Rebels Wanted. Explaining faith in "millennial" language.He studied communications but never thought of dedicating himself to it, "I saw it from the negative side," he admits. This 28-year-old Tenerife native was in the diocesan seminary for five years before making the leap to religious life.
He entered Carmel in 2016 and, upon making his religious profession, God made this "anti-net" man see that He wanted him evangelizing in Youtube.
How did Friar Abel's channel begin?
-It was not something I planned. Almost the opposite, I would say. Like all things of God: God takes the initiative and you follow in tow. That's how my life has been, always in God's wake, like the prophet Jonah.
I didn't have social networks or anything. I practically lived in digital abstinence. In the novitiate I hardly used the computer. I would check my email once a week or look for some information and little else. I was "zero" on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Youtube.
On the day of my religious profession, kneeling down, I experienced that the Lord was calling me to be an evangelizer through YouTube. And I said to myself: "Let's see, how am I going to be one? It is true that I had studied communication, but almost "to redeem myself": to get to know it, but not to dedicate myself to it. In fact, I saw it from the "negative" side.
The fact is that I experienced this unexpected call to evangelize on Youtube. I thought it was an invention of my mind but, from there, I went through a long process of discernment with my spiritual director, with the formators, etc. until the channel was inaugurated, on October 15, St. Teresa's Day, 2019. I opened myself Twitter e Instagramalthough everything is very focused on Youtube. My idea is to create community on Youtube, this is the sense, although it is true that each network has its own audience.
Why Youtube and not another social network?
-There really is no logical explanation. I only know that, at that moment, I had a crush from God. A very incisive experience. That crystallized in my mind in Youtube, and not in anything else. I knew very little about that world, I knew Antonio García Villarán who is an art critic that I liked a lot but little else.
Do the results confirm that this was what God intended?
-On the one hand, results are not a sign of anything. In the Gospel, the dynamics of success is completely missing. There is no dynamic of success, but rather the opposite. We can say that, from the tile down, with purely human eyes, at least in the life of Christ the preaching of the Gospel was a "resounding failure": he was abandoned, he died on the cross... The seed of the Gospel had to rot in order to bear fruit. We also have to enter, in our apostolates, in the seed dynamicsWe need to rot in order to bear fruit. That is why, I repeat, success is not a criterion for anything.
On the other hand, it is true that I have come across prodigious facts that the very dynamics of the word engenders: fantastic people, people who have felt helped by the channel or who have deepened their faith thanks to the videos... This shows that the effort, that overcoming these personal temptations, is worth it. It is worth the risk. Evangelization, mission, is a risk. Beyond the numbers, it was worth it.
As for the numbers, I'm not complaining. As difficult as it is now to disseminate Catholic content on the web, we are more than happy that there are so many people of all kinds following the channel. We are doing a precious mission, which is a path of shared faith.
How to navigate in a world where it is not difficult to use God as an excuse to look for oneself?
-That is the daily struggle. To see God's will for this work that requires much discernment, much prayer, and to avoid those temptations that are on this path.
Does anyone help you with this task?
-This is a very sacrificing mission, because of the time it takes and the energy it consumes, the emotion you put into it, the attention to the dynamics of operation. To be youtuber is not only a profession, as such, but almost a way of existence.
I count on people who collaborate with me, especially in the management of social networks because I am still quite abstemious in that sense. I respond to questions asked of me personally but I am not a continuous inhabitant of the net. In fact, I don't have a smartphone, so my internet surfing is very restricted to the moment I log on to the computer. And that's basically because I don't have the time. I have four hours in the afternoon, if I spend one of them on social networks, I only have three left to make the video and these videos do not come out with three hours a day but with much more.
How do you balance that youtuber lifestyle with that digital semi-abstinence?
-I approach it from the theological point of view of contemplation. Everything is ordered to this germinal principle: the contemplative life.
The contemplative life from the Teresian point of view requires a lot of evangelical astuteness, it is not all of the devil or everything is our salvation. It is a middle ground that requires taking advantage of all the good that the digital continent has to offer and rejecting everything that could be detrimental to the health of our contemplative life, which is a constant challenge. That is why I consider myself semi-abstemious digital: I work on the Internet but I don't let it take over my whole life.
That's why I don't have a smartphone. I have a computer in one place, away from my room. I have some very specific times when I work in the digital world. I do a kind of ecology of the day that allows me to free my proper contemplative sphere - the cell, the chapel or the refectory - from all the noise that the digital continent can bring in and that is not its own space. That is why I have to delimit space and time very well.
One of the characteristics of your presence in the networks is that you avoid confrontations and polemics, but how do you see these discussions and attacks that manifest themselves in the social networks, also among Catholics?
- One of the creators of the Internet, Jaron Lanier, has become a kind of apostle against what the digital world has become because of a radicalized attention economy that seeks to viscerally capture our attention. All this with the aim of generating interaction, knowledge about us. From this author I got the idea that all radicalized people at this time, with radical or illogical positions, have a particularity: they are, in many cases, addicted to the Internet.
This radical polarization is the result of mismanagement of our experience of the digital continent and we can all fall into this.
From an economic point of view, it is in the interest of the network companies that we are as radical as possible, in all areas. The more radical we are and the more radical our interventions in social networks are, the more interaction we will generate, and therefore, the more data about us and the people around us we will provide them with.
Christians often fall into the idea that a social network is of one political profile or another... Of the left or of the right and it is not so. Social networks are not right-wing or left-wing but of the lowest, of the lowest of the person because polarization produces revenue.
So when we see that some accounts are cancelled in networks, such as Twitter for example, don't you think that they want to silence one or another position?
The first thing to say is that very few accounts are cancelled indefinitely. They are usually cancelled for a week because the algorithm has not worked well. That is, if 300 people "agree" to denounce an account, even if it is about flowers, they are going to cancel it, because the platform's own guidelines work that way. Twitter suspends it as a precautionary measure until it is reviewed by a person and then, generally, it is restored.
However, if a profile goes against the laws of those platforms where it is, -which are private, let's not forget, and they can set the rules they want-, or if its behavior provokes violent behavior, illegal content, they will cancel it indefinitely.
I am not saying that there are not cases in which they have not gone too far, behind the social networks there are people and there can be injustices. But, as far as I perceive, there is no systematic censorship of Catholic profiles.
How would you define your channel?
-It's a very good question because I feel like I've been asking it for two years. With every video it resurrects the question "what am I doing, what is this channel for?"
Lately I think that what I bring to this channel is theology. Theology for Youtube, but I also make videos analyzing the background of High School Musical and the doubt "what is this, geek theology?" comes back.
The truth is that postmodernity today understands disciplines in this sense, almost absurd. The absurd, in a good sense, is almost a category. We only have to look at Canal de Ter, for example.
If we want to talk about postmodernity, sometimes we have to start from comparisons that, from an academic point of view, are banal, absurd.
Theology has to open its format to postmodernity and that means changing the dynamics of the academy to other dynamics in which we are still initiating. I could say that my channel is Theology for the postmodern man.
What have been your "top" videos?
- What I like best are entertaining, but profound, explanations of theological issues that people care about. For example, I did a 10-minute video on Advent that succeeded or one on the Immaculate Conception. I have also commented on recently published magisterial documents. People appreciate it when you explain things in a profound but fresh way.
