VATICAN CITY, NOV. 29, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is exhorting Catholic communicators to serve the truth, giving the reasons of the faith and helping to interpret reality from the evangelical point of view.
He made this appeal last Friday on receiving in audience participants in the assembly of the Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies (FISC).
“The truth, for which man thirsts, is a person: the Lord Jesus. In the encounter with this Truth, in knowing it and loving it, we find true peace, true happiness,” the Holy Father explained.
He said the Church’s mission is to create conditions to facilitate such an encounter between man and Christ.
Addressing the directors and collaborators of the 188 leading Catholic newspapers represented in the FISC, the Pontiff indicated that “collaborating in this task, information organizations are called to serve the truth with courage, to help public opinion to see and read reality from an evangelical point of view.”
“It is about presenting the reasons of the faith that, as such, go beyond any ideological vision and have full right of citizenship in the public debate,” he explained.
“Born from this need is your constant commitment to give voice to a point of view that reflects Catholic thought in all ethical and social questions,” the Pope added.
Cultural challenge
Benedict XVI reflected that in our postmodern world, “one of the most important cultural challenges involves the way of understanding the truth.”
“The prevailing culture,” he said, “the most widespread in the media areopagus, is placed, in regard to the truth, with a skeptical and relativist attitude, considering it the same as simple opinions and considering, as a consequence, many ‘truths’ as possible and legitimate.”
However, the Pope affirmed, the “desire that is in man’s heart attests to the impossibility of being content with partial truths.”
Thus, Benedict XVI indicated that the specific function of Catholic newspapers is to “proclaim the Good News through the narration of the concrete events that Christian communities live and of the real situations in which they are inserted.”
And he suggested an evangelical comparison: “As a small amount of leaven, mixed with flour, ferments all the dough, so the Church, present in society, makes grow and mature what in her is true, good and beautiful.”
“You have the task to give an account of this presence, which promotes and strengthens what is genuinely human and which takes to the man of today the message of truth and hope of the Lord Jesus,” the Pope told the journalists.
He exhorted them “to continue in your service of informing on the vicissitudes that mark the journey of communities, on their daily life, on the many charitable and beneficial initiatives that they promote.”
“Continue being newspapers of the people, that attempt to foster genuine dialogue between the different social components, arenas of confrontation and loyal debate between different opinions,” the Holy Father exhorted.
And thus, he said, “Catholic newspapers, while carrying out the important task of informing, carry out, at the same time, an irreplaceable formative function, promoting an evangelical knowledge of the complex reality, as well as the formation of critical and Christian consciences.”
“With this,” the Bishop of Rome affirmed, “you respond” to “the educational challenge, the need to give the Christian people a solid and robust formation.”
