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B. Media at the service of dialogue with the world
8. The Second Vatican Council underlined the awareness
of the People of God that they are "truly and intimately linked with
mankind and its history".15 Those who proclaim God's Word are
obliged to heed and seek to understand the "words" of diverse
peoples and cultures, in order not only to learn from them but to help them
recognize and accept the Word of God. 16 The Church therefore must
maintain an active, listening presence in relation to the world -- a kind of
presence which both nurtures community and supports people in seeking
acceptable solutions to personal and social problems.
Moreover,
as the Church always must communicate its message in a manner suited to each
age and to the cultures of particular nations and peoples, so today it must
communicate in and to the emerging media culture. 17 This is a basic
condition for responding to a crucial point made by the Second Vatican Council:
the emergence of "social, technical, and cultural bonds"
linking people ever more closely lends "special urgency" to
the Church's task of bringing all to "full union with Christ".18
Considering how important a contribution the media of social communications can
make to its efforts to foster this unity, the Church views them as means "devised
under God's Providence" for the promotion of communication and
communion among human beings during their earthly pilgrimage. 19
Thus,
in seeking to enter into dialogue with the modern world, the Church necessarily
desires honest and respectful dialogue with those responsible for the
communications media. On the Church's side this dialogue involves efforts to
understand the media -- their purposes, procedures, forms and genres, internal
structures and modalities -- and to offer support and encouragement to those
involved in media work. On the basis of this sympathetic understanding and
support, it becomes possible to offer meaningful proposals for removing
obstacles to human progress and the proclamation of the Gospel.
Such
dialogue therefore requires that the Church be actively concerned with the
secular media, and especially with the shaping of media policy. Christians have
in effect a responsibility to make their voice heard in all the media, and
their task is not confined merely to the giving out of Church news. The
dialogue also involves support for media artists; it requires the development
of an anthropology and a theology of communication -- not least, so that
theology itself may be more communicative, more successful in disclosing Gospel
values and applying them to the contemporary realities of the human condition;
it requires that Church leaders and pastoral workers respond willingly and
prudently to media when requested, while seeking to establish relationships of
mutual confidence and respect, based on fundamental common values, with those
who are not of our faith.
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