Premise on Mass Media

In these pages, I shall try to zip an altogether cultural indicator related to the mass media of communication, particularly to the on going digital revolution, to help the youths in formation to live, in this cyberspace, a new evangelical experience having as origin and goal the life of persons and of the community.

In this historical moment in which communication tends to emphasise the technological aspect, the radio, from the viewpoint of the user, remains the most pervasive, accessible and flexible instrument. In many Countries, it contributes considerably to the formation of the civil conscience, by interpreting the world in a local perspective, answering the needs of information and allowing the marginal part of the population to participate in the processes of communication and of building the consensus on the most important questions. This moment, I think of the Mission ad gentes, where there are people scattered in territories, which can be reached only by the radio waves, provided they can have a small radio, which can easily stay in the fist of the hand.

The other media (the TV, the cell phone, the printing press and internet) require much more complex instruments and structures of more capillary support, with costs which risk to fall back on to the users, excluding them actually from the access. However, they are endowed with enormous attractions and certain specific qualities, which make them highly appealing. This is why they have an ever vaster and preponderant public, particularly in the civilised Countries so much so as, in spite of its being economic and easy to use, today the radio is marginalised, while Internet, the latest model of the global communication, is in its strong growth.

Anyhow, the radio, the TV and the cellular are the three favourite means for Italians under 30 years of age. This emerges from the Terzo rapporto Censis/Unione Cattolica stampa italiana sulla comunicazione in Italia. On the contrary, “internet”  –according to what Raffaele  Pastore  explains about the Censis-  “represents a true exception. It breaks the world of the youths into two: half of them live it as the most advanced crowning of the TV, the cellular and the radio, the other half considers it as a difficult instrument, which compromises the easiness and fluidity of the communication. In fact, very many people are excluded from it, or are victims of the “Net”. The youths overcome the adults in the use of the mass media of communication: radio, books, newspapers and internet; only the TV is in contra-tendency. It sees a superior penetration of the over 30.

Revolution in the communication

Every form of communication offers possibilities, which empower the existing ones and, at the same time, as it is obvious, poses problems of ethical nature. It would be wrong and mortifying to start from deteriorating effects, also because the instruments are neuter. The one who uses it in its double aspect confers the moral value: active and passive, namely the sender and the receiver. According to the Decree of the Council, Inter mirifica, and what many times John Paul II has repeated, we can say that they are very useful instruments to approach the peoples. All this is exalted by internet, because it makes each person receiver and sender at the same time, though remaining a unity before the mass; an individual among the crowd; prevalently user. From this brief reflection, we understand how much a basic preparation to the use of such an instrument is necessary, in its double function of listener and speaker.

The problem concerns mainly the youths, because of a series of considerations. Their life is characterised by their schooling, namely by their learning the indispensable instruments for their insertion in the social life. Thus, the new techniques of communication enter, by right and by duty, the programmes of formation mainly addressed to the youths. Moreover, since they need to open themselves to the new techniques, the youths are better predisposed, while the aged users must adapt themselves. Some people ask whether the printing press, which up to the last century has been the main channel of communication, after the human voice, is not going to disappear very soon. Today we still read and write, but the pages have become a sea to be sailed and the writing is s digital work. The images, which can easily be caught with a clic and in a digital modality, are supplanting the writing and the reading, because they can be decoded more easily. Will a day arrive in which nobody will be able to hold a pen and to write?

About this Fabrizio Mastrofini writes. “It has been said and written that internet carries with itself

a revolution in communication similar to the one realised with the diffusion of the printing press at

time of Gutengerg. Today the alphabetisation and its contrary, alphabetism, are of a technological

nature:  it is not enough, therefore, to know how to read and how to write; we need to know the instruments of informatics, we need to know how to use them, not only, but also how to manage in a vast ocean of information which we can receive. Within a few years we shall consider as “analphabetic” the one who does not understand the technology, and the “analphabet” of the future will be the person who is unable to use the new media and to read their messages”.

