How we evangelise

If this year is as any other, Social Communications Sunday September 3 will pass with most Catholics being unaware of it.

There is a rich irony in the notion that the Church regularly fails to communicate to the faithful its communications apostolate. Had the early Christians been as careless about the use of social communications, there would be no Church today.

Happily, the early Christians the famous, such as the evangelists and St Paul, and the many nameless disciples of the risen Christ knew the power of the media at their disposal.

At a time when most people were illiterate, the Gospel message was transmitted mostly orally. But for the learned and influential few, a body of literary work was quick to form: the gospels, which told the people of Jesus’ life in ways that made sense to them; the Acts of the Apostles, which disseminated how and why the Christian Church came to be; the letters of St Paul, which outlined how Christians should live their faith.

At the same time, Christians announced the Gospel by their way of life and community, providing persuasive models of the faith that encouraged others to join, even at the risk of social ostracism or even persecution by the political powers.

This was social communications: the essential tool in evangelisation.

Today Church leaders continue to urge us to become active agents in the social communications apostolate.

For some it means producing media that promotes, magnifies and strengthens the faith and life of the Church the People of God. For others it means finding ways of actively supporting the social communications apostolate, for example by promoting or subsidising the media that serve the faith. Others yet may participate in the apostolate by proclaiming the Gospel publicly in action and in words living and acknowledging the faith at work or among friends, and speaking about it knowledgeably (which ideally requires the consumption of Catholic media). These are the ways by which we continue to evangelise today.

Our evangelising objectives are changing, however. This is a time when many who were brought up in the Catholic faith are drifting away from it, and when many others think they know enough about the Christian faith to reject it, but have never benefited from full and accurate exposure to it. Both categories of people, those who are fragile in their faith and those who resist it, must be evangelised.

In a society where Catholicism is unfashionable and subject to much prejudice, this requires that the Church communicates its message with vigour and imagination to show that it is neither irrelevant nor tarnished.

It requires a sound social communications strategy which, crucially, must include better use of the media Church and secular. It must also look at new ways of actively promoting the Catholic media, which usually is the only source for the faithful to be accurately informed about their Church.

The Church in Southern Africa has yet to reach the point where the importance of such a strategy is fully appreciated. Often matters of social communications are treated either with an unconcerned disdain or from a perspective of vested interest.

This is an unhealthy attitude. It fails the Church as an institution and as the People of God.

The local Church on all levels must find ways to elevate the social communications apostolate, without delay.