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CBCI Media Leaders Plan Effective Strategies For Improving Communication Ministry NEW DELHI, Feb. 15, 2010, 12.00 Hrs (CBCI News):
Speaking on the high priority the church should give to communications, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Chairman, CBCI Commission for Social Communications, said the church must continue to learn to to improve its communication, engage more professionals, promote training, and involve the laity and women. There has been a marked change in the communication ministry since the last ten years in the church in India, but there is also a sense of restlessness that things are not happening, and as fast as they should, with regard to communication minitry, he pointed out. He urged church leaders to have a change of mindset in order to ensure that communication is given utmost priority in the mission of the church. The meeting was attended by the chairman, members and secretary of the CBCI Commission as well as the chairmen bishops and secretaries of social communications in the 13 regions of the CBCI. The seminar focused on right to information, its role in relation to media, and how to promote right to information act in the church institutions. The meeting reviewed the national pastoral plan for social communications and the way it is being implemented. The participants urged the need to strengthen structures and offices at the diocesan and regional level in order to address issues like media management, planning, public relations and a more coordinated and effective communication ministry. A three-member panel of speakers shared ideas on how to laison with civil society, government and with church organisations and bodies with regard to information and communication. The speakers were Member of Minority Commission, Government of India, Sr Jessy Kurien, Director, Prashant, Fr Cedric Prakash SJ, and ICongo Director, Mr. Jeroninio Almeida. The secretaries of the region presented reports of programmes and activities in their respective regions. They also shared the problems and difficulties they face in carrying out the communication ministry effectively. A team of resource persons led by Dr. Srivastav and Ms. Madhvi Sharma from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) led a session on more effective use of the internet and websites and other new media for more effective communication. The participants discussed how each of the dioceses could strengthen information sharing through websites, coordinate and link information so as to speed up the process of information sharing, e-newsletters. Fr. Jude Botelho, Director, Niscort, shared about how to plan, design and improve diocesan and regional newsletters and E-newsletter. He stressed the importance of the networking through the E-newsletter and blogs. CBCI Commission for Social Communications Executive Secretary, Fr. George Plathottam presenting the data on the diocesan websites said out of 160 dioceses, only 77 have websites. Some of these are not regularly updated or maintained well. He urged the need to have better planning, linkages between sites and coordination of data and information. The regional commissions have agreed to assist the dioceses within their region to provide logistic support and guidance to start, improve and regularly maintain websites in their regions. The participants also decided to coordinate communication activities in their respective regions through a more focused effort to get the dioceses to establish commissions for social communications, more frequent meetings, animation, training programmes and ensuring greater involvement of the laity, women and youth in the media ministry. Archbishop Celli spoke of insights, opportunities and challenges for the church in the digital world. (Text of his talk is given below). On Feb 12th he launched and inaugurated the course for formation in social communication for seminaries and formation personnel in India. He released a 3-volume series of books and resources called Communications for Pastoral Leadership prepared by the CBCI Commission in collaboration with Don Bosco Communications- India. In his concluding message Archbishop Celli urged secretaries and leaders entrusted with the communication ministry to make the church present to all and to use the new technologies to promote ecclesial communion and to build harmony. He also urged the need to remove the digital divide that is prevalent in the world today.
The
Catholic Church in a Digital World I want to begin this message by reflecting on what it is we intend when we are talking about the Catholic Church in the context of communications. I know that in many ways it is obvious, to those of us who are believers, what the Catholic Church is; but it is always worth reminding ourselves of the priority we should give to that self understanding when we think about the communicative mission of the Church. The first thing is to remember that the Church – is “Catholic” in the sense that it is universal. The Catholic dimension, which probably best accounts for the universality of the Church, is the reality that the same Church that is present in Rome is alive and present by the grace of God on different continents throughout our world. We have a Church that is present in different locations. It is a Church that in some countries is very strong and influential by virtue of it numbers, its history and traditions. In other continents, and I am thinking very particularly of Asia, it seems the Church has a weak foothold. But what is important is that what is celebrated, what is lived at the local reality, is the truth of the reality of the Church. It is at the local level that the Church finds much of its vitality. It is at the local level that the Church structures reach and touch the lives of so many people. When we talk about the communicative mission of the Church, we are not talking about one mission among many others. We are in fact talking about the fundamental reason why the Church exists. The Church exists by the will of God and it exists precisely to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. From the beginning this has been its universal mission. We are called to bring the Good News to the ends of the earth, to ensure that the Good News of the Gospel reaches and touches the hearts of people in every part of our world. This message with which we have been entrusted – this Good News – is itself the message of Jesus Christ. It is not just a message in terms of being words or knowledge about a person. The message is fundamentally the person himself. So when we teach and preach the message of Jesus, we are handing on a message and a teaching that can never be separated from the life and the person of Jesus himself. We are also teaching not just about a historical figure who lived two thousand years ago and whose message has been recorded; but about a person who is still present to us in and through the life of the Church, particularly through our administration of the sacraments. At the core