To educate oneself and to educate others: the role of formators

  It’s useless to say that all this opens a complex problematic, full of unknown things, with exalting perspectives and very serious risks, which are to be well valued and patronised. It is undoubtedly a challenge. He who sails may be caught by the shivering of the full freedom to enter the sea of internet and may get lost in the search of sites and addresses, wasting plenty of time and thinking of being in relation with persons, information, photos, etc., yet at the end he remains all alone and a victim of frustration and illusion.

A sister who was invited to indicate the adequate attitude required “to navigate” in the Net, wrote, “I more and more realise that we are supposed to educate ourselves in order to educate others to a rationality capable of penetrating the real, of getting oriented in the multiplicity of information, of reaching the root of important things. Perhaps it is a question of knowing less, of seeing less, but …  of knowing and seeing better”..

A cultural problem is at the root of the challenge; by culture we do not mean hunting for diplomas or degrees, as some time ago has happened with the religious, but the acquisition of instruments and a parallel maturation for their optimal use. As a sister, I interrogate myself about the formation of the new generations to consecrated life.

Bruno Secondin, who knows the world of the female religious, writes. “…the cliché of the sister who is generous in her service, pious in her devotions … ingenuous in the criteria of discernment, would actually be outbid by more active and disenchanted consecrated women. Women who are well furnished in the social field, in human relationships: more punchy also in the field of religion”  .

Today, the person needs to be endowed with adequate means of discernment, which would enable her to live harmonious relations with itself, with others, with the environment and to see that everything be at the service of man, never against him.

Fr. Secondin adds, “A sister, today, cannot limit herself to ruminate old traditions of ignorance and of exemplification, but must rather be a visible and comprehensible sign of a great love for contemporary men and women, made up also of discernment, serious and abundant information, as well as of hope rooted in the real life”.

To be in tune with the present time and to be fully “inserted in it, it is essential that the formators, of persons in the initial formation, feel the change in becoming. They are supposed to accept the New, living it actively, rather than bearing it passively. They are to respect its newness, adapting it to their own charism but, above all, finalising it to his own mission. It is necessary, therefore, that they are prepared to educate the new religious to an intelligent and appropriate use of the mass media, to see that this net produces freedom rather than slavery, that it establishes human bonds rather than alienating or robotising the persons.

To this purpose (let us say it at low voice), perhaps the first ones needing an adequate formation in the intelligent and appropriate use of the media of communication, seem to be the formators. An important role of formation and information is carried on by the site Vidimus dominum, which, having an interesting number of daily contacts (a majority of religious, hopefully young women in formation), would certainly deserve a separate study and analysis. Before this “new areopagus”, moulded in large measure by the media, we must grow in the awareness that the “evangelisation of modern culture itself depends mostly by they influence”.

F. Matrofini writes, “We are witnessing, these years, a new phase of the Consecrated Life: the birth of religious more open to the extra local dimension. The virtual net, as it goes on thickening, strengthens the search of an increased awareness, decreases the enclosures and the atomisation and improves the social relations. Sure, all this happens provided the change be guided, organised, managed, thus becoming an integral part of a project at Congregational level”.

We need to create a new sensitivity and to educate to the tout court communication. Though it is thought that the risks are insignificant, if compared to the advantages ad to the possible interconnections, according to Soukup, “we figure the risk, for the Church, that the virtual connection may detach the young persons in formation from the reference to their real communities”. In fact the paradox may be verified that the instruments of communication would produce incommunicability and isolation.

