He continued, saying, "We should express our preoccupation with the bad uses to which the media can be put - pornography, character assassination, sensationalism; but we should be especially eager to praise those who do good things in the media, to encourage them, to support them; and we should not fail to use the media ourselves, not only to tell the good news - the Gospel - of Jesus Christ, but also to tell the good news of what the Church is doing in the name of Jesus."
At Mass yesterday for members of the Media Committee of European Bishops at the Paul VI International residence in Rome, Archbishop Foley spoke of the Pope's Apostolic Letter on communications, saying it is "to commemorate the publication at the Second Vatican Council of the Decree 'Inter Mirifica' and to offer an insight and a challenge to all of us in the Church for a profound understanding and wise use of the media."
"I would ask," he said, "that it be one of your major preoccupations to help to promote Catholic communications activity in what we might call the Church of the Modern Catholic Renaissance in central and eastern Europe.”
He said that, “It is not only in eastern and central Europe where there is a hunger for the Gospel. There, perhaps, the opportunities to use the media are now greater - but the need to hear the Gospel and to see sound Christian values incorporated in the media is perhaps even greater in an increasingly secularized western Europe.”
How do we get people's attention to listen to the most important message in life - our origin, our destiny and the means to achieve it? How do we get people really to listen to what Christ has told us - without their tuning out because they think they have heard it before or because it has struck them as dull? It will be hard work for us - but God has promised us strength."
Read the Holy Father's Apostolic Letter at: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/document.php?n=51