of the message of Jesus is a message of God’s love for all people. Constantly Jesus reaffirmed the unconditional nature of God’s love for his people. God loves first. He reminds us that love is universal. God has no favourites. God’s message of love is a message for all people. We must always keep that universality as a fundamental characteristic of our communicative efforts. And God’s message itself is a message to people to become people of love. Just as God has loved us, so we are invited to love, to love in the sense of putting others first. In doing so, we find the very secret of our own wellbeing and happiness. Our Gospel tells us that those who pursue only their own interests, who think only of themselves, will live a form of life which will prove delusional, that will not bring them the happiness they seek; and that it will also bring about a situation of serious social disharmony. The person who loves first, who thinks of his or her neighbour, who reaches out and serves those who are less well off, those who are vulnerable, those who are weak, is a person who will find his or her own dignity and happiness in the service of that message. He or she is also a person who will bring Good News to society, someone who will help create a society that is more attentive and caring of the needs of others. So therefore our message is one for the world. It is a message of Good News for the world and I think these are the key theological perspectives that we need to keep with us when we think about the importance of our own pastoral work. In our gathering this evening, I am present precisely as President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. I always think it is worth remembering what the Council for Social Communications is. It may be more obvious to some than others, but we are not the Press Office of the Vatican. That is a separate operation managed by Father Federico Lombardi, who would be known to many of you, but it is an operation that works independently of our office. We are not a media outlet. The Vatican is rich in media outlets – we have the CTV, Vatican Radio, our newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, and we have various news agencies; and they have their own operational autonomy. Of course we try to work with these to give a coordinated and collaborative dimension to the Church’s mission, but we are slightly different. We have some residual operational responsibilities. We have a responsibility to look after the Vatican’s film archive. We have a particular responsibility to reach out to the network of communicators in Latin America that is coordinated by the RIIAL. We have also got responsibility for accrediting photo journalists and television crews. Probably best known is our responsibility for “Mondovisione” – to coordinate the satellite broadcasts of the great events of Rome – those events I mentioned that are symbolically important for the unity of the Church. We collaborate with local partners to ensure that those great events can be brought to the attention of people through our world. Our mandate comes from the Apostolic Constitution – “Pastor Bonus”. It is a mandate that tells us we should promote the use of the means of social communication in the life of the Church, to proclaim the Good News that is so fundamental for the lives of all people; and also to ensure that the means of communications are put at the service of human beings so that they serve the good of human society through the promotion of development, justice and solidarity. These are not separate aims. To spread the Gospel brings with it the promotion of development, justice and solidarity. Equally the promotion of these human values can allow us to witness to the values of the Gospel. At Vatican II, a clear choice was made to speak of social communication rather than simply about the means of communication. The choice of the fathers of Vatican II was to stay with this title of social communications, to remind us that communications in the Church is never simply or uniquely about the means of communication. We communicate not just through the formal formats that we are most familiar with, not just through radio, not just through TV or through internet, or newspapers; we are rich in these means, but we communicate in every aspect of our lives. Communication is also a fundamental aspect of our liturgies and our celebrations. Communication is done by how we live our faith. What is often the most important communication is the strength of our witness to the Good News – our testimony renders it believable and welcome in the lives of others. It is our life, our liturgy, our attitudes, our approach to people that speaks most loudly. Communication always begins from the heart of the human person. Communication is always one person speaking - in the broadest sense of that term - to another. I would now like to move our reflection on somewhat, and list for you, and reflect on, some insights that should guide our understanding of the Catholic Church’s communicative mission in a digital age. Many of the themes that I am drawing on here have been articulated in the Pope’s Messages for World Communications Day. I am thinking particularly of the Message for 2009, where the Pope spoke about new technologies and new relationships, promoting a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship, and this year’s message, which reflects on the pastoral ministry of priests in our digital culture. The first insight that I think is clear is that the revolution in information technology which is so obvious to us is not just a technical revolution, but perhaps more fundamentally a cultural revolution. There has been, of course, a technical revolution. The wonderful technologies we have and the new software allow us to communicate with greater speed, to share greater volumes of information and to make that information more accessible to more people. Information becomes accessible through the use of mobile technologies that in fact render it available in the most unlikely places. There has been then this profound revolution in the technologies themselves. Maybe what is even more interesting is how people have used these new capacities, these new technical proficiencies, to communicate. We are seeing a concomitant revolution in the culture of communication, in how they gather information, in how they work together to best share that information. What we are noticing are very dynamic patterns of change in the ways people are actually communicating. This is a fundamental challenge I think for all large organizations. It is not just a challenge for the Church. All organizations are trying to understand the new dynamics of communicating, trying to understand how to position themselves to take advantage of them so that they can be present in this new debate, this new discussion, emerging by virtue of employment of the new technologies. It is interesting that John Paul II had in a sense a finger on the pulse of these changes even before the internet emerged as everyday reality. Speaking