(news taken wrom www.zenit.org)
Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications conducted a conference on the theme “The Role of Mass Communications in Evangelization” He stressed that the “church is committed to engaging with the new media,” saying that “communication is not just another activity of the Church but is at the very essence of its life” With this commitment, proposing a new way of looking at communication, he said that we should not only be “technically prepared” but most of all, we should be “culturally attentive” which has two dimensions: that we should “know the general culture of the people (intended audience) --- to know their cares and concerns, their fears and hope” and that we “must be familiar with the specific culture changes presented by the new media environment where significant changes in patterns of media consumption have been brought about by the changes in technologies.” He also added that to be “culturally attentive,” “there is also a need to attend to the specific media culture that is coming into being in the context of the ongoing revolution in the technologies of communication” that “it would be a mistake to see these changes as merely technological” because “they have also changed the way people communicate, they ways they associate and form communities, the ways by which they learn about the world, the ways in which they engage with political and commercial organizations.”
With this new media forged in “digital revolution,” the Church is challenged to consider how it will seek to communicate the Good News in the context of a new emerging culture of communications with “modern and effective versions of the pulpit”(Evangelii Nuntiandi) in a “digital continent,” this continent being “a virtual one, with no physical dimensions but where almost one-third of all humans --- especially the young and children, but also among citizens, scientists, academics and businesspeople --- come together to seek information, to express their views and to grow in understanding” Pope Benedict XVI particularly challenged the young Catholics to commit themselves because of their “almost spontaneous affinity” to digital communication.
To this, Archbishop Celli said that Church is present in the “digital continent” only that “we are just at the beginning of a journey” and because of this “we need to develop a more strategic and integrated presence” in order “to ensure a more efficient, articulated and cohesive presentation of the Good News.”
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Reflecting on this article, I can’t help smile at the possibility when seminarians would be commissioned to sit and wait on calls like call center agents answering common everyday questions about our faith, how to do this and that, what to do or who to call at a given situation, information about our archdiocese and the likes; when we hear mass through teleconferencing; and much more, when spiritual directions or confessions can be done “on-line.” But I know this is something yet far-fetch that only our imaginations can fancy.
Decades ago, the Church has closely looked at the development of information-communication technology; and has focused greatly on its disadvantages in terms of commercialism and its propensity for worldly values, especially of sex and violence. Recently, it has leaned towards the right, with its propensity for knowledge diffusion, when knowledge was made available to all beyond geographical location and physical space, in all its expanded quantity and quality. No wonder that as we look forward in the next decades to come, our Church has come to terms with it, beating it as a tool to propagate the faith. This is a strong message to respond to the call of the time --- not to be succumbed to it but the other way round, to claim it and control it to our benefit.
I have always believed from the standpoint of sociology and philosophy, that the world depicted in the trilogy movie “The Matrix” is not impossible; in fact, it already existed along with the “real world.” For Pope Benedict XVI, the Matrix is the “digital continent” and mostly, those who are “inside” the Matrix are the youth, including those who were named in the article above. To claim it and control the Matrix, Pope Benedict XVI is clear, that it is the youth who has the power to do so. The way I see it, for the youth, there is no “red pill” or “blue pill” to choose from now --- We are in the Matrix, we are in the “digital continent.”
Come to think of it, when all things go bad in this “real world,” I think we still have hope in the “heaven here on earth” that we make as People of God, when we claim it as our own again and take control, not of anyone or anything else, but ourselves first, together. That would be in the world we make --- may it be in the “digital continent.”
Joseph Sylvester E. Pampliega
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