Image and reason

“The Pope’s declarations on Islam”, headlined some authoritative papers, focusing on an historical fragment and torn off the Pope’s argument at Regensburg University.At the same time, surprisingly, the network of the Arabic Al-Jazeera TV channel transmitted live the Pope’s Angelus from Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, 17 September.We live in a globalized, multicultural and multifaith society. Each declaration, each event has reverberations round the whole world: each person, in his own country, interprets it according to his own mental, cultural and religious preconceptions. This is particularly deplorable when it touches on relations between the West and Islam, because in this field we now find ourselves in a situation of open conflict. That’s why we ought not to “be surprised” by what is happening. Is it merely a reaction that ignores the real position of the Holy Father, in a hasty and misguided interpretation of phrases extrapolated from their academic context? Is it an echo, of particular actuality in our time, of the fourteenth-century controversy on the “holy war”, on the relations between faith and reason and, ultimately, on the conceptions of God that will always remains actual? Or is it a cunningly calculated indignation, which immediately took its cue from the words of the Pope in order to place in difficulty the presumed “head of the crusade”? These questions have received prompt replies and others will do so in the wish to keep open the dialogue. As for the role of the mass media in the uproar, we may clearly note that they are almost invariably incapable, as are all their public, of understanding what’s really at issue in the questions evoked by the Holy Father: apart from appealing to experts, what journalist, in response to questions raised by religious leaders, will treat them in a non-emotional way? And how could they do otherwise when the mass media function on the basis of television information, and hence of the image?We live in a media society and in particular a society of the image; the image appeals not to reason, but to emotion. It claims to place us in direct contact with situations in just a few minutes, with just a few images. Have we forgotten that the mass media must also sell themselves, in a context of extreme and ruthless competition? Woe betide those mass media that bore their own public! Woe betide those mass media that irritate their public! They will disappear very rapidly from the audiovisual landscape, swallowed up by the competition or reduced to silence by the powers of the day, be they political or economic. With some exceptions, what mass media eschews the sensationalism for which the public is avid? Simplifying things that are too complicated gives to the public the impression that they understand what’s going on…So there is no shortage of reasons for concern.Among other things, the need for education in the image-based mass media seems clear. Only this type of education will make us free and critical of the information we receive.A supplement of responsibility, moreover, is required of everyone. The media, in particular, must place their extraordinary capacity for transmission and communication at the service of mutual understanding between cultures, religions, credos and human groups that are called to share our common Earth.