Using the new media

by Editor · Published September 2, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

What would St Paul think of a Church that does not use all the available media to spread the Good News, and whose leaders sometimes even remove themselves from public discourse?

In its earliest times, the Church used the media of the day to communicate its message to believers and to evangelise non-believers. St Paul�s epistles are the oldest record of the early Church and still form part of social communications, in printed Bibles or when proclaimed from church lecterns. The gospels were written with the specific purpose of making Jesus known and disseminating his teachings.

Paradoxically, at a time when an unprecedented diversity of media offers the Church access to communicating its message, many in the Church are hesitant to use them.

If St Paul were to evangelise today, he might well write a blog. And if God the Father had sent his Son into the world today, it is likely that Jesus, so masterful in wrapping up a teaching in a compact phrase, would have tweeted on Twitter.

One may well wonder why not every bishop and priest capable of operating a computer mouse is not making use of the great opportunities to communicate on the Internet (never mind through the more traditional media).

Few, if any, of our bishops in Southern Africa have a Facebook profile. Yet Facebook� and Twitter, the most popular social networking platform, provide bishops and pastors with excellent scope for building community � not to supplant but to complement the visible community � and to keep in touch with parishioners and friends who have left their sphere of pastoral influence. More than that, through social networking, pastors can find out more about the joys, the pains, the values and the interests of those they minister to.

Through the Internet, pastors can reach and teach many more people than those who attend Mass. A skilled homilist may well spread the Gospel message by writing a blog, an endeavour which today requires negligible technical expertise.

In a more conducive Internet environment than that in South Africa (where punitive prices and limitations on usage severely impair innovation), the really accomplished homilist might even spread the Word on podcasts to good effect.

In the Internet and cellphone age, the range for communicating fruitfully with people, regardless of geography, is almost boundless. However, the �new media� are not a substitute for the traditional media or traditional community.

Pope Benedict is right to warn that obsessive social activity on the Internet can isolate the user from authentic human interaction. In his social communications message this year, the pope notes: �It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation.�

Nor can the Internet take the place of traditional media: newspapers, books and radio. For the Church, it remains important that the use of traditional Catholic media be resolutely supported and encouraged.

Likewise, it is imperative that the Church engage with the secular media, even when these are seen as hostile. Alas, for all the wise guidance given by successive popes and the Vatican�s Council for Social Communications, many Church leaders are reluctant to engage with the media, Catholic and secular.

Catholic media is often ignored (the litmus test: is your diocese or parish observing Social Communications Sunday on September 6?), media strategies are left unexplored, and the secular media is written off as hostile instead of working towards a presence in the wider conversation.

What would St Paul, the Church�s great communicator, think of that? What would Jesus tweet?