The role of the educator, then, assumes a decisively determining function; she must be acquainted with the fact that the women in formation enclose a “world” in themselves, a world to be re-discovered, recognised, supported, oriented and accepted with all its conditions. If misunderstood or left alone to manage the new reality, these young women could easily look for nets in which to find the so called “virtual communities”, better understood as chat, which seem to be there on purpose to exalt and/or to destroy feelings, to generate suffering rather than joy. In the chat, we could find meaningful encounters or our own growth, but we could also run the risk to make experiences which nourish strange and harmful fantasies, to the disadvantage of a healthy and balanced development of the our personality. In this way, a fracture could be created between what we are and what we would like to be. Such a situation, on the long run, could lead us to a form of schizophrenia, blocking up the formative process and compromising our identity. In truth, even from a spiritual viewpoint, ”the virtual reality cannot substitute the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacramental reality of the other sacraments and the shared cult of a human community in flesh and bones. In fact, there is no sacrament on Internet".

On the role of internet, Carlo Climati writes, “It is a bombardment which finds the fertile soil in the life of many youths, often characterised by a deep solitude, by difficult family situations and by uncertainties for the future”.

The young religious in formation are not exempted from all this. Yet, adequately formed and oriented, they could make a free and correct use of the Net, through which they bring to Jesus persons who are outside the Church. Through it, she can also contact youths from other countries, thus inaugurating an experiential exchange at distance.  Internet could, therefore, reveal itself as a decisive opportunity by which we could launch a vocational pastoral activity, which is ever more indispensable to give a charismatic contribution to the Church.

Carlo Climati states again, “Briefly speaking, the world of internet presents very many dangers for the youths and the children. We must fight these dangers strongly. Yet, we need not to exaggerate with too much alarmism. After all, the risks of “getting drowned” on internet are the same as those which we run in using any other means of communication”.

Among the thousand potentials of internet, the most negative ones concern the “affective dependence” which takes place when a religious isolates herself from her own community, to look for new friends and new stimuli in the net”.

When this happens, “the Net’s call becomes more important than common moments” and, moreover,” the strengthening of the social support, which the person succeeds to get in internet, meets the need of relations. This happens, above all, when the interpersonal relations are in conflict or where the climate of friendship in our own community is not sufficient .

Let us not think that it is strange if also the youths in formation experience a deeper contact through a “virtual sexuality” made up of an exchange of images or of “confessions and fantasies”, to reach later on a true and proper forbidden and pathological behaviours. It is here that moral problems spring up. Such problems concretise just as once bad thoughts did. The most adequate answer to be given to this case, Fr. Crea says, “consists in activating a “pedagogical approach” to the problem. In fact it is not so much the matter of an “evil to be uprooted”, as rather the matter of an “alarm bell”, of something that does not function in the way of living our own affective and relational life”.

Having made the premise that the goodness or non-goodness depends on the subject that uses it, it is urgent for the formators, or any of their substitutes, to succeed in blocking at its very start the way of approaching certain arguments “at risk”. They are expected not to leave them alone as they experience some newness that could reveal itself fatal for their formation, but to point at the route of navigation, at what could be negative. Immoral, clandestine as well as at what is also positive, official, legal at cultural and religious level.”

At this particular case there could rise the case of some inferiority complex on behalf of the educator before the youth in formation, since the youth, generally, finds itself more at home in the use of the instruments. The educator must help the young woman to develop a critical sense, to reflect, to understand and to choose so that there may be no barrier, and the existing ones may be removed. All this is to be done without demonetising the tout court internet. This is not to be seen a only “good” or only “bad”, but simply as an instrument at our service.

To be in digital: a service to peace

  In this moment of social communication, “the Church acknowledges some gifts of God destined, by divine Providence, to unite man with fraternal bonds, to make them collaborators of His designs of salvation even regarding internet.”

In his message for the 36^th World Day of social communication, John Paul II spoke of the revolution of communication and information. He made a question, which challenges everyone, above all those who work in the sector of social communication and information.

“How can we guarantee that the revolution of communication and information, with internet as its first motor, operate in favour of the globalisation of the human development and of solidarity, objectives which are strictly linked with the mission of the Church evangelisation?”.

Today, several Institutes and, therefore, the formators keep on utilising  internet to contact and to accompany (at least in the initial phase) the young women interested in the knowledge of particular vocations or charisms, establishing a friendship, on the base of a faith research, reaching personal encounters and colloquies which remain irreplaceable to build up a true educative relation.

