V. THE NEED FOR PASTORAL PLANNING

A. Responsibilities of the bishops

20. Recognizing the validity, and indeed the urgency, of the claims advanced by communications work, bishops and others responsible for decisions about allocating the Church's limited human and material resources should assign it an appropriate, high priority, taking into account the circumstances of their particular nations, regions, and dioceses.

This need may be even greater now than previously, precisely because, to some degree at least, the great contemporary "Areopagus" of mass media has more or less been neglected by the Church up to this time. ³¹ As the Holy Father remarks: "Generally, preference has been given to other means of preaching the Gospel and of Christian education, while the mass media are left to the initiative of individuals or small groups and enter into pastoral planning only in a secondary way".³² This situation needs correcting.

Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Missio, n. 37, in AAS, LXXXIII (1991), p. 285.

Ibidem.