Speaking the Truth in the Media

The Catholic Church has celebrated World Communications Day since 1967, on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord. This year that feast fell on Sunday, May 20, and from May 23 to 26 Venezuela will celebrate the 46th World Communications Day for the first time, with a meeting at major Caracas universities and with leading journalists, to study the message the Holy Father Benedict XVI addressed to Catholic communicators this year, entitled “Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization.”

In its letter for the occasion, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications expresses the wish that pastors and the Catholic faithful make every effort to carry out the pastoral works and initiatives on which depend not only the renewal of Christian life but also the spread of the Word of God in today’s world.

The spread of the Word of God and His Truth in the media is urgent. We are all aware that the world is going through a global crisis, not only political, economic and social, but a grave crisis of morals and values, which is the cause of so many problems: economic (the product of greed), social (the product of selfishness and so on), family problems (the product of a moral relativism that treats divorce, infidelity and sexual license as normal), violence and death (the product of hatred and of attacks on life seen in abortion, murder and euthanasia), and so on.

The Truth that our Lord Jesus Christ came to teach us has been so distorted that those of us who are Catholics and work in the media have an enormous responsibility, not only to defend the Truth and the Values that Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic Church teach us, but also something even more important: to form the next generations of Catholic communicators so that they speak clearly, and without fear!, about God and His Truth, with the gift of tongues, as the Apostle Saint Paul taught, he who was the great apostle of communicating the Truth in a time of great political, social and moral decline.

Today we have communication tools with great worldwide impact, which make us see the great responsibility in our hands to help recover values not only in Venezuela but in the whole world. We have seen how many “first world” countries are suffering seriously from the consequences of moral relativism and of a misunderstood secularism that practically forbids speaking about God in the street, in schools and so on.

If there is one thing we have in Venezuela that we Catholic communicators must make the most of, it is that the great majority of Venezuelans have great respect for God and the Blessed Virgin. Our country is about 80% Catholic, but a great many are Catholic only by baptism and know little of the greatness and wonder of being a true Catholic. It is in our hands to show them, through the media, the wonder of living as wholehearted Catholics, the wonder of following the path our Lord Jesus Christ left us, not only so that we may find happiness here on earth and then in Heaven, but so that we may live to serve, spread the Truth and bring many people to the right path. Because without firm foundations, rooted in Christ, we will never change society’s problems at their root.

So all of us Catholic communicators have an enormous responsibility in our hands. The Holy Father’s message this year, “Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization,” teaches us that only if we are people of prayer (even in the midst of this hectic world we live in) and seek moments of silence in our daily lives can we draw closer to God and to his teachings, which we must study more every day, with all possible dedication, in order to pass them on.

Only by filling ourselves with God’s Love and His Word can we go out into the world to spread the Truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only thing that can lead the world along a path of Justice and Peace.

For more information about this meeting, follow @46Jornada or visit the Paulinas website: http://www.sanpablo.org.ve/