Peter Novecosky, OSB

To communicate well

Ever since the collapse of the Tower of Babel, communications among individuals and communities has been problematic. From the international scale, where failures in communication have led to disastrous wars, to the human scale, where failures have led to family breakups, communicating effectively and transparently is no easy matter. Differences in culture, age, gender, religion and language are among the factors that hinder communication. It has also been pointed out that about 93 per cent of personal communication is non-verbal. It’s more than what we say that counts.

Modern technology has added more fuel to the fire. Schools and parents, for example, are facing a challenge in coping with young students involved in “sexting” — texting with sexually explicit content. A school principal in Pennsylvania finds that children in grade school are involved with the Internet, computers, cellphones and iPods on a daily basis. “I thought I was ahead of the curve,” the technology-savvy principal said, “but the children are so far beyond us.”

Sexual material that young people send via cellphones has become a national problem, she said, and it leads to tragic results. In her school, 125 out of the 150 students in grades six through eight possess cellphones. The students have to be taught what dangers leaving their personal footprint in cyberspace can lead to. What is put into cyberspace stays in cyberspace. It can’t be erased even when it’s embarassing.

There are countless positive aspects to modern technology as well. We now take emails for granted, though it’s a young technology. YouTube is only five years old. Putting a cellphone in your car for winter driving can get you rescued in case of bad weather or an accident. News is disseminated around the world in seconds instead of weeks or months.

Using technology properly and effectively is not only a personal challenge, it is a challenge faced by institutions. Most large companies have communications departments which help to get out the “right” message for the company. For cynics, this has led to the use of “spin doctors” to put a positive twist even on a negative event.

The recent sex abuse crisis in the church has led commentators to call for a renewed effort to modernize the church’s efforts in communicating its message. Many dioceses already have a communications office, but not all. The Vatican has come under increased scrutiny in its handling of the crisis. It is criticized for being too steeped in a culture of secrecy and too slow to respond to fast-developing events. Thus, secular writers have to rely on other sources to write their stories to deadline.

A recent conference in Rome for Catholic communicators, reported below, examined some of the difficulties reporters face. It encouraged the church to become more transparent, more proactive in communicating its message and more journalist-friendly. This is true not only for the Vatican but for every diocese. All bishops and leaders in church offices would be well advised to take training in dealing positively with the media today.

The conference in Rome also pointed out the positive role papers such as the New York Times have played in the sex abuse crisis. The dean of the Opus Dei-run Pontifical University of the Holy Cross noted that, overall, the press has played a positive role in bringing sex abuse to light and helping make it a priority for the church. This is quite a different perspective compared to those commentators who bash the media for persecuting the Catholic Church.

In a recent national congress on digital media organized by the Italian bishops conference, Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told participants that truth, transparency and credibility were paramount in communications today. “Secrecy and confidentiality, even given their positive aspects, are not values that are cultivated by today’s culture,” he said. “It is important to have nothing to hide.”

It’s important to have nothing to hide. It’s important to have good news to share.