything is made known to everyone and all suspicions become facts. At this point, the one being “corrected” has lost his reputation and even the possibility of refuting the wrong accusations against him.

30. At this point an innocent person is condemned publicly by a multitude who hides behind their social media profiles. If he is really innocent, it is now impossible to recover the honor that was robbed of him for the sake of “telling the truth to all”. If he is, on the other hand, guilty, he won’t even consider correcting himself but instead how to get “justice” that is to say revenge against these multitude who condemned him.

     

31. If the community authority —the priest in charge of the chapel, for example— notices the damage to the common good decides to investigate, no one will cooperate with him because:

1. “Not me, Father. I have nothing to do with it. I’m not a gossiper.” 2. “Oh no, we cannot tell

Father bad things, but only good things”. As if the priest as well is subject to the prejudices, secret pride, insincerity and self-love that rules social media.

32. Are we really Catholics? Our Lord said “By the love that you have for each other the world will recognize that you are my disciples.” Are we recognizable as being Our Lord’s disciples or are we recognizable as being the world’s disciples?

33. We have just celebrated Christ the king. Even social media use is subject to Our Lord’s law and dominion. If in serving God we are required to use social media, then we have the grace of state to use social media, meaning God will help us to do what is right when we use social media.

     

34. If social media is not a necessary means to fulfill our duty to God, then there is no grace of state. Meaning, God is not obliged to help us to keep us out of trouble as we use social media. This is something we have to think about the next time we use social media.

Fr. Ferrer