Australian Social Media Ban: Secular Substitute for True Catholic Formation
The EWTN News portal reports on Australia’s new law prohibiting children under 16 from accessing social media, framing it as a victory for “Catholic advocates” like Dany Elachi and Melbourne’s Archbishop Peter Comensoli. The law imposes fines up to tens of millions of dollars on tech companies failing to verify users’ ages. Elachi, co-founder of the Heads Up Alliance, claims the measure helps parents resist “values of TikTok” and restore family prayer time. Comensoli ambiguously endorses the law while acknowledging social media’s “great benefits,” and Professor Michael Hanby cautiously supports it despite doubts about effectiveness. The article presents state intervention as necessary to rescue childhood from digital addiction, ignoring the Church’s established supernatural remedies for modern crises.
State Usurpation of Parental Authority
The Australian law epitomizes the modernist substitution of state power for divine and parental authority. Pius XI’s Divini Illius Magistri (1929) affirmed that “the family holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring” (n. 33), condemning state encroachment as “an unjust claim.” Yet Elachi praises this state mandate as “pro-parent,” demonstrating how conciliar Catholicism inverts principles: “Everybody has seen the damage… I’m proud that Australia is… taking serious steps to roll it back.” This stance echoes the condemned proposition from Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “The entire government of public schools belongs by right to the civil authority” (Error 45). True Catholic resistance would form parental leagues independent of state coercion, emphasizing sacramental grace over bureaucratic control.
Naturalism Masquerading as Pastoral Care
Comensoli’s statement typifies the conciliar church’s naturalistic worldview: “Social media has brought many great benefits… Young minds need time to develop… to use social media safely.” Contrast this with St. Pius X’s condemnation of Modernist epistemology in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): “They proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree… so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched” (n. 39). The archbishop’s focus on “safe usage” ignores the occasions of sin inherent to platforms designed to incite vanity, lust, and distraction—evils requiring avoidance, not management. The pre-conciliar Catechism of St. Pius X explicitly warned believers to “fly from all occasions of sin” (The Commandments, Q12), a principle erased in this therapeutic approach.
Psychological Reductionism Over Spiritual Warfare
Elachi’s narrative reduces childhood corruption to screen time: “Scrolling replaces bedtime prayer… Instagram overwhelms children’s lives.” This ignores the demonic dimension of media promoting abortion, gender ideology, and blasphemy—realities requiring exorcistic prayers and sacramentals, not merely age restrictions. Pius XII’s encyclical Miranda Prorsus (1957) addressed media dangers by urging “the use of these inventions to spread the Kingdom of God” through Catholic programming, not capitulation to state censorship. The article’s fixation on “withdrawal symptoms” psychologizes what is fundamentally a crisis of faith: Children deprived of the Rosary, Eucharistic adoration, and corporal works of mercy will inevitably seek counterfeit consolations online.
False Security in Technological Solutions
The law’s reliance on age verification systems exposes its modernist foundations. Requiring children to submit identification to tech corporations—entities actively subverting Christian morality—contradicts the Catholic principle of prudential distrust toward secular powers. As Leo XIII warned in Libertas Praestantissimum (1888): “Whence it follows that whatever is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man” (n. 13). Australia’s mandate creates a surveillance apparatus while doing nothing to ban pornography, blasphemous content, or LGBT propaganda accessible to “verified” users over 16. It echoes the condemned Error 79 from the Syllabus: “Civil liberty of every cult is the best way to make people prosper”.
The Silence on Supernatural Remedies
Nowhere does the article mention the traditional Catholic antidotes to digital addiction: daily family Rosary, First Saturday devotions, regular confession, or consecration to the Immaculate Heart. Archbishop Comensoli’s vacuous hope that children will “engage with social media in positive ways” ignores Pius XI’s teaching in Quas Primas (1925): “When once men recognize… that Christ reigns over society… then at last will many evils be cured” (n. 19). True protection requires restoring Christ’s social kingship—not outsourcing morality to secular legislators. The conciliar church’s embrace of this law confirms its apostasy: It administers aspirin to cancer patients while withholding the Divine Physician.
Source:
Catholic advocates hail Australian social media ban for children as ‘new standard’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.12.2025