One of Pope
Francis’s best known quotes is the one telling priests they ought to have the
smell of the sheep. That seems to me to be the take-away from the 2017 SIGNIS
World Congress that took place June 19-21 at Laval University in Quebec City.
Officially, the theme of the congress was
“Promoting Stories of Hope.”
SIGNIS is the
Rome-based world organization of Catholic communicators, representing about 100
countries on six continents. It has been described as “an interface between the
sacred and the secular.” The world congress is held every three years.
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| Some of the many SIGNIS reps from Asia |
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Cardinal LaCroix preaching; photo shot with my camera by Amy Morris
while I was seated with concelebrants off to the left side of the sanctuary.
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| SIGNIS opening session, Monday morning, June 19 |
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Frs. Pereira, Ryska, Mendl, and Koladiyil
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Spiritual life of the “nones” is based on relationships
Numerous
speakers, both “keynoters” and panelists, in both plenary sessions and the
smaller “breakout” or professional-area sessions, spoke indirectly of the need
for communicators to be attuned to the sheep of the Lord’s flock. At least one,
Fr. Richard Leonard, SJ, from Australia was explicit about that with reference
to clergy.
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| Dr. Elizabeth Drescher & panel of respondents |
We’re
seeing a series of shifts, she said:
-- in belief, from cognitive to
experiential;
-- in behavior, from rules and
ritual to narrative;-- in belonging, from communitarianism to cosmopolitanism;
-- in being and becoming, from a fixed identity to an evolving narrative identity.
She continued: The more closely a story can
be tied to people’s everyday lives (day-to-day expressions of faith), the more
it carries meaning for people. We need to listen to what people find meaningful
and respond to that.
Responding
to Dr. Drescher, panelist Guy Marchessant (professor emeritus, St. Paul
University, Ottawa), suggested that the key terms of Dr. Drescher’s
presentation seemed to be “network, relational, incarnational.” Religion is no
longer a Sunday experience but a daily one. It’s no longer top-down but
bottom-up or horizontal. In turn, this implies changes in our teaching,
celebrating, and governing. It’s not the message that counts any longer but
one’s relationship with the other.
One
commenter from the floor observed that since Vatican II the Church has noted
the value and necessity of the young speaking to and evangelizing the young.
Jesus expresses God’s solidarity with human beings
In
a breakout session about communicating faith and hope in difficult situations
(pain, loss, tragedy), Fr. Leonard, director of the Australian Catholic Film
Office, said that our story of hope is that God is good—“in Jesus Christ our
Lord.” The most underrated concept in theology is the friendship and
companionship of God. Jesus displayed God’s solidarity with humanity, and we
can communicate God through our own solidarity with people who are suffering.
As
part of a panel speaking about “Building Peace and Hope in a World of Cultural
and Religious Diversity,” Jaime Carril from Chile commented that the most
important value for dialog is the ability to listen. Compassion also is
critical.
In
a session titled “Content Creativity,” Michael Jones from Maryknoll USA told
his audience that the key to creativity is sensitivity to what’s in front of
the reporter or writer.
Plenary
speaker Dr. Michael Higgins of Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Conn., spoke
of reverence for the word/Word. Among other remarks, he quoted the late Fr.
Henri Nouwen: the work of the priest is communion, bringing people together
through and around the Word. Language can be a companion of the Divinity, said
Dr. Higgins.
It seems to me
that the examples above illustrate calls to smell like the sheep—at least as
important for priest and religious evangelizers as for people working as
communicators in fields other than the pulpit or classroom.
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A panel of Fr. Luis Garcia Orso, Magali Van Reeth, Fr. Peter Malone, Sr. Nancy Usselmann,
and Abdul Rehman Malik discusses religious themes in recent films.
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But the idea
of communion and sensitivity to the sheep also came from no less a source than
filmmaker Martin Scorsese.
The core of
the SIGNIS-CMC shared sessions on Wednesday, June 21, was a screening of Mr.
Scorsese’s most recent movie, Silence, and a
conversation with Mr. Scorsese. Silence
is a story based on the persecutions of Christians in 17th-century Japan. It
took Mr. Scorsese 27 years to make the film after he read Shusaku
Endo’s novel in 1989. On stage in front of between 400 and 500 captivated
Catholic communicators, the legendary director engaged in “a conversation” with
writer Paul Elie.
