From social to sociable

Did your parish observe Social Communications Sunday last week? I’m almost inclined to say ha!ha! Who reads these days and what is social communications anyway?

I sometimes think that those of us who write are more passionate about the message we want to get across then the readers are about reading it. Why? Have writers thought more about their subject matter and as a result become passionate? What makes a person passionate about something, like family life? So we begin with my usual list of questions.

At the Pastoral Forum for the Laity last month there was no detailed discussion about the pastoral issues facing Catholics that had been identified prior to the actual meeting. That had been planned as such. The main issues that had been identified in the questionnaires that were circulated over the last year were little different from those identified in 2000. Marriage and family life, youth and adult formation were again among the main pastoral needs.

At the Forum there was an almost universal cry for formation. The laity want formation and the bishops, clergy and religious want the laity to have that formation too, in order to take up their rightful place in the scheme of things.

The Church exists to evangelise is a message that can hardly be forgotten after some contact with Fr Barney McAleer, the bishops’ secretary for Evangelisation. That was also the main focus of the day: the need for ongoing formation in order to evangelise, which of course is spreading the Good News of God’s love revealed to us still through a relationship with Jesus.

All that was wonderful and energising. Our various briefs then after the Forum are to contextualise the work.

Evangelisation and Families is my particular brief and it will hopefully continue much as I have been doing, but possibly with renewed vigour and greater and stronger support from both the level of the bishops and from the coalface, the families in our Church.

Families are the context in which the vast majority of people live their lives. There are many different types of families and they are at different stages of their family life cycle but, for all, their family moments are also their faith moments. The condition of children in their families has been our main focus this year. Parents concerned about their children and how to deal with the common and extraordinary affairs. Older people concerned about their children and their grandchildren prompted me to initiate a little Movement of Prayer of Grandparents for Grandchildren. Families hurting because of the poor quality of couple relationships or other family conflict are all the context for evangelisation.

Social communication in the Church has probably tended to be considered as dealing with the big issues: of poverty, unemployment, refugees, gender equity and crime. Those are very real issues, but the ones that concern most of us on a daily basis are those everyday family ones. Pope Benedict even chose the theme Children and the Media for his Communications Sunday message.

Children are influenced very much by the various areas of media such as TV, radio and glossy magazines. Some of them and others in the families read books and newspapers. Some read fiction, others read non-fiction and some read spiritual books.

Judging by the support for aspects of the print media, most people prefer reading about other people at quite a basic level. Self-help and motivational books do have some appeal. But the market for material such as MARFAM produces is limited (take a look at www.marfam.org.za). MARFAM, the Marriage and Family Life Renewal Ministry is about family life education and enrichment of relationships.

I accept that it is not a popular cause, yet my passion for family life enrichment keeps me at it. The focus is not really on the social but more on the sociable side of family life, meaning welcoming, friendly, accepting, tolerating differences, building up communication and related skills.

That to me is what Social Communication should mean and is what I feel pretty passionate about.