 |
AND THE CHURCH BECOMES "NEWS"
FOR THE WORLD
Vittorio Citterich
The Second Ecumenical Vatican Council was the "ecclesial"
event that has had the most worldwide informative repercussions in this century
now coming to a close. Naturally through the rapid development of communication
techniques, starting with the spread of the television age. But someone who
lived through those extraordinary years as a reporter, from its announcement by
Pope John to its conclusion by Paul VI, while not transgressing the limits and
criteria of his profession, cannot attribute the great historical influence of
that event merely to external technical reasons. In their first reflections the
Council Fathers already discussed what should be "ad intra" and what
should be "ad extra" in their undertaking. Only to realize later that
the distinction was not an easy one to make. In John XXIII''s Instinct (the "instinct"
of the Holy Spirit, it was said), the Council was placed in a period of total
and dramatic epochal change that concerned the common destiny of the "human
family". The nuclear age - as it was called briefly - conditioned and
threatened by balances of terror and dialectics of ideological stereotypes which
did not look sufficiently into the future, to the meaning of history, to plan a
future of "peace on earth".
It is within this context that the Council, an ecclesial
event, is placed. It cannot, however, be confined exclusively within an
ecclesiastical boundary, at the disposal of "specialists", because its
message was addressed to everyone. It was as if the Church were making the
Gospel more acute in its universal outlook, in comparison with the dominant
cultures that had lost it. On 4 September 1962, even before the Assembly began,
a contemplative in political activity like Giorgio La Pira ("the
charismatic Mayor of Florence", John Paul II defines him in his great
prayer for Italy) almost sensed its potential impact on the future: "How
does the Council fit into the great perspective of the Church and the nations?
In this technical, scientific and space age which marks an unprecedented
turning-point in the history of the world? An age in which war is disappearing,
peace flourishes, the world is becoming united, idealogies are crumbling and the
Church is emerging more and more every day, almost to enlighten it...".
Lumen Gentium (Christ, the light of humanity) will
be the fundamental document of Vatican II. The Council with a task of
enlightenment in a decisive historical moment. If this was the overall meaning
of the conciliar Assembly, there then arose the task of making it known, without
apologetic forcing but also without falling into the likely temptation of
inserting the novelties of the Council into the patterns and stereotypes of the
dominant journalistic information that placed the events of the Church's life
among the leftovers, though at times suggestive ones, of an illustrious "religious"
past, now and for ever surpassed by the triumphant secularism of modernity. It
was Romano Guardini who had pointed out, with far-sighted cultural vigilance,
that historical developments were leading more likely towards the "end of
the modern age", and so towards a religious revival whose symptoms were
felt, disposed towards a new harvest, towards a new presentation. The initial
difficulty in gathering news of the Council, apart from the suggestiveness of
the rites and of plenary assemblies of more than two thousand Bishops in St.
Peter's Basilica transformed into a conciliar hall, could not however be
attributed entirely to the journalistic setting of that time, to its limits and
its prejudicial hostilities. Especially in the first session there was even a
frightened defensive movement among those who had to "communicate"
from the outside the developments of a reflection of "up-dating"
which, before the great themes under discussion, openly adopted the criterion "of
unity in diversity" instead of that of an unfruitful, yet disciplined
laudatory repetitiveness. On the other hand, on the evening of the inauguration
of the Council, Eastertide, we had assisted at an event that anticipated the
future of the world of communications in a horizon as a "global village".
Pope John appeared at his lighted window to bestow an unexpected blessing.
After calling on the Moon to bear witness to the brotherhood deriving from a
great Christian event like the Council ("we seek what unites us, let us
leave aside, if there is anything... what divides us"), he ended with an
embrace for children ("when you arrive home, you will find your children
there, embrace your children and tell them that it is the Pope's embrace...").
To some extent it can be said that, among many
turning-points, that extraordinary moment, broadcast live by the RAI television
cameras, also marked a turning-point in the relationship between the Church
gathered in Council and the world television image. It may be curious to
remember (but it is not only curiosity) that in those years at the beginning of
the sixties, in a world that was divided as far as television was concerned by
an incommunicability no less impenetrable than the "iron curtain", the
stern and ideologically autarchic Soviet television asked the Italian television
if it could transmit the image and voice of that old Pope blessing the people on
the evening of the inauguration of the Council.
However rapid the advance of television and it repercussions
among the means of social communication may have been, the sought-after priority
for making known the daily course of Vatican II naturally remained that of the
written press, which had its headquarters in the Council's Press Office at the
end of Via della Conciliazione, close to St. Peter's Square (later it would
become the Holy See's Press Office. Joaquin Navarro Valls, the present
director, was at the time among us reporters eager to know and understand in
order to give out the news correctly). A humanly as well as professionally
extraordinary experience which formed, in constant confrontation with the event
to be understood and retransmitted ("l'événement notre maître",
Emmanuel Mounier said), a unique community made up of roles, competences, and
experiences all different from each other but in some way complementary and
convergent. Thirty-five years later the happy memory of this may diminish
marginal details, episodic tensions between some reporters' haste in their
profession and others' desire for caution, the sum total of which may have
produced, here and there, leakages of misleading sensationalism or, on the
contrary, occlusions of truthful transmissions. It is, however, certain that,
thirty-five years later, it can be recognized that the Council summoned by Pope
John and brought to its conclusion by Paul VI, was also a great turning-point
for the Church in the global village of the world of communications and, at the
same time, the occasion for a total maturation of the international journalistic
ambient before the thematic specificities of so-called "religious
information" and the universal extension of its spiritual themes.
Those who were fortunate enough to be present in the
Council's Press Office will always remember vividly Pope Paul VI's farewell to
the journalists who had reported on Vatican II. Paul VI's kindness: "If,
as never before in the course of her two thousand year history, the Church has
become aware of millions and millions of people interested in the Assembly of
Bishops from all over the world, undoubtedly, dear sirs, this is fully due to
you...". And his methodological recommendation: "You have assisted at
a Council, at a decisive moment in the history of the Church, but remember that
the history of the Church is like life, which imperceptibly throbs in many
places...".
The Council - John Paul II writes in Tertio Millennio
Adveniente - was a "preparation for that new springtime of Christian
life which will be revealed by the Great Jubilee" of the Year 2000. There
arises again the relationship of a "decisive moment" in the history of
the Church, as a Jubilee is, and the imperceptible influence of her life in
consciences, in prayer and in many places, to the far ends of the earth; which
though they are not easy to measure ("it's not news", in journalistic
jargon) are, however, the wide and fertile ground from which the new springtime
comes.
|