in 1990, in Redemptoris Missio, he had the following to say: It is also necessary to integrate that message into the "new culture" created by modern communications. This is a complex issue, since the "new culture" originates not just from whatever content is eventually expressed, but from the very fact that there exist new ways of communicating, with new languages, new techniques and a new psychology. The first thing we can note particularly in the message of 2009 is that the Pope has expressed on behalf of the Church a very positive evaluation of new media. He speaks of them as a “gift for humanity”. This is not to say that the Pope is naïve, that the Church is naïve. There are, of course, risks attendant on the new technologies, and more particularly on the uses that human beings are making of them. We are all aware that there are types of content available by virtue of the new technologies that are fundamentally destructive in terms of their negative impact on human wellbeing. There are sources of information that mislead. There are sources of information that debase others – that are there purely to exploit. We have to resist these materials. But in all of that, it is important that we do not lose sight of the great potential that exists when the new technologies are as the pope says, used properly, used well, best used to achieve their possibilities of creating a better society and enriching the lives of individuals. There is an old principle which says “abusus non tollit usum”. The fact that technology can be abused does not mean that it cannot have good uses. I think we find particularly in the 2009 message, picking up on aspects that have been present consistently in Church teaching, a realization that those technologies that support and enhance the human capacity to communicate are to be welcomed. Anything that makes the fruits of human knowledge more available to greater numbers of people should be welcomed. Innovations that facilitate learning, and we are aware how the new technologies open up access to the ideas and teachings of different people in different parts of our world, are to be celebrated. There is a potential there for us to enhance the capacity of human beings to grow in understanding of one another. And the accessibility of the new means permits us to think in terms of bringing our message to people who previously would have been isolated from us. In fact, maybe the strongest indication of the Pope’s positive evaluation of the new technologies is in his insistence that, precisely because they are so good and have so much to contribute to human wellbeing, we must ensure that they are shared by all people. There is a consistent note in the Pope’s teaching that insists that we must overcome the digital divide. We must, therefore, strive to ensure that the digital world, where such networks can be established, is a world that is truly open to all. It would be a tragedy for the future of humanity if the new instruments of communication, which permit the sharing of knowledge and information in a more rapid and effective manner, were not made accessible to those who are already economically and socially marginalized, or if it should contribute only to increasing the gap separating the poor from the new networks that are developing at the service of human socialization and information. So therefore, we are committed as a Council on behalf of the Church to advocate wherever we can in various world governmental organizations for this attentiveness to ensuring that the riches of our new communication technologies are available to all peoples. I know that in India you are experiencing a similar divide: notwithstanding the phenomenal growth in new technologies, there are many who are excluded. I was struck by an observation of the writer, Arundhati Roy, concerning the divisions in India: In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road-gangs of emaciated labourers digging a trench to lay fibre-optic cables to speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the light of a few candles. I encourage you to take up the task of finding imaginative solutions to ensure that the talents of all people can be harnessed by linking them to the new networks of information and communication. The other issue is that the digital divide is not just a global divide between rich and poor. We need to be attentive also that the internet is truly open to all even at the local level and that there is access across the social divides. We need to focus particularly on older people or those who have been left behind in educational terms and who can be left outside of the new emerging communities. We need to pay attention to those who are poor, who cannot afford the type of charges that seem to be there before people can have access to these forms of information, particularly as more and more public services and also Church services are mediated through the internet. We need to be attentive that we are not inadvertently excluding people from our attention as we develop digital strategies. A key concept that is evident, when the Pope talks about the new technologies, is their potential to facilitate dialogue between people. The fact that we can find online information generated by different communities themselves, offering therefore the best possible statement of their own beliefs, perspectives and traditions, is itself an enormous richness. It has great potential in the area of inter-religious dialogue, which is so important here in your part of the world. We can learn more about each other. We can present the truth as we see it to each other. We can debate with each other in ways that may not be so easy if we have to come together – there can be tensions about coming together, problems about choosing the right ground or area. The internet creates a space where each, from the safety of his or her own context, can reach out to the other and can begin a dialogue where we seek mutual understanding. It is important in such dialogue that we respect each other’s difference. Respecting differences does not mean we will always agree with each other. We will often debate. We will argue and try and clarify our perspectives. We will try to nuance our perspectives so that we can grow in understanding. But the key note is that we do so as friends. As friends we are committed to trying to understand the other’s position. We debate not to score points against each other, but in order to grow in greater insight. The Holy Father has long insisted on the importance that we have a culture, a public culture that is rooted in reason. He calls on believers, who are present where new cultures are being formed, to be present precisely as believers so that they can exercise a service of culture, what he calls a “diakonia of culture”. We can bring into emerging cultures and new cultures the rich human values that have been so fundamentally important in our Christian tradition. These values are often to be found in other religious traditions, they may to be found at times in the traditions