Truth in Media
I live in Texas, and during any 10-minute stint on the freeway I can usually spot a billboard that promises to fill just about all my temporal and even spiritual needs. This advertising blitz can take the form of billboards, newspaper and radio advertising, endless television commercials, and a myriad of sources including the back of Church bulletins. Our kids don’t fare much better as anyone familiar with children’s TV programming, fast food restaurants and theme parks can attest.
Modern media also provides us with an almost endless array of options to access information and entertainment. With the advent of the Internet, anyone with a link to the World Wide Web now has access to much of the knowledge western man has been able to accumulate over the past few millennia.
But as any discerning person knows, and as Christians are well aware, not everything one reads, sees on TV, or hears on the radio is necessarily the objective truth. This is true whether it appears on the editorial page or the big screen. In today’s world of radio and TV the secular media culture is deeply imbued with a postmodern sense that the only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. This reasoning, of course, runs contradictory to the Christians knowledge of the never changing divine truth as revealed to us by the teachings of an inerrant Catholic Church.
Laboring in the Media Vineyard
Certainly it would be naïve to think that either Hollywood or Madison Avenue has any interest in our souls. For the most part, their concern is our wallet, and whether wittingly or not, they are more than willing to sacrifice eternal souls for the almighty dollar. We see the results all around us. We have become a society of consumers. A society of misplaced priorities that emphasize the individual and the here and now versus the eternal. For the most part, our children understand more about the superficial pop culture that surrounds us that the bedrock reality of the Faith. So much so, we might be tempted to see the dawn of mass communications as something intrinsically evil, as a tool customized for destroying our souls.
But this is a dangerous temptation, one which would turn Christianity into a ghetto religion that fears the world it is supposed to transform. Fortunately, the greatest prophet of our age, Pope John Paul II, following in the footsteps of St. Maximilian Kolbe, has reminded us of the potency and power of mass communications and invited us to baptize and “confirm” it. The Holy Father is convinced that the era of global communications offers a unique opportunity for evangelization. Every May he has designated a World Communications Day to deliver a message centered on the relationship between the Church and the media. This year he appealed to the whole Church to make an “active and imaginative commitment” to working in the field of the media. The Holy Father stated that “once the media reported events but now events are often shaped to meet the requirements of the media.” He went on to say “the relationship between reality and the media has grown more intricate, and this is a deeply ambivalent phenomenon. On the one hand, it can blur the distinction between truth and illusion but, on the other, it can open up unprecedented opportunities for making the truth more widely accessible to many more people. The task of the Church is to ensure that it is the latter that actually happens.
We are fortunate that our Pope is so clear in his directives concerning media. Certainly one can choose to avoid some of the destructive effects of negative media by simply “tuning out.” Eliminating some of the time we spend in front of the tube or avoiding movies that are degenerative to our spiritual life is certainly a good idea, but the Holy Father is also calling us Catholics to be active in utilizing the media as an opportunity to spread the good news. He points out that there is nothing intrinsically evil about communication vehicles like TV or the Internet, and that these tools can be used to accomplish either great good or great evil. John Paul II is making the strongest of calls to engage the world of media effectively and to speak what he calls “the language of the media” with sufficient force and clarity.
This is certainly a daunting task! In the clearest of terms the Holy Father has given us our marching orders. We are to engage the media at every opportunity and use this great tool for the benefit of the Church. But this is a daunting task. We Catholics have fallen far behind in the effective use of communications. Certainly, we can point to some recent successes like Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network and the past achievements of Church leaders and media personalities like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Father Patrick Peyton. But, for the most part Catholics have not taken advantage of the huge opportunities the advancement of communications offers for evangelization.
New Evangelization of the Americas
Our Protestant brothers and sisters serve as excellent examples of how to use media effectively. As a group, evangelical “Gospel preachers” are now one of the most influential media groups in the world. They have been enormously successful in constructing an international network of radio, television and new technology outlets that reach tens of millions of people in every part of the globe. In the United States alone there are over 1,400 Christian radio stations and several large evangelical TV ministries that cover every major market in the country. In Dallas alone we have 12 different radio stations with a Christian format. But in this city, like most others in the country, there is little if any Catholic counterpart. Although we have seen the number of Catholic radio stations grow from 14 to over 40 in the past five years, for the most part we Catholics have been left far behind in more ways than one in the communications surge that has occurred over the past few decades. Although there is not a simple explanation as to how we find ourselves in this position, I believe there are two primary factors contributing to this situation.
The first is the hierarchical structure of the Church itself. When instituting His Church, the Lord certainly understood the necessity of empowering the papacy with supernatural authority and knowledge. In matters of theology only a Church with this structure working within the power of the Holy Spirit could ensure the teaching of inerrant doctrine. Through the grace of God we are blessed with knowing that the full repository of the Faith is held and taught through the Catholic Church. But the very nature of this hierarchy can also provide difficulty in coordinating specific activities. Although there is uniformity in the content of the truth, there is not similar uniformity in how it is taught and therein lays the challenge. Each Diocese led by their Bishop operates fairly independently in providing for the needs of their particular flocks. This is true in matters of education, Church ministries, and of course in the area of communications and evangelization. In turn, each parish operates within Diocesan guidelines but also with a great deal of latitude in its day-to-day work. For this reason, excellent programs, including communications programs can be accomplished at a local parish or Diocesan level but these efforts do not flow upwards easily into larger national and even international activities.
I believe the second factor has been the generally inefficient matter by which Church laity and Church hierarchy work together to accomplish special projects. In the area of communications we have recently seen aggressive efforts from both the Conference of Catholic Bishops and groups consisting primarily of Catholic pay people to launch promising communications programs. Most have had limited success and many have met with almost complete failure. It would be too much of a generality to group the particulars of these failures as simply a lack of laity and hierarchy working together. However, as a general rule we have not been able to establish an effective working relationship among the two that would enable the Church to realize the full potential that each brings to the effort. This is indeed a complex problem and one that the Holy Father has addressed. Referencing Ecclesia in America, the Pope points out the need “to promote positive cooperation by properly trained lay men and women in different activities within the Church, while avoiding any confusion with the ordained ministries…so that the common priesthood of the faithful remains clearly distinguished from that of the ordained.”
Fortunately there are signs everywhere that this cooperation is beginning to take place along with a renaissance of Catholic communications. This past October, along with Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, two Cardinals, two dozen bishops and several dozen lay communication leaders from North, South and Central America met in Santo Domingo to craft an effective and comprehensive communication strategy for the Church throughout the Americas. At this gathering an organization titles NEA (for New Evangelization of the Americas) was born. A lay initiative operating in obedience to the Bishops of the Americas, NEA promises to be a shining example of how cooperation and effective communication can result in real accomplishments. NEA’s mission statement is to help bring about the “New Evangelization” that Pope John Paul II has called for through the effective use of media, especially mass media and new technologies. This coming January in Miami, Florida, NEA will hold a gathering expected to draw over two hundred Catholic communicators and Church hierarchy from throughout the Americas to continue it’s efforts to put communications to work for the good of the Church. Our Holy Father has pointed out that “using the media correctly and competently can lead to a genuine inculturation of the Gospel,” a necessary element in fulfilling the great mission of evangelization to which Our Lord has called us all.
(Alan Napleton is Managing Director of NEA and co-founder of Catholic Exchange. This article originally appeared in Lay Witness magazine.)
