VATICAN - Benedict XVI tells Pontifical Council of Culture: “We need men and women who speak with their lives, who know how to communicate the Gospel, with clarity and courage, with the transparency of their actions, with the passionate joy of charity.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “The lives of the saints and martyrs reveal a singular beauty that fascinates and attracts, because a Christian life lived to the full speaks for itself. We need men and women who speak with their lives, who know how to communicate the Gospel, with clarity and courage, with the transparency of their actions, with the passionate joy of charity.” These were the words of the Holy Father Benedict XVI in addressing participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council of Culture, on the theme: “Culture of Communication and New Languages,” whom he received in an audience on November 13.
The Pope said: “Discussing communication and language, in fact, does not mean just touching on one of the crucial intersections of our world and its cultures, but for us believers it means drawing near to the mystery itself of God who, in his goodness and wisdom, willed to reveal himself and manifest his will to men...Communication and language are also essential dimensions of human culture...” Benedict XVI mentioned that “a profound cultural transformation is under way, with new languages and new forms of communication” and pastors and faithful “notice with concern certain difficulties in the communication of the evangelical message and the transmission of the faith within the ecclesial community itself...The problems seem sometimes to grow when the Church addresses men and women who are distant from or indifferent to an experience of faith, whom the evangelical message reaches in a way that has little effectiveness or attractiveness.” The Church, “recipient of the mission to communicate to all the nations the Gospel of salvation,” tries to use the new languages and new modalities of communication “with renewed creative effort, but also with critical sense and attentive discernment.”
Therefore, considering that “the incapacity of language to communicate the profound meaning and beauty of the experience of faith can contribute to the indifference of many, above all young people,” the Pope observed that “today not a few young people, deafened by the infinite possibilities offered by information networks or other technologies, maintain forms of communication that do not contribute to maturation in humanity, but rather threaten to increase the sense of solitude and forlornness.” This is sign of the educational crisis of which Benedict XVI has spoken on other occasions, “a challenge to which we can and must respond with creative intelligence, committing ourselves to promoting a communication that is humanizing, and that stimulates the critical sense and the capacity to evaluate and discern.”
Lastly, the Pope highlighted that “in the technological culture of today, the Gospel is the guide and the permanent paradigm of inculturation” and that “the Church can draw on the extraordinary patrimony of symbols, images, rites and gestures of her tradition. In particular, the rich and dense symbolism of the liturgy must shine forth in all its power as a communicative element, to the point of deeply touching the human conscience, heart and intellect. The Christian tradition has always been closely linked to the liturgy and to the language of art, the beauty of which has its special communicative power.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 15/11/2010)