austraLasia #2153

Faculties & Departments of Communication in Catholic Universities called to Rome

ROME: 22nd May 2008 -- The Pontifical Urbanianum University in Rome is the setting for a major gathering of representatives from around the world - all members of Schools, Faculties, Departments of Communication. The meeting, called by the President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Celli, is one of the first moves he anticipated at the time of his appointment last year: "Looking to the future of Communications together with the whole Church".
    As can be expected, a number of Salesians who are working at University level in this area are attending the meeting which began today 22nd and concludes on 24th.  Amongst them is Fr George Plathottam from India, recently appointed as Secretary of the Communications sector of the Indian Bishops Conference.
    It is a little odd that such a prestigious Council as the PCSC has not provided an open description online of its Conference activities - the address given for access to this material brings up an 'error' message and an indication that the user has no permission for entry to that directory!  It is odd given that one of the keynote speeches today was 'Communications in a digital age: how is the world of communications changing?'  Of course, one of the ways in which it is changing is precisely in such essential openness.  However, it may simply be an oversight! austraLasia has obtained a hard copy of the material that we hoped would be found on the website anyway!
    The meeting and its participants will face up to many exciting and rather challenging questions - probably too many for just three days.  Let's list some of them: What are the present and future challenges for Christian communicators in the secular world and the Church? How is technology changing the nature of social communications, particularly print, broadcast and electronic journalism? How are institutions, particularly the Church, to communicate in a digital age? What are the implications for schools and departments of communication in Catholic universities? Is there an 'ethics of communications'? Is communication an intrinsically ethical enterprise? Should schools and departments give consideration to characteristically Christian forms of communication such as proclamation, witness, liturgy and dialogue..... and so on.
    The real work of the Congress will be done at group level, organised on the basis of language and geography but hoping to consider characteristics of Catholic identity that transcend contextual differences.
    We look forward to some concrete feedback from proceedings.  Meanwhile the Salesian Polytechnic University's (UPS) Faculty of Communications in Quito is about to announce a major international conference on Free Software and the Democratisation of Knowledge.  it is hoping to have some of the world's major gurus in this area as speakers - names proposed include people like Richard Stallman and Nicholas Negraponte.
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Title: australasia 2153
Subject and key words: SDB General Pontifical Council for Social Communications
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2153