PAUL VI
MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS DAY
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS DAY
Theme: Advertising in the Mass Media:
Benefits, Dangers, Responsibilities
Benefits, Dangers, Responsibilities
Venerable Brothers and beloved Children of the Church, and all you men of good will,
The dioceses of the Catholic Church, in response to the invitation of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council (Cfr. Decree Inter Mirifica, n.18), again this year celebrate the World Day of Social Communications, in order to help, through reflection, through prayer, by their interest and concern and by moral and material support, the press, the radio, the television, the cinema and the other modern instruments of social communication in the discharge of their important function in information, education, and where the specific responsibility of Christians is concerned, evangelization of the world.
This Day, now being celebrated for the eleventh time, has happily become in many countries an occasion for direct contact between the local Churches and the professionals of the mass media and an opportunity for the growth of better understanding between them. By means of appropriate liturgical and cultural events, it goes some way towards alerting the conscience of the person who uses social communications - whether he be reader, listener, viewer, or cinema spectator,- to the necessity of being selective in what he reads, views and listens to; a selectivity that often effectively influences those responsible on the production end as regards the type of matter they will offer for his consumption. But still more, it stimulates him to make a mature evaluation of the content of the communications which he receives.
