THE JUBILEE: NEWS ON THE FLUX OF EVENTS

Renato Farina

Vice-director of "Il Giornale"

The Jubilee is for me expressive of the essence of Christianity. In contrast to the pagan rituals which ratify the circularity of time where the sacred is enclosed, and nothing really at bottom happens, the Jubilee lets people know that something has happened, that there is an urgent and decisive news to know. This is the difference that Christianity has with respect to pre- and post-Christian mentalities, according to which the things which happen, and life itself, are circles in the water, very quickly absorbed in the huge inert mass. The Jubilee says that something has happened which has scratched the everlasting sphere of the ephemeral which thinks it will endure but instead dies without a trace: no, says the Jubilee, the eternal has entered time 2,000 years ago. The instant becomes precious, oozing grace.

In these mild considerations, all which I believe the Jubilee says about information are contained. The great vice of information is the same which deforms the heart of our time. The hopes dictated by rationalism, which saw the triumph of man at the end of a glorious process, are shipwrecked. The feeling of the total vanity of things is prevalent in intelligent persons, and among them those who produce newspapers and TV. Moravia called the state of the soul boredom, because reality does not convince us of its existence. Given that humanity will never succeed at constructing the meaning of history and that utopias have revealed themselves etymologically as non-places, what is left to man is to embroider something entertaining, or at least of dignity, on the illusory fabric of existence. It is nihilism that conquers today. It no longer has the color and smell of blood, it no longer looks for death with violence, but limits itself to squeezing from the instant a light pleasure or the sensation of a game which in some way dominates it. The dogma of this attitude towards time is that reality doesn't exist. That is, it has no direction, purpose or origin. It does not exist because it does not have meaning. The consequence for information is tremendous: if reality doesn't exist and newspapers are made to talk about it, then the news is invented.

Among the billions and billions of imperceptible daily happenings, which are those that I must choose to transfer into peoples' homes? Where is the hierarchy of values which would induce me to say this, instead of that? If there is neither meaning nor expectation of meaning, information is a game (information is in fact a game) where I place on the table not the truth which is not, but those pawns, or kings or queens, which make the game more entertaining and gripping.

If one takes a look at the big Italian and foreign dailies one could not but agree with these observations. Just think of how the Pope and his trips have been treated: the event is no longer the bursting in of a new man on the scene, identified with Christ and therefore with his destiny, in the life of this or that people, but the phrase not read in such discourse, the provocative declaration of some tuning peg.

My newspaper, "Il Giornale," condenses more than any other a point of view on its pages rather than the reality of the world. I retail to our newspaper the loyalty of believing in reality. At times the result can seem almost surreal if compared with other papers. But this surreality is the outcome of a parallel with reality, not its negation. "Il Giornale" admits being one of the points from which the world is perceived. And God knows how many defects our vision has. But we affirm that with this our partiality there is however a whole, and it is real, the most real. Whoever has had the patience to read these lines of mine can perhaps already gather on his own why I hold the Jubilee to be so important. In these deaf times, the Jubilee of the advent of God in time and in space says that there is a harmony, a peace that can be experienced. The Jubilee, as Pope John Paul II says again and again, in time and outside of time, is not a jaunt of distraction but the place of memory. Something really happens. And whoever has not already recognized this event must be able to reopen his eyes, re-examine whether something huge destroys the castle of nothingness to which humanity seems to be fleeing to avoid despair (but which does not succeed, the youth want to escape this castle at whatever cost).

A word has entered circulation in these last months: and it is "clone", in the sense of repetition. And behold our newspapers have become receptacles of "clonicle", rather than chronicle. At bottom they are the same thing for the person who makes and the person who reads the newspapers: nothing happens, every day is repetition, ever more tired than the preceding day. Cleaning one's gaze: behold what the Jubilee could be for journalism and for its audience. Little is needed: even remaining shaken by that great man, the Pope, or in front of the suffering of a boy offered to God and then transfigured. And with this one realizes that reality exists, and it is full of questions as our hearts know. And maybe there is an answer, and the Jubilee could tell us.