of secularists also, but these values are increasingly fragile in contemporary society. We need to recover this sense of showing that these values are rooted in human nature and are accessible to human reason. I am thinking of values such as justice and respect for the dignity of the human person. We live in a world where the logic of the market tends to dominate; we live in a world where many are vulnerable because they are poor. Our tradition – and it is not exclusively our tradition – insists on the value and the dignity of every human person. We live in a society which needs to be reminded of the importance of truth. We live in a society where there is a need to show that people can live together; that there are forms of tolerance which allow for people to live acknowledging difference, even celebrating difference, and yet finding a shared belief in the goodness of each other that allows them to cohabit, to share public spaces, notwithstanding those differences. One of the things that is very clear in Caritas in Veritate is that the new technologies themselves will not automatically revolutionize and make everything better. Just because social communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or internationalize development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity (73). In that same encyclical the Pope insists on the importance of the religious voices being present, not that religious voices will predominate nor that they will have exclusive access to any area of public debate; but that they are an important element of that public debate. Denying the right to profess one's religion in public and the right to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has negative consequences for true development. The exclusion of religion from the public square — and, at the other extreme, religious fundamentalism — hinders an encounter between persons and their collaboration for the progress of humanity. … Secularism and fundamentalism exclude the possibility of fruitful dialogue and effective cooperation between reason and religious faith. Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development. There is a wonderful sense in which the Pope sees the potential of the new technologies to promote dialogue and the creation of what we might call a global forum. Many commentators have pointed out the risks that exist in modern communications, that in fact instead of promoting a culture or exchange, we end up with a very polarized culture where people only go to those sources of information that are already in agreement with their own self understanding of the world. This has been noted by many commentators; in particular, the US academic and activist Cass Sunstein has outlined the dangers to democracy if people only engage with arguments generated by their own political affiliates. If people only take seriously that which conforms to their existing views, and lose the capacity for a public culture of debate where people can acknowledge and accept difference, there are real dangers for society. In his Message for this year, Pope Benedict develops the idea of the internet precisely as a place of encounter between believers and non-believers. He uses the image of the “Court of the Gentiles” to express this reality. Whereas access to the Temple of Jerusalem was reserved to Jewish males, the Court of the Gentiles was open to the Gentiles and it became a privileged place of meeting between Jewish believers, coming and going from the sacred area that was the Temple, and their non-Jewish neighbours. It was almost a half-way house between the sacred and the purely secular arena. The Pope suggests that the internet could exercise a similar function: Just as the prophet Isaiah envisioned a house of prayer for all peoples (cf. Is 56:7), can we not see the web as also offering a space - like the "Court of the Gentiles" of the Temple of Jerusalem - for those who have not yet come to know God? In his recent message on priests in the digital era, the Pope says that priests must be present precisely as priests. They need to bring their values, their ideas, and their very essence as people of the Gospel with them. And he says that if they and everybody else can do this, then in a sense we can give a soul to the web. Otherwise, the web can become a rather cold and clinical place where information is exchanged impersonally. The Pope’s intuition here is that we can enrich it by giving it a truly human dimension – giving it a soul. Another key concept, and again we have touched this to some extent already, would be that of respect. The focus here is on content of the web. We need to ensure that the content of the web respects human dignity. All human beings have an intrinsic worth and are due respect. We need to understand the threats that exist to that human dignity, particularly on the web. There is much material that is there to promote hatred. There is much material that exploits people, exploits them by debasing the goodness of human sexuality and reduces people to objects that are there for the entertainment of others. There are other examples of where people are being manipulated, where they are being forced to take sides in debates without being given a true picture of the nature of the debates. There are places on the web where human beings have their dignity destroyed because they are reduced to becoming figures of fun or ridicule. The Pope has interesting insight on this; talking particularly in the message in 2009, he reminded young people that they are not just consumers of new media, they are also producers of media, and that they both need to be attentive to what they consume and to what they generate or produce. They ought not share material that threatens the values of others nor circulate material that undermines the goodness of others. We also need to remind people to be cautious about what they produce about themselves – there is a need for self respect on the internet. People should be careful about the images they portray of themselves because those images will last forever. There is real danger at times that people will inadvertently undermine their own dignity by being indiscrete in the types of materials they post and publish without adequate reflection. Another concept which the Holy Father used in talking about the internet was this idea of a digital continent. He seems to have successfully sidestepped the distinction which is made between the real world and the virtual world. If there are real people present in a virtual environment, then maybe in some ways we have to recognize that we are dealing with a reality. If human people are gathering, are congregating n this new space, then it is a space that we need to reach towards. And the Holy Father used this term to talk about this new reality; he spoke about the digital continent. And just as the Church over the years evangelized the different continents with varying degrees of success, so the Church today needs to approach and be attentive to this new continent where so many people