(24 Apr 10 – RV) The need to give the Internet a soul and humanize the dynamics of
the digital world was at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI’s message Saturday to participants
in a conference on modern means of mass communication.
Promoted by
the Italian Bishops Conference, “Digital Witness” draws together experts in information
technology, social networking, web journalism and blogging to focus on the language
we use and the way we communicate as Christians in the online society.
Pope
Benedict told participants that the task of every believer who works in media, is
to ensure the “quality of human contact, guaranteeing attention to people and their
spiritual needs”. “This is increasingly urgent in today’s world”, he said, at a time
when Internet appears to have a “basically egalitarian” vocation, but at the same
time, “marks a new divide", the "digital divide" that "separates the included from
the excluded"
"The dangers of homologation and control, of intellectual and
moral relativism are also increasing, as already recognizable in the decline of critical
spirit, in truth reduced to a game of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and
humiliation of the intimacy of the person"
Thus said the Pope we see, a "spiritual
pollution" that brings us to no longer "look one another in the face”. So we must
“overcome those collective dynamics that risk reducing people to "soulless bodies,
objects of exchange and consumption”. The media must become a “humanizing factor”,
focused "on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples". Only then, will "the epochal
times we are experiencing be rich and fertile in new opportunities":
"Without
fear we must set sail on the digital sea facing into the deep with the same passion
that has governed the ship of the Church for two thousand years. Rather than for,
albeit necessary, technical resources, we want to qualify ourselves by living in the
digital world with a believer’s heart, helping to give a soul to the Internet’s incessant
flow of communication".