“The new challenge for the Church is that of understanding, interpreting and appreciating the culture of internet … This challenge is the essence of the meaning which, at the beginning of the new millennium, characterises the following of Christ and its mandate: ”Duc in altum”.

Religious community and virtual community

We must take into consideration the reason why “many participants on line” seek a sense of community, which they do not find in their own communities.

B.Fiorentini and G.Mendes Dos Santos write, “One characteristic of communication, particularly of the virtual communication, is the interactivity that must be at the base of any group of persons who work in the sector. The same thing is valid within the Church and in the field of social communications”.

In fact, through the net we can create communities outside the space, outside the territory, with new, once impossible relations.  Today the cyberspace is synonymous of community, of space in which we share our own ideas and emotions. If we want to improve the human relations within the community, the educators are supposed to accept to put under discussion their traditional way of looking at things. They are expected to consider and to choose some communication options. It is a question of forming a community, where there is communication, sharing of information, exchange, dialogue; where mature interactions and identity are produced. Today the notion of community is linked to that of communication. We can state that there is a community wherever there is communication”.

In synthesis, this means that, by improving the internal communication in the communities, we throw the conditions to upraise the level of the communitarian “belonging”, which goes to strengthen the charismatic identity. All this acquires more importance in this moment, when religious of different nationalities, of different culture, different age, different cultural and theological formation, live in the same community. This is the sign of a great hope. It proves that the “net of nets” can be utilised to benefit others, rather than promoting racial or ethnic hatred, rather than transmitting free pornography and violence.

In Italy, on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the birth of the TV, about two thousand sisters, from the principal monasteries of cloistered nuns, prayed with particular intentions for all the TV operators. The same thing happens for many Congregations which, through their particular site, beside receiving visitors, have the opportunity to reach persons “in search”, with whom they succeed in realising a presence more and more inspired to productive criteria of the beautiful, of the truth and of the just. In this sense, we invite the formators to become more and more aware of the responsibility which the profession assigns to them.

In the best of hypothesis, within a few years, one milliard of persons can possess an internet, while almost four milliard will remain excluded from it, because of poverty, of course, not because of lack of connection.

We could apply to ourselves and to internet a sentence of Jesus: Do not be afraid of proclaiming the Gospel through internet: I have plenty of people in it.

Conclusion

I like to conclude with an exhortation of John Paul II. He is an example of an intense and correct use of communication, even concerning the mass media. His frequent journeys and his ways of diversified communication are universally acknowledged. His commitment to the world of arts and of theatre, have particularly taught him to utilise the language of images, of gestures, of symbols, to reach straight the hearts of persons.

There is a letter, which John Paul II has never written, yet it has travelled all over the world. It is his “encyclical of gestures”:  a small card slipped into the Wall of weeping, Jerusalem; the visit he paid to the prisoner who had attempted to kill him; the “mea culpa” during the Jubilee for the sins of the Church; his kissing the ground at the arrival in every foreign country; his caressing the children; his skiing on the mountains; his entering a  synagogue and a mosque, plus thousands of other gestures “outside ceremonies”, accomplished during his 25 years of pontificate. Images and gestures communicate better and more than words.

In conclusion, hoping that the arguments of this article may motivate really and not only virtually, to unzip the reflections which I have zipped in it, I allow myself to exhort the formators –who have been entrusted with the care for  particular women, capable of listening, of tenderness and tenacious in pursuing solutions- to be fully attentive in inviting them never to get tired of fixing their eyes on Jesus of Nazareth, who has realised the most important communication for the history of humanity, by allowing us to see, through Him, the face of our heavenly Father .

If “the challenge is that of how to use internet – the virtual space- to improve the formation to the end of a better quality of our community life”, I suggest that “to navigate” and to live in the web is truly at hand’s stretch, rather at mouse stretch. Therefore,  “duc in altum” in the ocean of internet”.