FOCUSING ON THE CHALLENGES OF THE MILLENNIUM

Guido Bossa

I am not sure if, around the Jubilee of the Year 2000 we will be able to reconstruct the enormous media attention which surrounded, 40 years ago, the Conciliar event. Probably it will only be possible to draw the sums when it is all over, whereas it is certainly premature, now as we are in the three years of immediate preparation, to identify any consolidated lines of tendency in information, or consistent movement in public opinion.

Yet it is certain that, as already the Council, the Holy Year, which opens to history the doors of the Third Millennium, finds humanity in the midst of a process of transformation which we would not hesitate to call epoch-making. Then, while the wounds of the Second World War were still painful, the world was experiencing the drama of the cold war: reciprocal diffidence and fear governed relations between States and arsenals were stocked with the most powerful weapons of destruction. On the world scene, few peoples were able to live as protagonists and entire continents became territory of bloody wars by proxy.

Today, the scene is completely different. The process of de-colonisation, begun between the two wars, has been completed and new protagonists are on the stage. The cold war has also gone into the archives and the basis laid for a new world-order founded on equality between states. Naturally, this is a process of becoming, which goes ahead with leaps and in a discontinuous manner; it is not always easy to identify coherent lines of tendency.

Precisely Pope John Paul II noted in Tertio Millennium Adveniente the coincidence between great ecclesial events and significant turning points in the history of humanity, when he wrote in chapter 27: «It would be difficult not to recall that the Marian Year took place only shortly before the events of 1989. Those events remain surprising for their vastness and especially for the speed with which they occurred. The Eighties were years marked by a growing danger from the "Cold war"; 1989 ushered in a peaceful revolution which took the form, as it were, of an "organic" development». The Pope also notes that after 1989 «there arose new dangers and threats», precisely in the geographical areas in which there had developed the liberation movement which began with the fall of the Berlin wall. And so, continuing our example, we could say that one of the prevailing themes of this close of the century will be the definitive emancipation of Eastern Europe and the Balkans from the weighty heritage of Communism; the development everywhere of mature systems of democracy, economic growth, the affirmation of true social justice and fully human models of development. Questions which call directly for the attention of the media. How could we overlook, for example, the supine acceptation, for many Eastern European countries, of electoral systems and methods which, in consolidated democracies, would be considered as swindling?

Forty years ago the opening of the Council favoured the entrance of new protagonists who also imposed themselves on the attention of the media: and the Third World was discovered. Today the new protagonism of the nations of eastern Europe, and well beyond Europe, could become an occasion for enriching information truly in search of an important theme. But not only this: the new frontier for information at this close of the century can and must be seen in the development of the qualifying events which already characterised the Sixties: from discovery to integration, from autonomy to globalization; in view of the construction of a world which will truly be the common house for all people.

In fact, globalization is the frontier on which the third millennium opens. In many ways, it is a relentless development of humanity, fruit of historical movements which have been taking place for some time and which began precisely in the years of the Council. «Accelerated integration of societies once marginalised, is the best thing that has happened during the life of the post-war generation» wrote the editor-in-chief of the international edition of the Financial Times, Peter Martin, in "Le Monde Diplomatique" (June 1997). And again: «Globalization constitutes authentic collaboration trans-frontier between societies and cultures, contrary to the fictitious collaboration set up by North-South dialogues and bureaucratic elites. Not only did it undermine the foundations of the empire of Soviet evil, it is doing the same in China today. Its virtues are extraordinary even apart from these direct political effects, because it has increased enormously human happiness in the societies which were able to grasp the opportunities offered».

Globalization, however does not in itself coincide with the new golden-age of humanity. The access of new countries, new economies, to the world market can happen, and in fact often happens, in contempt for those commonly defined as the "social clauses" of international development and commerce, and therefore in contempt of the rights of the weaker ones: in the first place women and children. This is another vast field for investigation in which information can take action to accompany critically the path of humanity to the threshold of the third millennium. If it is true that, as Peter Martin writes, under the impulse of globalization «power will irresistibly move from the developed countries to the rest of the world» we must take care to see that this different location of power will not happen to the detriment of fundamental human values and development, of which the Church is also the guardian.

There is no doubt then, that critical commitment required of media workers today is just as serious as that to which the journalists were called at the beginning of the Council. In the meantime, the instruments have changed, enormously accelerated are the times, news, all news, has become a product shared by all, potentially by all the inhabitants of the earth. Then the concilar event gave rise to the birth of new professional figures in the field of information; today we do not know what the future holds in store. We do know however, that if the Jubilee Year indicates «the general emancipation of all inhabitants in need of liberation» to «restore equality among all the children of Israel» (TMA 12, 13), and if this emancipation comes about, as it is already doing, in the sign of progressive integration of the peoples of the world, that is in the sign of the globalization of economies and markets, the process which has already begun will demand of information critical, watchful and constant attention. So that the passage to the third millennium may come about in the sign of growth, not the homologation of humanity.