congregate, where so many people do business, where so many have their social life and being, where so many people find friends. The Church must be present. The Church cannot be absent in such an important forum. The digital continent needs to be the focus of our evangelization. In this year’s message of the Holy Father, there is an evocative use of the image of the highways of information technology. In the early days of the internet, we used to talk about the information highways, and the message talks about these crisscrossing highways that exist now in cyberspace, in the internet. It suggests that as once Jesus walked the highways and byways of Galilee, today his voice must be made present on the highways of the internet. To do so effectively requires that we are attentive to the culture of that environment. We must find languages and ways of communicating that are appropriate to the mores and to the customs of this new digital continent. I think we should trust younger people in particular with this mission. Younger people are digital natives. They were born into this continent; they are at home on this continent. They have a capacity for expression and knowledge of the modes of communication that are most appropriate to a digital era. We must trust them in a particular way with the evangelization of their peers. But it is also a mission for the whole Church. This becomes clear in this year’s message where the Pope, talking to the whole community in a message addressed to all brothers and sisters, invites priests to be attentive to their responsibility to ensure that the web becomes a place of evangelization. The Pope insists that when priests think of their own ministry, and the scope of their ministry, that they think of the web. Opportunities The Internet is also a place where we must appreciate there are great opportunities for the Church. The French Canadian theologian Rene Latourelle spoke about points of insertion for the Gospel. I think the Internet is a place where we can find ways of bringing the Gospel and inserting it into the lives and searching of human beings. We can think of the Internet as a forum. It is this incredible forum or public square, or the term use by the Pope – agora, it is this common area where we can hope to have extraordinary access. We can reach isolated individuals and communities. We can find new audiences. We can speak to people who might never be present in our Churches, who might never read or engage with more specifically Catholic media, but who are on the net, who are searching, who are at times randomly browsing and come across our messages and ideas. We see this then as a place of outreach, where we can bring our message to these extraordinary large new audiences. It is also a place that allows us to bring our message in a way that is direct. We can blog; we can put out our message using our own choice of words. We can podcast our message, allowing the human voice to express directly our hopes. We can use YouTube to deliver visual message. We can use various social networks in ways that makes our message, our teaching, our reflections, our ideas, our songs, and our celebrations available to wider audiences, but in ways that are not necessarily mediated in the way that old media demanded. In the past we often had to relay on an editor, someone else to make selections, to decide how much we could say or what we could say. We are allowed a more direct access. This more direct access comes with a certain cost as ours is one of the many voices competing for attention. We need to consider how we can draw people into dialogue. We have to realize that those who are browsing may not be there for long; we need a way to capture and hold their attention. One point I think
should give us great hope when we engage with the internet is
that it is not just this empty forum or marketplace. It is a
marketplace – a forum – which many people have chosen
to use as a way of seeking out connectedness, of seeking out
friendship. The social uses of the Internet are very strong
particularly among young people. I think before we see that
as a vehicle for engagement, we have to see it as a fundamental
sign of hope for us in terms of our capacity to reach these
young people. This search for friendship, the search for connection
which is such a feature of internet usage, is not simply a recent
phenomenon, but a more recent manifestation of a traditional
truth of human nature which is that human beings desire relatedness.
I think also the very concept of connectedness and friendship can serve as a basis for an ethic. There has been a lot of discussion of the need for an ethic of the internet, for an ethic of communications. I think the very concept of friendship begins to ground such an ethic and, moreover, it is a concept that can be shared by both believers and non-believers. Friendship itself will lead to respect. Friendship itself will require a commitment to dialogue even in situations of difference. Friendship itself will always alert us to our solidarity with others and make us more sensitive to their needs. Many of us will have a sense of being touched by the terrible tragedy in Haiti. Those of us who had friends in Haiti will have a stronger sense of that tragedy. If we can develop this sense of friendship, then we will produce people who are more socially sensitive to the needs of our world. A final point that I think is, in a sense, a sign of opportunity is to be found in the very structure of the Internet. People talk about the internet as being structured not hierarchically, but in terms of linked networks. There are various networks of individuals and institutions which overlap with each other and which cumulatively construct a web which has many different hubs where the different networks are linked. This in many ways parallels the Church’s own understanding of itself. We are, if nothing else, a community of communities. People belong to specific local ecclesial communities; but because many of them will have connections to other communities then the very communities themselves become linked and interactive. I think we can build on this and see in our own existing Church landscape a structure that is particularly susceptible for engagement with the internet. I think a particular manifestation of this can be found in the fact that people often talk about the internet being both global and local. The internet is global in the sense that we can find out things that are happening in every corner of the world. And yet the internet is profoundly local. Much of the research
that has been done shows that most of the day to day interactions
of people on the internet concern local issues. They want to
know about local timetables. They want to know about the availability
of local services. The internet then is both global and local.
The phrase “glocal” has been coined to account for
this reality. I think this term “glocal” –
this sense that an internet is global, universal in its concern,
and yet intensely local, also parallels the reality of the Church.
