Leonardo Meira
Vatican City–Pope Benedict XVI received an audience of the participants of the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical
CN News File Photo
Council for Social Communication. The retreat occurred in the Clementine Room of the Vatican Apostolic Palace. The Plenary of the Council happens in Rome from today to Thursday, March 3 with the theme: Language and Communication.
“The digital culture presents new challenges to our capacity to speak and hear a symbolic language that speaks of transcendence. Jesus himself in announcing the Kingdom knew to utilize the elements of the culture and the environment of his time. The sheep, the farms, the banquet, the seeds and so on. Today, we are called to discover, also in the digital culture, symbols and significant metaphors for people, that may be able to help to speak of the Reign of God to the contemporary man” he said.
The Pope remembered that in the Message for the Day of Communication this year, he invited to reflect on the fact that the new technologies not only change the mode of communicating, but work also a vast cultural transformation. ” It will be developing a new way of learning and of thinking with unprecedented opportunities of establishing relationships and building community.” he said.
The Pontiff remembered the risks in the use of the new media-loss of interiority, superficiality in relations, escape, obfuscating the search for truth-these are consequence “of the incapacity to live in the fullness the meaning of innovations and of an authentic manner.” The departing point of the reflections on the languages involved in the new technologies is the Revelation-when God communicated His marvels across the language and in the real experience of men, to the full manifestation in the Incarnated Son, Jesus Christ.
“The faith always penetrates, enriches, exalts and lives the culture, and this, in turn, makes itself vehicle of the faith, that offers the language to think and to express. It is necessary, therefore, that we become attentive hearers of language of the men of our time, in order to be attentive to the work of of God in the world,” he affirmed.
Digital Culture
In relation to the challenges presented through the digital culture, the Holy Father explained that he did not treat only of expressing the evangelical message in the language of today, but to help to encounter answers to the questions as “What challenges the digital thought puts to faith and to theology? What demands and requirements?”
It is exactly the appeal to the spiritual values that will permit promoting a true human communication: apart from all the easy enthusiasm and asceticism, we know that this is an answer to the imprintl in our nature of being created in the image and likeness of God of communion […] The contribution of believers, therefore, may be to help the world of media itself, opening horizons of meaning and values that the digital culture can not, alone, perceive and represent, “said the Bishop of Rome.
Also, the Successor of Peter, remembered that the actual communication involves an always closer and daily relationship between men and machines, such as computers and cellular telephones, of such form that these technological platforms may enable a profound bond with the spirit” in the words of Benedict XVI, in the meaning of having the vocation of being called to the service of the sacred.
Finally, the Pope remembered the 4oo year anniversary of the death of Fr. Matteo Ricci, promoter of proclaiming the Gospel in China in the modern era.
Translated from Portuguese