MESSAGE OF POPE PAUL VI TO THE FOURTH DAY
GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS
Dear brothers and sons, all you men of good will,
you, especially youth of the world:
The World Day of Social Communications this year focuses on a topic that will surely greatly concerned "Social Communications and the young." In fact, who are not aware of the immense responsibility of each and every one of us, before history and before God, to take advantage of extraordinary opportunities that the media give us to help young people to learn, to form, to discover the real problems of the world, pursuing the true values \u200b\u200bof life, to assume fully their vocation as men and Christians?
are indeed pressing questions faced by all people of good will, private organizations, national or international, and the Church: Adults, how will the youth of tomorrow in this universe are you today make ready? Young, what society are you going to do when you take your hands touch the destiny of the world?
Brothers and sons, all we mean, urged on by the awareness of our pastoral responsibility for tomorrow as we will be ready today, with the help of God.
Is therefore necessary to recall once but the phenomenon becomes every day more widely? The press, radio, television, tend to neutralize and even to supplant yesterday as generations passed to your heirs using traditional media culture: the family atmosphere, the educational activity of the school and parish, education of teachers and educators. Now come into play new sources of knowledge and culture than by their sheer power of penetration, impact achieved with the sensitivity and intelligence, yet the procession of imaginative and ideological dissonance caused by sound and visual images. Wonderful
opening means of contact, communication, participation, certainly. Provided, of course, do not forget your character means to serve an end, the only end worthy of the name: the service of man of all men and all men (cf. Populorum Progressio, n. 14). But rather, as happens too often, managed by an industry becomes its own end, degenerate into instruments of exploitation particularly of young people and children, consumers easy to drag down the slopes of eroticism and violence, or the winding roads of uncertainty, anxiety and distress. I wish that all honest people should be brought together to launch a cry of alarm and an end to companies of corrupting force is to qualify.
So, who does not grasp the urgency of using such means of communication and emotional language, through sound, image color and movement that are truly modern channels of human interaction, able to respond to the expectations of youth?
What great fortune this abundance of food, whether it is healthy, if the body is ready to receive it, if you can even assimilate without poisoning! Wonderful opportunity, certainly for many young people to find a distraction from quality, to acquire a wealth of information and, for some, receiving a first training reading and writing, "we remember especially in this World Year of Education, proclaimed by the United Nations on the eve of the second decade of development," access to high culture, taste the authentic values \u200b\u200bof brotherhood, peace, justice, the common good.
truly exciting task of those who run the media giant, putting them in the service of youth. But what will all this if parents and educators do not help young people to choose, judge, to assimilate what they are proposing, and thus be able to train as a man and a Christian mind? Otherwise, young people remain at risk of liabilities, fascinated, as it were, to those able to seek, brought and taken away by desires found and unable to tame character.
Finally, who knows introduce young people the message of true life, loyal and brave, perhaps unconsciously they expect? Hundreds of millions of men are excited together with the striking images of the first steps of man on the moon. Who will be able to join them in the same fervor about loving God who came to walk with walking speed in our land, to "call everyone to participate in life as children of the living God, the Father of all men" (Cf. Populorum Progressio, n. 21)? We would like paternally
encourage and stimulate all who in great numbers, we know, priests, religious and secular, are employed with ardor in searching, through the "mass media", a new language to announce the Young is good news, which remains always a new surprise. Who could doubt that, in fact, young people today expect this announcement, are thirsting for this testimony, and can recognize they, too, with deep joy that is, in himself, the answer to your questions more radical and disconcerting, who "has made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption "(1 Cor, 1, 30)?
"young, seek Christ to keep you young '(St. Augustine, Ad fratres in hermitage, Serm. XLIV). Here's what I want for you and what you ask.
Making all parents and educators, producers and users of the press, radio, film and television this World Day of Social Media for a fruitful discussion and to make fruitful resolutions directed at the greater good youth.
With the confidence that they will do, we send all our affectionate Apostolic Blessing.
Vatican, April 6, 1970.
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