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Current issue: Vol.1, No. 2 May 2001

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Evangelizing the Media

By Laurenti Magesa

Commentaries in the Vatican II's decree on the means of mass communication INTER Mirifica, have not been very favourable. At the time it was published in 1963, many saw it as already outdated and overtaken by developments in the field. Some perceived it as rather conservative as well and not sufficiently open to innovation. Nevertheless, the decree made one thing clear. It recognized the responsibility of the church to preach the gospel through the instruments of social communication.

What the council was saying was that newspapers, radio and television can and must be used by the church as instruments of evangelisation. Today the Council would not have failed to include in the list the Internet. The information revolution has at the same time the potential of being the evangelisation revolution. Just as the church was very open to and encouraged the missionary movement of the 19th century, it must be open to and encourage the potential internet missionaries of the 21st century.

But the evangelisers must first be evangelised themselves. The instruments of social communication will not be able to play the role of evangelisers when the are devoid of ethical content. An information revolution which pushes information without value expression, without shame can never be at the service of the gospel of Jesus because, rather than enhancing human dignity, it dehumanises persons. Jesus' gospel is a call towards humanization, towards more and more understanding of humanity and the world in order to fulfil the life of humanity and the world.

Radio mille Collins and close to a million innocent people murdered in cold blood in Rwanda in 1994: a classic and tragic case, if one be needed, of “the medium being the message.” But there is also the routine glamorisation of sex and commercialisation of women's bodies on most of the print and electronic media. One kind of message leads to the death of the body, the other to that of the soul. It is pointless to ask which is worse, the human person being an integral union of both. This does not correspond to the good news of life in its fullness. Obviously there is the need to evangelise the media.

The point of evangelising the media does not mean hindering the information revolution or placing blocks in its way. It does not even mean setting up alternative “Christian” media. Not necessarily because even these can be dehumanising in a different way: white washing reality, portraying a merely triumphalistic image of the church and its leaders we all know to be only fallible men and women, just like the rest of us, or being self-righteous. The point of evangelisation is to install in the media a culture of goodness and right, a culture of freedom of expression that is authentically human, devoid of spiritual exploitation and psychological rape as well as of propaganda to exploit and oppress.

Here is where we need to look at the relationship between life and art and admit that each influences the other today as never before. All art does, of course, originate in life, so that decaying art is so often merely a reflection of a civilization of death. It is often a mirror of a civilization of ethnocentrism, racism, commercialism, greed, lust, and hatred and disvalues like that. This is what we witness prominently in the mass media today. People are quick to blame the media without taking a good long look at the dominant culture which nurses these attitudes and forms of behaviour. The evangelisation of the media cannot happen without the metanoia or repentance in life, a change of life.

But that is only half the story, one side of the coin. It is necessary to recognize as well that life initiates art. We quite often speak and act out of what we hear and see. More than parents, peers and teachers in schools, the mass media are the most effective socializing agents in our own day in all important areas of human life, quite clearly so in ethics or morals. No wonder that increasingly nations make their most important decisions – who will govern them – based on who shows the best image of him/herself on TV. “Truth” is increasingly also taken to mean what one hears on the radio or reads in the paper. Can there be any reasonable doubt then that to evangelise life depends very much also on change of direction in the media?

Given these facts, it remains only a question of method: what to do in order to transform the mass media into life giving instruments, how to do it, and by whom it can or should be done. The “where” and “when” are of course the aspects of the question that are easily answered. The place is here and the time is now. The other question, however, need much more careful consideration.

Get involved in the Information Revolution. That seems to be the call to the church if it wants to transform the media. No artificial limits should be in the way of this involvement. There is no danger going “too far” here. Just as in evangelisation, the earth is the limit, so here too. No medium is out of bounds, whether it be print, visual, audio or electronic, as long as it is for the greater glory of God and the integral life of humankind. Fears of the mass media or resistance against them it counterproductive.

In what ways can this can be done? Besides owning its own means of social communication, such as papers, radio and TV stations as well as websites, the church's presence needs to be felt in governmental and other private media institutions. The church can help produce quality information, educational and entertainment programmes that it can distribute to these institutions. The emphasis must be on quality, not mere pious platitudes that are no good to anyone but the already converted. Incidentally, this applies equally well to church owned media which suffer most from this disease. With so much choice around, who can be blamed for skipping over such programmes?

But to produce quality programming that will be used by whatever media institutions, there is no alternative but to spend money. The church spares no financial resources in building places of worship, and indeed, it probably should not. Similarly, it should not spare any financial resources in creating programmes that will recognize the sacredness of body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. It should hire for this purpose people of faith, if you like it, into stars – for greater glory of God and the fullness of life of humanity.

Of all the revolutions that have marked modern human history, none can compare with the Information Revolution in its impact on the life of peoples all over the world. Indeed, it can now be said to be the mother of all revolutions in every field of human endeavour. If we are to have an evangelisation revolution in the 21st century, the place to be is with the means of mass communication where as Marshall Meluhan, the guru of the media once said, “the medium is the message.” In other word, the media are on “extension” of humanity. In as far as they can harmonize humanity, they can evangelise it.

Laurenti Magesa, a priest from the Diocese of Musoma (Tanzania), is one of Africa's best-known Catholic theologians. He has taught theology in Africa and America and he is currently involved in pastoral work in his home country


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