Pope urges for more effective communicative language to preach the Good News

(November 13, 2010) In today’s technological culture, the Church must adopt a creative and effective communicative language and skill in order to make the Gospel message relevant and attractive to the men and women of our age. The Pope offered this advice to participants in the plenary assembly of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture that discussed the theme “Communication Culture and New languages,” Nov. 10-13. The Pope said that great many Christians need to have the Word of God proclaimed to them again persuasively so that they can concretely experience the power of the Gospel. He observed that this problem seem to increase particularly when the Church deals with men and women who have drifted away from or are indifferent to faith experience, to whom the Gospel message comes in a less effective and convincing manner. In a world that is making a winning strategy of communication, the Pope said, the Church… must not only make use of the new languages and means of communication with renewed creative commitment but also use them with critical sense and careful discernment. The inability of a language to communicate the profound meaning and beauty of faith experience, he said, can contribute to the indifference of many, especially young people. Since an inadequate presentation of the message hides more than manifests the true face of God and religion, it can become a reason for people to drift away, the Pope added. Today many young people, stunned by the endless possibilities offered by information networks or other technologies, set up for themselves forms of communication that do not contribute to growth in humanity. Rather they may even risk increasing the sense of loneliness and loss. One must respond to these phenomena with creative intelligence, by promoting a humanizing communication that stimulates critical thinking and the ability of evaluation and discernment.