Our Church is an international, multi-national, trans-national
community, but it remains particularly grounded at the local
level. One of the things we will have to see is how we can harness
the internet to create this sense of global communion for all
Catholic believers, especially those who by the nature of where
they are geographically, or of their political situation, are
left with a sense of isolation. We need to construct on-line
networks that parallel our own community and ecclesial structures
so that we can set up what we might call networks of solidarity,
community and communication. We have a privileged opportunity
to reinforce the reality of what the Church is in and through
an appropriate use of the new technologies. I think we have to be honest and recognize that there are challenges posed to the Church, as there are to every other global organization, by the new technologies. The first is maybe structural. I think in today’s world we have to insist again on the priority of communication in the life of the Church. Communication has always been at the core of the Church’s mission. In today’s world that becomes ever more important. We need to think not just about the individual efforts of people in different parts of the world who are engaged in communications activity, but we need to think in terms of how the Church as a unity is communicating. We also need to ensure that where decisions are made, where important judgement calls are being made, that the communicative dimension of those decisions and judgements is thought about from the beginning so that we can effectively present them in ways that makes sense to the people of today’s world. Communication has to move to the core of many of our existing structures of governance and decision making. I think that becomes very particular in a world of convergence. Convergence is a buzz word we often hear used. Whereas in the past we had specific content in newspapers, radio and television; today all that content can be mixed together. Such a bringing together of content allows for a fluidity, allows for people to watch, read and listen at the same time. So we need to take account of that in our structures. We need in particular to look at our existing institutional structures of communication and see how we can get types of synergy, the bringing together of existing energies, in order to achieve a new, intensified impact using our existing means and, through a more harmonious integration of those means, achieve an ever greater impact in the digital arena. I think we need also to be attentive to the reality that the internet is not just a forum for us to speak, but for our outreach in the broadest sense. All effective communication begins with listening and receptivity. The internet allows us to listen in on other debates. It allows us to see what other people are saying about our messages. It allows us to begin an evaluation of how our message is being received and perceived. It enables an attentiveness to how others are dealing with our communications. There are challenges in this. Things happen so quickly. We live in a world with a 24 hour news cycle, where globally there is no end to the generation of new information, including comments and opinions on what the Church is doing and saying. We need to be able to respond to that quickly. We need to be able to respond to that in the various languages in which the debates are happening. So we need to have a very intense listening in order to facilitate a more fluent engagement with the debates, a more focussed positioning of the Church in the debates. Our listening, however, should not be just for the purpose of strategic rebuttal but to foster a greater sensitivity to the concerns of others and an awareness of their deepest longings and aspirations. It is an agreed point among commentators that one of the features of Web 2.0 is that it is interactive. It allows for more personal forms of engagement, for the possibility of reaching out to the specific questions of the individuals who are visiting our websites. That is going to be a challenge for our Church, not least because of the resources required to do so effectively. It is a challenge because we have to be careful that the whole authority of the church is not invested in the individual responses to specific questions. We cannot a situation emerge where every answer to a question on the internet is perceived as an official position of the Church. We have to be careful that we develop good devolved structures that allow us to respond at a local level in an appropriate language to questions so as to ensure that we meet the individual needs of those who are questioning and those who see in the web a way of approaching us and engaging with us. We must also recognise that the digital culture requires us to confront a particular challenge in terms of our language. Within the Church, we are accustomed to the use of texts as our primary language of communication. Many of the websites that have been developed by different Church institution continue to use that language. One can find on the web many wonderful homilies, speeches and articles but it is not clear if they speak to a younger audience that is fluent in a different language; a more visual language rooted in the convergence of text, sound and images. Many of the texts have been shaped with a particular audience in mind, an audience that is willing to study and analyze the text, but their appeal can be limited to those who are browsing and who will move on very quickly if their attention has not been immediately impacted. The difficulties are compounded when the actual texts use a vocabulary and forms of expression that are experienced as unintelligible and off-putting even by sympathetic audiences but the deeper problem is precisely about the over-reliance on texts. In meeting this challenge the Church will look to the example of Christ, who spoke to his contemporaries with words, stories and parables but also through his deeds and actions. Moreover, the Church can turn to its rich heritage of art and music. Just as the stain glass images of the medieval cathedrals spoke to an illiterate audience, we must find forms of expression that are appropriate to a generation that has been described as “post-literate”. The need to find a new “language” is not new for people of faith. Throughout its history, the Church has learned to proclaim the unchanging message of Christ in new idioms and in ways that respond to different cultural contexts. The Church has long been “multi-lingual”. The new language, in which it must be fluent in order to be present in the new forum of ideas and information, will stand beside the other languages of its tradition. Those who are concerned that the language of the digital culture is too banal or ephemeral to translate the profundity of the Christian message should remember that it is not a language that will substitute the precise language of dogma and theology or the rich language of homiletics or liturgy but rather will serve to establish an initial point of contact with those who are far from faith. Those who respond to this initial contact will be invited to more profound forms of engagement, where they will learn these other languages in their proper context. There is a very interesting parallel used by the great Jewish writer, Jonathan Sacks, when he distinguishes between broadcasting and narrowcasting. Anyone who has ever delivered a religious broadcast knows how difficult it is to speak to an unknown and open audience. To our fellow believers we can address words of fire; to a wider public only the vaguest generalities. Broadcasting as opposed to narrowcasting is low on authenticity. But if we are to have a public culture, and one with a religious dimension, it is a discipline we have to undergo. We have to learn to speak to those we do not hope to convert, but