A. Media at the service of persons and cultures

7. For all the good which they do and are capable of doing, mass media, "which can be such effective instruments of unity and understanding, can also sometimes be the vehicles of a deformed outlook on life, on the family, on religion and on morality -- an outlook that does not respect the true dignity and destiny of the human person".¹³ It is imperative that media respect and contribute to that integral development of the person which embraces "the cultural, transcendent and religious dimensions of man and society".¹⁴

One also finds the source of certain individual and social problems in the replacement of human interaction by increased media use and intense attachment to fictitious media characters. Media, after all, cannot take the place of immediate personal contact and interaction among family members and friends. But the solution to this difficulty also may lie largely in the media: through their use in ways -- dialogue groups, discussions of films and broadcasts -- which stimulate interpersonal communication rather than substituting for it.

Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Pornography and Violence in the Media: A Pastoral Response, n. 7, Vatican City, 1989.

JOHN PAUL II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, n. 46, in AAS, LXXX (1988), p. 579.