Church and the media

CHURCH AND THE MEDIA

Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB

            When I think about the Church and the media, what comes to my mind are two worlds coming in contact with each other and if we go to see their history, we can trace back a long route, from being just one simple entity to a complex organization.
            Today when people speak about the media, what normally comes on the surface are things like ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Wassup’ and so on. But to narrow down the word ‘media’ to just these few things would be restricting its scope and horizon. Rather, when understood from a broader context, the word ‘media’ actually means ‘to communicate’ and for me, this is what encapsulates all other things such as facebook, twitter and so on. The Church, too, as mentioned before has grown from being a simple unit to a complex organization. But more than just, the Church is the Bride of Christ and it was Christ who exhorted His disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations.
            This is evident from history as we see how the Church has grown. In the beginning, there was only the oral and the written tradition. Everything had to be hand written. There were no computers, typewriters or printers. In fact, the first printing press was started around the 16th century by Johann Guttenberg. Hence, we can imagine how evangelization must have been like during those times. Today, when I look at modern technology, I am baffled at the progress it has made over the years. Who would ever think twenty years ago that the cell phone revolution would take the world by storm? I remember my experiences as a boy in school that to have a cell phone was like a rich man’s commodity but my chemistry teacher predicted that one day even the so – called ‘rickshaw driver’ would also be roaming around with a cell phone. Today it is a reality!
            The cell phone has indeed ‘invaded’ our world today. Even a child as old as six or seven years old knows how to handle a cell phone today. When it comes to evangelization, one thing that strikes me is the Church’s relevance in a particular era. For instance, the Church cannot be speaking about the solution to a 16th century problem in a 21st century era. Every time and every period has its own ups and downs and with the changing times, there are enough and more issues that the Church has to deal with. As mentioned before, children today who are as old as six or seven years old are already familiar with cell phones, it is nothing unusual to find so many people roaming around with cell phones. Life, in comparison to the past, has become fast and pacy and many people prefer using the cell phone today as one can do practically anything with it be it playing games, watching movies, listening to music, chatting and so many other things besides just making phone calls. When it comes to the Church and the media, I think this is one area where the Church can make a big impact and it is consoling to know that Holy Mother Church has taken this step thanks to the efforts of his Holiness emeritus, Benedict XVI who took that step. What is even better is that the present Pope Francis is very much in support of this and today the Church has become more aware of the need to use the media as a means to evangelize. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that given our freedom, there is every possibility that we could become overly dependent on the media or get obsessed by it. We should never forget that ultimately it is the priest or the minister who is the communicator; the media is only a tool.

            With these few words, I pray and hope that as we all journey in our faith, we may make good use of the media for the greater glory of God.     

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