Nauka Kościoła o roli mediów w społeczeństwie

The Church as a community has the duty to participate in the activity of the media. This duty is enshrined in the legal codex of the community: “The shepherds of the Church are to teach the faithful that they have a duty to cooperate in the work of the media so that these become imbued with the human and Christian spirit”. Those belonging to the Church community should try to ensure that the media are a tool in the promotion of sanctity. This is only possible when the aim of the media message is to present the truth. In the context of the fight for media to present the truth one must fight to portray the freedom of an individual; Jesus taught clearly that: “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (St John 8: 32). So if the truth is to set us free, one needs to be free to accept it. The correct understanding of freedom is then the beginning of the educational attitude towards media and their duties. From the point of view of Christianity, freedom is a well-thought and discriminating choice of everything that is good, beautiful and truthful. The Catholic Church in its considered opinion of the mass media saw it, primarily, as a tool of evangelization. The new media and computerization give potentially an unlimited opportunity of proclaiming the message of salvation. The Church must remember that contemporary society most frequently bases its idea of the world and the purpose of life on the teachings of the media. That is why it is important that the message of salvation becomes part of that media experience. The priestly ministry in the world of computers should show this era, the era of faithless humanity, that God is close to every person, and that in Christ everyone belongs to each other.