with whom we wish to live. Narrowcasting frees us from that burden. But it moves us nearer a situation in which opinion is ghettoized into segmented audiences, and where the increase of choice means that we only have to listen to voices with which we agree. (The Persistence of Faith, London, 1991, p64.) Many commentators have spoken of the need for people of faith to acquire two languages; a first language of citizenship which enables them to engage with all others in the public forum and a second language that can be shared with those who are of the same tradition. The first language is often less rich than the language of our scriptures and of our liturgies but it permits a continuing conversation between those who make up society. As Jonathan Sacks argues in the context of British society: Keeping this first language alive means significant restraints on all sides. For Christians, it means allowing other voices to share in the conversation. For people of other faiths it means coming to terms with a national culture. For secularists, it means acknowledging the force of commitments that must, to them, seem irrational. For everyone, it means settling for less than we would seek if everyone were like us, and searching for more than our mere sectional interests: in short, for the common good. (Ibid,p68) The use of this first language is not to be confused with the tendency among some secularist to exclude religious language or the insights of religious faith from the public forum but rather represents a balance between intolerant forms of secularism and fundamentalism. I think as Catholics we are particularly fortunate. Much of our ethical teaching in particular has been formative in the context of the language of the natural law, the language or reason, the language of debate and dialogue. I think we can use that language to intervene effectively in debates about the point and purpose of human life, the best ways of living as human beings, the best ways of constructing forms of society that protect and cherish all their members. We have a ready-made language that engages and that is accessible to others. As we move more in the digital arena, we will have to use new languages. There is a language one will need for Twitter, a different language for YouTube, another language we need for traditional television. We have to learn these new languages and there are risks involved. We will make mistakes, but nobody has ever learned a language without making mistakes. If we are simply afraid of making mistakes, then we will never learn to be fluent in these new languages and we will fail in our mandate to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I think another particular challenge is that the landscape of the web is often described as being democratic. A huge emphasis is put on the individual’s contribution. The term that is often used is that the web is open, free and peer-to-peer. The Catholic Church has many of those values, but we are also a very strongly hierarchical organization. We are also an organization that rightly values the insights of our tradition. It means we have to think about how we can engage with what is the more free-flowing conversation of the internet, where very often people are valued for the novelty of their presentation, for the originality of their presentation and for the language of their presentation, rather than the essential content of what they are bringing to the discussion. We need to engage astutely because the web has need of our wisdom, our traditions. The web, if it were to leave space just to the young, would be denying them some very important resources. Very often it is said that the web is a place where communication happens peer-to-peer, virally, as people share content with each other rather than going to one central source of content. It has often been observed that to be strongly present in the web, to have real penetration, one has to let go of control and allow other people to bring one’s message forward. That is a challenge for us, the accuracy of our Christian message is important. Our message is not of our own creation. It is the teaching of Jesus Christ and proclaims the truth of his life and his love for all people. We need to find ways of expressing these insights that will stay coherent and true even though they are passed on by different people. We also need to be attentive to the reality that it is very hard to know what is authentic on the web. The web facilitates people being present in different ways and anonymously. We need to have ways in which in the long term we can begin to think about how we can have an authenticated Church presence. If individuals are present and claim to speak for the Church and in fidelity to their faith, they need, in some sense, to be licensed if theirs is to be an authentic voice of the Church. We have to think of new structures which allow us to guide those who are searching on-line for the Church to find its authentic voice. This becomes particularly important because our culture is a culture that is marked by a very strong relativism. Throughout the world there is a view that it is no longer possible to say what is right or wrong, that we have to accept and respect the different views of different individuals and groups without making judgements. All views are to be accepted. We know that philosophically we can challenge this position and we do so. In particular, the Holy Father has been strong in reminding us of the need we have for truth if we are to live our lives well, both as individuals and as societies. There is a particular danger on the internet where there is such a volume of material, much of it contradictory, that there is a tendency of people to give up on a search for truth and simply to seek out that information which coincides with there already pre-formed ideas. In that forum we need to be a voice that advocates truth, a voice that insists on the importance of reason. There is another choice confronting the Church in a context where there is so much that is wrong, mistaken and misleading on the internet. Should the Church spend its time correcting that which is wrong or should it seek to complement and supplement that which is misleading by having clearly authenticated and reliable sources of its own. Rather than allowing those who are spreading mistruths, those who are being deliberatively mischievous, or those who are simply mistaken to define the debate; would it not be better to develop sites that allow us to speak the truth on our own terms, in positive terms, in ways that seek to engage people? The web in our thinking is often seen primarily as a location for the exchange of information, but the web is also a place where people go to be entertained, to have their imagination engaged. The web is not just a place where people are going with an intellectual mission to find things out. They are also going there to find new nourishment for their heart and their soul. We need to remember the importance of the imagination. We can think back to Jesus. It was not simply the intellectual quality of his discourses that drew people to him. It was that he could tell stories. He could create images; create narratives that captured people’s hearts and minds. We need to develop that capacity to express the message of Christ not just in raw intellectual terms, but also in ways that engage the imagination. Throughout our history we have wonderful examples in our traditions of music, art, literature, of celebration and in the lives of the saints that can speak to people. We need to bring that with us as we go into the web. The web is multi-dimensional. The web requires multiple intelligences, not just an intellectual intelligence. So we need to recover the sense of stories, images, and icons. We also need to remember the importance of the dominant images of our age. Many people’s only view of the