Pope Leo XIV (Robert F. Prevost): Evangelization and Mass Media

 Below is a short reflection then-Fr. Prevost gave on October 11, 2012, during the 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization.  Hat tip to Redditor unconscionable for finding this.  The Vatican source can be found here.  Below is merely an excerpt; audio of the full address can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.

 

Evangelization and Mass Media

Fr. Robert F. Prevost, O.S.A. 

October 11, 2012


At least in the contemporary western world, if not throughout the entire world, the human imagination concerning both religious faith and ethics is largely shaped by mass media, especially by television and cinema. Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.


However, overt opposition to Christianity by mass media is only part of the problem. The sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices that mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully engrained in the viewing public, that when people hear the Christian message it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective.
If the “New Evangelization" is going to counter these mass media-produced distortions of religious and ethical reality successfully, pastors, preachers, teachers and catechists are going to have to become far more informed about the challenge of evangelizing in a world dominated by mass media.


The Fathers of the Church, including Saint Augustine, can provide eminent guidance for the Church in this aspect of the New Evangelization, precisely because they were masters of the art of rhetoric. Their evangelizing was successful in great part because they understood the foundations of social communication appropriate to the world in which they lived.


In order to combat successfully the dominance of the mass media over popular religious and moral imaginations, it is not sufficient for the Church to own its own television media or to sponsor religious films. The proper mission of the Church is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an antidote to spectacle. Religious life also plays an important role in evangelization, pointing others to this mystery, through living faithfully the evangelical counsels. 


EDIT: Somewhat à propos to this is Pope Leo's address to the media today; he spoke of how our words (in journalists' reporting, as well as the words of us all, on mass media and beyond) have power to change the world.  "Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world," he said, in line with a quote from St. Augustine earlier in his address, “Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times” (Discourse 80.8).

EDIT 2: This article by Francis X. Rocca includes links to videos of then-Fr. Prevost dating from the 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization.  An interview can be found here, and audio of Fr. Prevost reading his full address as the Synod can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.

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