By Natasha Marsh
Pope Francis chose “the family” as the theme of the 2015 World Communications Day.
In his message for the day, Communicating the Family; A Privileged Place of Encounter with the Gift of Love, the Pope said the family was an ‘appropriate theme’ considering it had been a topic of profound reflection in the Church, with the extraordinary assembly held on 5-19 October 2014 and an ordinary assembly scheduled for October this year.
World Communications Day was first established by Pope Paul VI in 1967. Each year it is celebrated by the Church on the Sunday before Pentecost. In his encyclical, Redemptoris Mission (1990), Pope St John Paul II called World Communications Day the ‘Areopagus of the modern age’, referring to the moment when the Apostle Paul preached ‘Jesus and the Resurrection to all who would listen at the Areopagus, the honoured tribunal site of ancient Greece. World Communications Day has always been linked to Pentecost, evangelisation and the preaching of the Good News.
Each year the Pope issues a message on January 24 (chosen to coincide with the feast of St Francis de Sales, patron of writers) with the topic and theme for the World Communications Day later in the year. Over the past half-century, the Popes have preached on a range of topics, including ‘the internet’, ‘silence’ and ‘children in the media.’
Pope Francis reflected on how the family is the first school of communication.
“In the family we realise that others have preceded us, they made it possible for us to exist and in our turn to generate life and to do something good and beautiful. We can give because we have received. This virtuous circle at the heart of the family’s ability to communicate among its members and with others.
“The family is also the place where we learn how to deal with conflict lovingly. A perfect family’ does not exist. We should not be fearful of imperfections, weakness or even conflict, but rather learn how to deal with them constructively. The family, where we love one another despite our limits and sins, becomes a school of forgiveness.”
He said that modern (social) media, while an ‘essential part of life for young people,’ could be both a ‘help and a hindrance’ to communication.
“The media can be a hindrance if it becomes a way to avoid listening to others, to evade physical contact, to fill up every moment of silence and rest so that we forget that ”silence is an integral element of communication.”
Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has insisted the need for real, authentic interaction, captured by his well-known images of a ‘bruised Church’, and one that ‘smells like the sheep.’
While social media enables ‘people to share their stories,’ ‘stay in contact with distant friends’ and even ‘open the door to new encounters,’ it should not replace true, authentic communication, Pope Francis wrote.
“The great challenge facing us today is to learn once again how to talk to one another, not simply how to generate and consume information.”
“All too often things get simplified, different positions and viewpoints are pitted against one another, and people are invited to take sides, rather than to see things as a whole.”
The Holy Father held up the image of the family, in all its beauty and brokenness, as a useful model for all communication endeavours.
“The family … is not a subject of debate or a terrain for ideological skirmishes. Rather, it is an environment in which we learn to communicate in an experience of closeness, a setting where communication takes place, a ‘communicating community.”
Pope Francis’s message for World Communications Day, ‘Communicating the Family: a Privileged Place of Encounter with the Gift of Love,’ can be read in English at the Vatican website, www.vatica.va.
Originally published in Kairos Magazine
From pages 18 and 19 from Issue 2: ‘Family: What does it mean in 2016?’ of The Record Magazine