Church will have been formed by popular culture – films they have seen where the Church is featured, TV programmes where the Church is featured. We need to generate in popular media - drawing on the goodwill of Catholic writers and Catholic producers - positive images of the Church, positive images of Church personnel and positive images of Church communities. We need images that reflect the reality of the Church so that the Church we know as believers is replicated in the presentation of the Church to those who maybe do not have our privileged means of access to that reality. Another clear challenge for the church is to be more attentive to education in this new context. By education, I mean the training and formation of dedicated Church personnel for the ministry of communication. I am thinking of lay people who will give their lives precisely to communications. I am thinking of ministers, priests and religious who need to have specific skills in communications if they are to be effective pastors in this new age. I think the focus here must always be on the training and formation of people. It is not simply about giving them technologies. The technologies will continue to change. We need to train people who have a sense as to how they can put modern technologies, and whatever technologies or systems of communication we may have in the future, at the service of our mission of communication. A robust commitment to the art of communication may in the long-term prove more important than particular technical skills. We need to be attentive to media education. We need in particular to educate people on how to understand the dynamics of the media so that they can find a sure and certain path in their use of media to find out truth, to entertain themselves healthily and to make positive and life giving connections. We also need to be particularly attentive to supporting families. In many ways, new media have reversed the hierarchy of the family. It is often the case that children are much more skilled in and knowledgeable about the news means of communication than their parents. It is difficult sometimes for the parents to offer directives in a world they are not familiar with. As a Church community, we need to work and support parents in that. We should share with them the insights of research, sometimes very basic things. Know what your children are doing. Do not allow them uninterrupted or private access to websites. Ensure that you are present for them and talking with them about what they are learning. One of the things we need to be concerned with is the Catholic presence in the blogosphere. Much of the blogosphere is characterized by very direct forms of engagement. We need to ensure that Catholics who are present have a way of speaking that is appropriate for them as Catholics. I am talking here of what we might call a code of behaviour - “netiquette” - for the blogosphere. We have to be sure that the way we debate things reflects all that is best about our Church tradition. There is a tendency for polarization on the web where people often engage in very strong and robust forms of debate. That is not unwelcome, but we have situations sometimes where people are not simply content to attack and debate the arguments of others, but they take them on and attack their very person. We need to remember that within our Church we want to witness to the unity of our community. That becomes very important on the web where our debates are accessible and available to people who are not believers. We need to be sure they are not turned way by forms of squabbling that are not going to draw anyone to the life giving message of Jesus Christ. Another challenge is to ensure that young people continue to be engaged positively by community life. There is a paradoxical danger that the internet, which is there to serve and facilitate human communication and human connectedness, can in fact give rise to forms of isolation. There are people whose patterns of usage of internet in fact become dangerous because they preclude them from having the time for true reflection. There is a danger sometimes that engagement with internet is at the cost of their engagement with the people and the communities where they live and work. We need to be attentive that people are drawn into healthier forms of community. That becomes particularly important for our own Church engagement. Our first contact may be mediated, may be virtual, may be online; but because we are always a community that is called into being by Jesus himself, we must invite people to community, to forms of community that incarnate faith through the love and service of other people. Our internet strategy must always be one that calls people to stronger, more personal and social forms of engagement. And that is necessary if we are to be true to what is specific about our own Christian and Catholic tradition. Finally, I would like to leave with some considerations that are more about articulating a strategy for a Catholic presence in the internet and a digital era. First I think we need to be conscious that we need to develop strategies that are organic. We need to let good initiatives grow from the local level and then embrace the centre. To try and come with a highly centralized solution - a master plan - is no longer appropriate, if it ever were appropriate. We need to watch and learn about the wonderful initiatives happening in various parts of the world, where various local Church communities and individuals are engaging and exploiting the potential of the web. We need to monitor and watch these and identify best practices which we can then make available, allowing for cultural differences, to people in different parts of the world. We need to be wary of “one size fits all” solutions. This is an area where there is limited expertise. Even the great gurus often get it wrong, mainly because what has happened is that the very patterns of communication are changing. They are no longer being centrally determined, but it is the users who are deciding which technologies are working and which fail. It is the users who are deciding which media and which platforms become viable and which become redundant. So we need to have a flexibility to respond to a constant process of change. In that we will need partnerships with those who have specific technological competence, partnership with those who are particularly fluent in the new languages of the media. What we need to bring to those partnerships is our own strongly developed sense of who we are, of what the message of Jesus is, and the type of community we are. So we need to ensure that our own engagement has its own theological specificity and is marked by our convictions concerning the centrality of Jesus Christ, the essential role of community and belonging and our conviction of the importance of respect, dialogue and friendship. Finally, this is a kind of learning by doing. I said we can make mistakes when we learn a new language. We will become competent by doing different things. We must learn to be honest in evaluating what has not worked, to celebrate what has worked and recognize achievement wherever it comes from. So we need to learn from what is best. Finally, I could use the example of Pope2You.net as a small experiment that has enabled us to reach new audiences. |
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A
three-day seminar on communication and information concluded
at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) February
13. Addressing the seminar Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, President,
Pontifical Council for Social Communication, urged the need
to adopt the new media culture and mentality for the communicative
mission of the Church. The meeting was organised by the CBCI
Commission for Social Communications, New Delhi.
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