A rigorous apprenticeship

The Church too must “go through a rigorous apprenticeship that goes under the name of language skills”. “It is no longer possible for Christian communicators to study the contents of the faith for years and then be ignorant of the elementary rules of oral communication, and media communication in particular”, said Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI). The cardinal was addressing the plenary assembly of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences now being held at Esztergom in northern Hungary. “Communicating in a changing world”. “More particularly – said Cardinal Bagnasco – it seems to me that the symbolic-narrative language that the Church has always used with extreme assurance (it’s enough to think of the richness of her liturgical heritage, and of her artistic and specifically musical creativity), must be learned anew today within our media culture. That there is some difficulty is our ecclesial practice is all too evident”. So we need to “integrate the Christian message in the culture of the media”. “The traditional forms of the transmission of the faith linked to catechesis, to sacramental life and to the witness of charity are and remain central – said the archbishop – but it’s essential that the influence of media culture be increasingly taken into account in their modes of expression”. “In the case of the Gospel – continued Bagnasco – that means that to communicate it ‘in a changing world’ we need, of course, great familiarity with the great Christian tradition that ‘does not change’, and an intimate spiritual and intellectual experience of the Gospel itself, but we also need a proper understanding of the languages, styles of thought and of life, and cultural climate of the contemporary world”. “It should never be forgotten that the culture that shapes people’s opinions in the fields of their life (affections, work and leisure, fragility, education, citizenship) is transmitted in an ever more massive way through the media and the systems of communication”.A European discourse. The challenge therefore is to “educate and promote culture in society”. It is “by now clear” – continued Bagnasco – that to counter “inadequate and partial visions” of the Christian faith and of human values themselves, “we need to interact in depth with the system of communication”. And we can do so “by cultivating a discreet and authoritative presence within the various segments of the media machine: press, radio, TV, Internet”. In describing to the bishops present at the CCEE plenary in Hungary the experience of the Italian Church in the field of the media, the President of the CEI spoke of the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire which – he said – “represents a significant point of reference for both the secular and the Catholic world”. He recalled that the press agency SIR (Servizio Informazione Religiosa) has been operating for “twenty years” and has widened its horizon “to a European discourse”. As far as SirEurope is concerned, the cardinal underlined its “being at the service of the European Churches” with a network of partners that permits on-line transmissions of daily news bulletins and twice-weekly features and analyses, in Italian and in English. Lastly the cardinal recalled the presence of the Italian Church in “satellite broadcasting” with its television channel Sat2000 and its radio station Radio In Blu. Various Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences also intervened on the role played by SirEurope: they emphasized its utility and hoped for its reinforcement in view of the commitments that await the CCEE, COMECE and the individual Churches. The role of the agency in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and in relations with the European institutions in Brussels (where SirEurope has opened an office) and in Strasbourg was also underlined.Care and formation for persons. “Ensuring a high qualitative profile for these media – said Cardinal Bagnasco – means expressing real attention to people, in the consciousness that the system of the media helps to shape the cultural climate and guide its collective ethos”. He then added: “Our choice of the media must be matched by our care for the persons who work in them”. “So we must invest a great deal more as the Church – concluded Bagnasco – on the formation of laypeople, on their responsibility and creativity as believers, and on their capacity to make comprehensible the treasure of the Gospel in the various linguistic forms most in vogue today”. But what should the Church communicate? “Given that the future is perceived more as a threat than as a promise, we need to continue to proclaim the message of hope”. “It is not arrogance, still less cocksure ignorance, but courageous faith that is able to resist the non-sense and in the last analysis the banality of evil”. “The main virtue of the ecclesial communicator – concluded Cardinal Bagnasco – must be the enthusiasm, the passion for the real in what is good that is always surprisingly superior to what is usually recounted by the media”.