Msgr Cuthbert Alexander

Taken from World Communications Day supplement

Communication technology today presents the Church with a pressing duty, an opportunity and a challenge. The challenge is as real for us in Trinidad and Tobago as for dioceses all over the world.

In his final Apostolic Letter The Rapid Development, Pope John Paul II identified two specific objectives for the Church in the area of media. First, the media technology has to be engaged in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ and, secondly, with increasing urgency, the Church has to infuse life-giving messages into the “new culture” which the media “create and amplify”.

Forty years earlier, Pope Paul VI had said in Inter Mirifica the Church “would feel guilty before the Lord if she did not utilise these powerful means” open to her.  Rapid Development puts it plainly enough: “The use of the techniques and the technologies of contemporary communications is an integral part of its mission in the third millennium.”

In the area of communications the Archdiocese finds itself in 2008 needing to put its communications house in order to respond to the needs of evangelisation and to assist in bringing about the culture of life that our country so badly needs. 

A look at our earlier Archdiocesan documents on communications will reveal that much has happened over the years. Much of what we do today is part of a plan that people in the field of Catholic communications took time to research and reflect on.

The television programming as it exists today is all part of the plan. In this medium, we have done fairly well in the devotional and liturgical aspects, not so well in the areas of evangelisation and education – preparing programming for various age groups – and in featuring news of the Caribbean, material that help us to better appreciate each other’s culture and customs.

The Catholic News has maintained its prominence in and outside of the region. Its 116 years, its online popularity, speak to its stature in the world of Catholic communications.

The design is intended to symbolise both Catholicism and the mass media. The symbol of the Cross points to our Catholic faith, while the swirl around the Cross suggests an orbit, inspired by the concept of satellite communications. The acronym CAMSEL forms an integral part of the symbol, allowing the logo the flexibility of standing on its own, without logotype, once the name has been established.

It seems though that while some things have been done and were done very well, we probably ought to have been in a better place than we are today. The hope was that we would have improved on what we did in the nineties.

We have not. And this is where CAMSEL must play an important part. As the new organisation attempts to bring together the resources in Catholic communications in a concerted fashion, more will to be possible.

This is not to suggest that networking has been absent from the operations of the local media. This is not the case. Trinity Communications Network (TCN) produces a weekly magazine programme in which it reviews the material in the Catholic News.

There have always been formal and informal links among the arms of the Catholic media. What CAMSEL must do is to deepen that interconnectedness so that there is one mind, one heart, one vision for communications in the Archdiocese.

But television, as effective as it is, and print are not the sum of communication, or its tools. Our hope must still be to transmit on the FM band continuously and to expand quickly our work on the Internet.

As we move forward, one area that requires special attention is the dissemination of information and knowledge about Catholic media and what they are about. There is too much vagueness about that. There is need for the Catholic population to be aware of what the Church is doing in the area of communications. CAMSEL must ensure that this happens.

So how do we move on from here? The first thing really is for the main players to have a shared vision for communications, for the short, medium and long terms.

What can we hope for in the short term – by December 2008? Rapid Development calls for the establishment of “a management system capable of safeguarding the centrality and dignity of the person, the primacy of the family as the basic unit of society and the proper relationship among them”.

It focuses attention on the person. In our planning and projects the who will perhaps be more important than the what. The document further identifies three fundamental options – formation, participation and dialogue. These can form a useful framework and guide for setting some targets.

As CAMSEL comes quickly into its own, and bearing in mind these fundamental options, among those benchmarks it might aim at are:
• An enhanced image of the Church, not simply to look better, but in a way that helps it to be recognised as a prophetic voice;
• An active link between CAMSEL and parish media teams to assist the work of these groups in the parishes and to serve as a conduit of information to and from the parishes.
• An Archdiocesan Plan for Communications be published, providing a clear guide for those directly involved in the ministry and information for those seeking it;
• Partnership with other departments and commissions of the Church.
• A genuine dialogue between media practitioners and the Church;
• A quality of excellence in Archdiocesan publications and productions and a high standard in all CAMSEL activities.

As we begin what must be a new era of Catholic communications in our Archdiocese, we thank God for the presence of these powerful media. We will need to employ them with “the genius of faith and in docility to the light of the Holy Spirit” (Rapid Development).