Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Father Claudio Pighin, member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions PIME and Director of the Communications Centre of the Pontifical Urban University reflects on a very topical subject: Catechesis and Communication
The essential mission of the Church in every age is to lead humanity to the salvific mystery of Christ. Since the early times of Christianity one of the means used for this delicate and complex work has been catechesis. “Catechesis is intimately bound up with the whole of the Church's life. Not only her geographical extension and numerical increase, but even more, her inner growth and correspondence with God's plan depend essentially on catechesis.” ( Giovanni Paolo II, Apostolic exhortation: Catechesi Tradendae (1979) in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1992).
Christ is the Saviour of all mankind, the One who points to God and leads to God. The Church is “column and support of Truth” (1Tim 3,15). In this Church catechesis is intimately connected with pastoral of social communications. Both Catechesis and Pastoral of social communications work for the full realisation of the person.
The form of communications referred to as digital communication has opened a decisively revolutionary chapter of human history. Especially communications via the Internet which is causing a radical change in the coexistence of peoples, which can be considered a radical change at the anthropological level, which places before us the problem of the new culture of the third millennium.
In his encyclical “Redemptoris missio” as early as 1991 the Pope stressed the urgent need to integrate the Christian message in the new culture of the third millennium (John Paul II, Redemptoris missio n. 37).
This is a complex issue, -the Pope continued - since the "new culture" originates not just from whatever content is eventually expressed, but from the very fact that there exist new ways of communicating, with new languages, new techniques and a new psychology. This new context of life is the main challenge facing the Church today . The evangelisation required for the present situation must therefore intervene with catechesis integrated with updated pastoral of communications guided by the wise saying “see, decide, act” (French Bishops 1960s).
This articulate commitment must regard the travailed crisis denounced not as dissolution and dispersion, but rather as a passage, although difficult, towards a new Christian vitality in which man is destined to reach full realisation as brother of his fellow-human beings and a child of God.
Fecund awareness of this change must be possessed not so much at the intellectual level but at the level of concrete daily living.
To tell the truth this positive attitude is by no means easy to achieve when we consider the emerging pressure from a philosophy often poor in metaphysics, a sociology with doubtful directions, an imperiously pervasive technology. In this framework of widespread religious and moral relativism we strive to promote the affirmation of a Christian message which in brief can be summarised as follows: belief in God and in his Love, authority at the service of others, the central Rite which is Mass where the Word is fully realised by becoming communion. Claudio Pighin (Agenzia Fides 25/2/2004; Righe 40 - Parole 478)
