Vatican Calls for Smarter Attitudes Toward Media

INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, Nov. 17 — Catholics should overcome their distaste and learn about mass media — in order to improve it, urged Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

He spoke Nov. 14 to the International Seminar on Media Education in Rome.

“Media education is absolutely essential in today's world, but I must admit that I have found opposition from two sources: the academic community and media executives,” Archbishop Foley said. “Academics object because many of them don't consider media as serious. How they can overlook the profound influence that media have on youth is an attitude I cannot understand. Teachers can and should help young people to be critical and intelligent consumers of the media.

“Media executives object because media education can and should make people critical,” Archbishop Foley added, “and I sometimes think that some media executives prefer couch potatoes — those who watch entertainment and perhaps news programming without a critical eye — and then buy most of the things that are advertised.”

A ‘Revolutionary Conservative’ Pope

THE INDEPENDENT (Bangladesh), Nov. 17 — In a column published by a Bangladesh paper, The Independent, former solidarity activist Adam Michnik wrote thoughtfully about Pope John Paul II and his role in modern history.

Michnik noted how few people expected “how much the new Pope would change not only Poland but also the world.”

On the Pope's first visit home, “communist police disappeared from the main streets of Warsaw, yet the streets became models of order,” Michnik wrote. “After decades of disempowerment, Poles suddenly regained their capacity for self-determination. … Then, in Auschwitz, he called the Poles, who remembered dear ones gassed to death in Auschwitz's crematoria as well as those frozen into glass in Siberia's concentration camps, to a brotherhood devoted to struggle against even justified hatred and revenge.”

“Some see in the Pope the person responsible for a religious revival; others see a man of peace,” Michnik continued. “Some see a defender of the poor, others a critic of liberation theology. … In the end, John Paul II does not fit neatly into any category and often represents a meeting of opposites: rejection of compromise with ecumenism, toughness with warmth, intellectual openness with insistence on theological orthodoxy. He is a conservative who loves freedom and a ‘peacemonger’ who condemns injustice but who reminds us that mercy is more important than justice.”

Voice of America and Why Sharon Skipped Vatican

VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS, Nov. 17 — A three-day visit Nov. 17-19 to Italy by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was scheduled to include meetings with representatives of Italy and the European Union — but not with Pope John Paul II, Voice of America News reported.

Speculating about Sharon's motives, the U.S. government-sponsored news service noted, “On the eve of Mr. Sharon's visit to Rome, the Pope criticized Israel's plans to build a separation barrier in the West Bank. The barrier is controversial because part of it is being constructed on occupied land and will isolate tens of thousands of Palestinians.”