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| Martin Scorsese accepts an award from the Catholic Press Assn. and SIGNIS at dinner on June 21. |
Church
imagery in the 1950s was of martyrs and suffering—quite a different set of
images than Hollywood offered at that time concerning Catholicism. The parish
also presented liturgy, pageantry, Holy Communion, community, a sense of right
and wrong. The cathedral’s focus and its rituals helped one get to the core of
Christianity.
Unlike
the parish’s other clergy (good men though they were), the young assistant
pastor, Fr. Francis Principe,
paid attention to the youths, guiding them in how to transition from their
parents’ Italian culture to America’s, to pay attention to their minds and to
learning, to beware of the ethic of the streets. They learned that professional
recognition isn’t the highest value; rather, family, religion, and school are
to be valued.
At a formal
dinner on Wednesday evening, Mr. Scorsese was presented with an award from the
Catholic Press Association and SIGNIS for excellence in filmmaking.
The message of Silence
Martin Scorsese explained on
Wednesday afternoon that his movie explores our search for meaning when what’s
right and wrong isn’t obvious. As with any film, one must look beyond the
image. What’s the idea being presented, the spiritual question? Silence challenges us to ask what we’re
looking for in our own lives, regardless of our age. How do we live who we are?
The key issues to face are love, trust, and betrayal.
Mr.
Scorsese’ interlocutor, Paul Elie, had written earlier in the New York Times Magazine
(11/26/16): “‘Silence’ is a novel for our time: It locates, in the missionary
past, so many of the religious matters that vex us in the postsecular present —
the claims to universal truths in diverse societies, the conflict between a
profession of faith and the expression of it, and the seeming silence of God
while believers are drawn into violence on his behalf.”
Other significant
events and observations
Speaking of St. Michael’s University
of the University of Toronto, its president David Mulroney said: “We have to
live the mission, communicate the mission. . . . You can’t communicate who you
are if you don’t know who you are.”
John Zokovitch of Pax Christi has
observed that extremism arises from situations of hopelessness, especially in
the young.
Fr. Tom Rosica, CSB, defined the
mission of Canada’s Salt + Light media as “opening doors and building bridges.”
He stated that we must offer the world solid, beautiful content, always
respectfully, and not be concerned about ratings or hits. People respect and
respond to truth and beauty. “Joy and hope are the weapons of mass
construction.”
Addressing “Finding Truth in the Age
of Digital Propaganda,” Dr. Renee Hobbs of the University of Rhode Island said,
“The best digital software is mindware,” i.e., being aware of what we’re
hearing or watching.
Reporter Sebastian Gomes from Salt +
Light made these points among others:
-- Catholics have a great
story to tell, and we have to tell it well.-- It’s important to be professional: to give good, timely, respectful information.
-- Build personal relationships.
Brenda
Riojas described a program of the Brownsville diocesan communications office, a
“mobile journalism” partnership with youths in the parishes, some as young as
11. This engages them in their parishes and also catechizes them. They start
with photography, which is easier to teach and which grabs their interest
faster than writing does.
“Babble-on: The Role of the Word in a Barrage of
Words”
Dr. Michael Higgins’s address on the
word/Word was cited above. (It wasn’t always clear when he was referring to the
Word of God and when to “mere human words.”) More from that presentation:
Our mission as Catholic
communicators is to protect the word. The word is some jeopardy and needs to be
recovered. “A lot of language is steeped in opacity.” Facts are foundational.
Words must represent reality. Words have to be handled with reverence.
There’s some concomitance and some
divergence in the use of words between the religious and the secular spheres.
The meaning of the word has been corroded; discourse has coarsened. E.g., what
does “mercy” mean today?
John Paul II spent the bulk of his
pontificate attacking the lie that was Soviet hegemony. We renew, cleanse, and
redeem the word. The Word will undo the chaos of lies. People listen to great
orators and poets because they’re looking for truth.
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| Some of the audience, including Fr. Pat McCloskey, OFM, line up to comment on Dr. Higgins's address |
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