Render to Caesar: the 38th World Communications Day

The Roman Catholic Church designated World Communications Day, May 23, which was Ascension Sunday, not as might be more appropriate, Pentecost, that great day of the sound of a mighty wind, tongues of fire, all of them speaking different languages.

Since my days as a radio and TV producer for the CBC and as a Catholic, I have dreamt of a dramatization in the church and on the media in celebration of this day.

However, there was no presence of this "celebration" in the media. It did not cause much of a ripple among those of us who work in the media and the arts, whose talents are rewarded from time to time with Caesar's com. It is sad that the church tends to expect artists, and craftsmen, and even computer geeks to render their talent, if not for free, then at a token charge, all the while keeping an eye on content.

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's."

The church of the people of God tends to accept the "word" as a good thing if it is practised as evangelization, rather than as communication; the very word "media" evoked some cautionary words in the Catholic Register May 23.

A sense of "celebration" of mass communications seems further away now than it was 38 years ago when Pope Paul VI called on "the church's children and all people of good will, to the vast and complex phenomenon of the modern means of social communication, such as the press, motion pictures, radio and television, which form the most characteristic notes of modern civilization."

As a practitioner in all of these media, I have been waiting since that call in 1966 to be answered independently by the laity. I have dreamt of a World Communications Day in which all of us lay practitioners of the arts and media could be invited to take a microphone, a T.V. camera, an easel, a pen, or a tool kit, so that a congregation could celebrate them as witnesses of human ingenuity.

Forty-two years ago I had the honour of contributing to the script for the obituary of Pope Paul VI on CBC Radio's "Pope Of The Middle Time". That was when the CBC had a religious department, which it has long since wisely given up. Too much broadcast religion can be too much of a good thing. It is good when church and media are separate. Now, at least for the CBC and its listeners here and in the U.S., thanks to Michael Enright, the Sunday Morning program does better than a whole department. And Enright has an audience that sometimes disagrees with him on air.

Years have passed since we progressive Catholics drank draughts of Vatican II but the church, in its Vatican form, blunders on in a verbal ghetto of Latinized English in its documents of communication. These documents must be a cross, even if bloodless, to the pastors and the parish lay ministers who must translate them into acceptable prose for their parishes. Then there is the handicap of not having a good microphone. Few laypeople know how to handle this tool, yet young people, many skilled in technology, could help parishioners listen and learn. The devil of microphone distortion destroyed a homily here in Toronto a few Sundays ago given by a brilliant and well-loved homilist. He was drowned out by a sound system. No one from the altar, the choir or the pews felt free to come forward, even when many hands clapped at the speaker's efforts to continue.

There is urgent need to canonize Marconi or Marshall McLuhan as a model of media content and techniques. Every parish or Catholic organization addressing a public in any church, lecture hall or picnic should have a competent professional and a trainee available for the audiovisual necessities.

Say, Buddy! Can you spare a dime or time for a lay media lest for the next World Communications Day?

Tony Ross was a broadcaster and teacher of communications for many years. He writes from Toronto.

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