|
What message are we trying to convey through WYD?
Dear Friends,
 BREAKING NEWS: In news received overnight Paul Collins and Frank Purcell are now seeking to get a thousand people to write directly to Pope Benedict. They are undertaking to have the letters delivered when His Holiness visits Sydney for World Youth Day next month. <Full story here>
Today's lead commentary…
The feedback continuing to reach us is of a scepticism on the part of many young people to institutionalised religion today. This is reflected in the massive withdrawal from participation in the sacramental and communal life of the Church once young people leave school. In transmitting a message, any communicator if they are intent on staying in business needs to ensure their messages cause more people to turn on to their product than to be turned off it. That is a basic axiom of communication whether one is running a newspaper, selling some consumer item or endeavouring to envangelise a religious message. There is no communicator who can please the entire population. ALL communicators attract some people who like their messages and others who are turned off by their messages. The art of successful communication is to simply ensure that you turn more people on than you turn off.
What message is being transmitted here? |
 |
Photo from Cardinal Pell's coffee table WYD souvenir book "This is The Mass". What message is conveyed by this Tridentine liturgical set complete with altar rails and a priest dressed up as an altar boy? It's as though the Second Vatican Council was an aberration in Church history. See the further commentary in the Catholica forum HERE. |
The way some religious leaders behave though you could be forgiven for coming to the understanding that this communication axiom doesn't apply when it comes to religious belief. Perhaps they believe the Holy Spirit will make up for their indifference to one of the basic laws of communication? It is a dangerously false axiom that any publicity is good publicity. If your publicity consistently turns more people off than it turns on, if you run a commercial business you're eventually going to go broke, if you run a political party you're eventually going to be voted out of office, and if you run a Church you're eventually going to have no congregation to preach to. The latest official figures released last week by the Pastoral Projects Office of the Catholic Church tell us that today only 13.8% of baptised Catholics now regularly participate in the sacramental life of the Church. This figure has been in decline for a century and it reflects an international trend and the leadership of the Catholic Church today seems of the mind that somehow this trend is "the will of God" and they have no responsibilities whatsoever in the matter. "We'll keep banging the drum that turns so many off Catholicism and to hell with what the consequences will be — or what final accountability we might have to face personally for what has happened." It's time for the rot to stop! Your responsibility, gentlemen, and ours as broader members of the institution, is to be bringing "the Good News" to all people — not just to the emotionally insecure or those that Pope Benedict, in his previous role as a Cardinal, described as "the little people". Your responsibility, gentlemen, is to be educating "the little people" not appeasing or stroking their insecurities.
The lead commentary in Catholica today is from a mother who has had much experience in bringing up young people and understanding their mores. The trigger for her commentary were the comments published by another mother, columnist Adele Horin, in the Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday who examined the growing media attention on World Youth Day in a household of unbelievers. Kerry Gonzales questions the effectiveness of the World Youth Day model in convincing young people today of what Jesus Christ has to offer. <Read Kerry Gonzales' commentary>
|
