Church & Media

In January 1989, to commemorate the 23rd annual World Communications Day, Pope John Paul II addressed a large crowd in Rome on religion and the media. In particular, the pontiff urged Roman Catholics to start looking at media not as a revealer of scandal, but as a positive force for change.

“The question confronting the church today,” he said, “is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the gospel message.”

John Paul spoke often about how the media influence society, and the need to to bridge the gap between the public, 80 percent of whom are not Catholic, and a religion that is 2,000 years old, but often shrouded in ritual and symbolism. In the past decade, John Paul made frequent public statements condemning cloning, abortion, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, the death penalty and other morally fraught topics. His and the church’s positions have not always been popular, and in some cases — the pope’s statements that seemed to support keeping people alive by artificial means in all cases — may have been misrepresented.

“Sometimes journalists have difficulty understanding the church because the church has a specific theological nature and mission, and it is expressed by theological language,” said the Rev. Wlodzimierz Pietka, an exchange student from Poland who is studying at the MU School of Journalism. “We sometimes are not as accessible to journalists (as we should be), so we can clarify our values and serve as mediators.”

Pietka and the Rev. Michelino Roberto of Brazil are at MU from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome to learn how to use the latest communication technology to express Catholic Church identity. The priests are enrolled in 18 hours of journalism coursework, including classes in broadcast, newspaper and online journalism, and also make weekly visits to various media outlets.

Although not an official journalism school program, it was set up by Phill Brooks, an associate broadcast professor, to benefit both the mass media and the church by broadening coverage of religious issues.

“The program provides an opportunity for those who are going to be involved with communication in the church to develop a better understanding of journalists,” Brooks said. “Also for us, who are journalism teachers and students, it provides a better understanding of those leaders and clergy in religion.”

Pietka and Roberto, who arrived here in January, are working on Ph.D.s in institutional and social communications, a movement within the church that dates back to 1963 and Vatican II’s “Decree on the Media of Social Communications.” In the document, Pope Paul VI wrote that among the most important technological advances are “those media which, such as the press, movies, radio, television and the like, can, of their very nature, reach and influence, not only individuals, but the very masses and the whole of human society, and thus can rightly be called the media of social communication.”

Paul VI could not have predicted that so much of the news about the Catholic faith under another pope would be so negative. The sex-abuse scandals that have bankrupted parishes, exposed pedophile priests and distressed a billion Catholics around the world were worsened, in the eyes of many, by the Vatican’s delayed response to allegations.

Roberto and Pietka said the church’s response in the past two years underscores its new approach to controversy — greater openness. Roberto, who was studying in Rome when the Vatican summoned American bishops to discuss the scandal, said the Church eventually decided to address the issue publicly and has allowed representatives of the press to sit in on important meetings.

“I think that the church respected the media and respected the professionals of the media,” Roberto said. “I think that is important sign of this openness.”

The priests are also trying to better understand American Catholicism and the role of religion in American life. They are currently interviewing, researching and writing articles on the separation of religion and public life, as well as Catholic conversion and growth in Missouri and the United States.

“It was a nice surprise for us to realize that the Catholic Church in America is growing despite the past problems,” Roberto said.

Roberto and Pietka think Pope John Paul II’s interest in greater transparency was evident in the nonstop television coverage of the two days leading up to his death on April 2. Such coverage relied on frequent updates from the Vatican, which in some cases may have told viewers more than they needed to know about the pope’s final illness, a urinary tract infection. The priests said they were fascinated by the scope of the television coverage, which simultaneously captured the drama in Rome and the reaction of believers, from New York to the small Polish village where John Paul II was born.

The two priests return to Rome in June. While they won’t be pursuing traditional journalistic pursuits, they hope to use what they have learned — both in the classroom and from the American media themselves — to promote the gospel message.

“The church has this opportunity to use newspapers, television and radio and can use it for good things like proclaiming the gospel and Jesus in the world,” Pietka said.