Give A Soul To Internet Flow Of Information
It is great seeing our Holy Father embrace digital media and the internet as mechanisms to witness to our faith and evangelize the message of Jesus Christ. According to a note in my latest Vatican Information Service update, Pope Benedict spoke to a conference on, “Digital Witnesses. Faces and languages in the multi-media age”. The congress was organized by the Italian Episcopal Conference, the president of which is Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa. Here’s what he said.
“The time in which we are living is seeing an enormous expansion of the frontiers of communication”, said the Pope. “The Internet is by nature open, tendentiously egalitarian and pluralist, but at the same time it also represents a new gulf. Indeed, we talk of the ‘digital divide’, which separates the included from the excluded, and this must be added to other separations which already divide nations, both from one another and within themselves”.
Benedict XVI also noted “the dangers of conformity and control, of intellectual and moral relativism, which are already evident in the diminution of the spirit of criticism, in the truth reduced to an interplay of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of individual intimacy. We are witnessing a ‘pollution of the spirit which clouds our faces and makes them less prone to smile’.
“And yet”, he added, “the aim of this congress is precisely to recognize faces, and therefore to overcome those collective dynamics that can lead us to lose a sense of the depths people have, to remain on the surface. When this happens those people become bodies without a soul, objects to be exchanged and consumed”.
“And how is it possible to return to people’s faces today?” the Pope asked. In this context, quoting from his own Encyclical “Caritas in veritate”, he explained how the media can have a civilizing effect “not only when, thanks to technological development, they increase the possibilities of communicating information, but above all when they are geared towards a vision of the person and the common good that reflects truly universal values.
“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”.
“Only in these conditions can the epoch-making change we are experiencing be rich and fruitful in new opportunities. … More than by our technical resources, necessary though they are, we wish to identify ourselves by inhabiting the [digital] universe with a believing heart which helps to give a soul to the endless flow of communications on the Internet”.
And the Holy Father concluded: “This is our mission, the indispensable mission of the Church. The task of all believers who work in the media is that of ‘opening the door to new forms of encounter, maintaining the quality of human interaction, and showing concern for individuals and their genuine spiritual needs. They can thus help the men and women of our digital age to sense the Lord’s presence'”.