I begin with some comments on the media presentation of Dominus Iesus, for I believe that this illustrates the difficulties of having calm and serious dialogue in an age of high-speed communication and instant response.Speed of communications
The speed of communications in our age is a great achievement of modern information technology and can be an immense factor for good. At the same time it places great problems on the shoulders of conscientious journalists; and it also creates difficulties for serious discussion about issues of profound religious importance. A declaration about Church doctrine which, of its nature, uses theological language and requires careful reading and even study, is released to the public at a press conference in Rome and then transmitted through the networks of the world press. Journalists, often without any theological formation, scan the document quickly—for speed along the information highway is a priority in modern communications. In journalistic terms, a feature of religious news is that the interest in the general public is assumed to be a minority one, and the attention span is assumed to be short. Consequently, it is felt that religious news must be given special “angles” to make it interesting. In other words, it must be presented as new, confrontational, and related to contemporary stereotypes in such terms as “hard line” or “moderate”, “conservative” or “liberal”, “reactionary” or “progressive”, “fundamentalist” or “forward looking”, etc. In the case of papal statements, further stereotypes come into play: is the statement a case of “Pope versus Vatican Council”, or “Pope versus Curia”, or an indication of a “power struggle in the Vatican”? The terms are by now entirely standardized.
As soon as the document is released, a précis, which is already a selective interpretation of the text, is flashed with maximum speed around the media outlets and news desks of the world. What arrives on news desks is a short summary, “angled” by the sending syndicate or agency along such lines as I have suggested. The resultant headlines are predictable, and it is these which create the first impressions the general public receive about the text in question. It is very difficult later for either Church spokespersons or for responsible journalists to modify these first impressions. The original text has also been put out on the Internet, but the imperative of speed leaves no time to read this. At this stage, the national media begin to trawl, often by telephone, for immediate reactions. The person telephoned has, in most cases, not even seen, much less read, the document. The journalist will almost certainly have read only the agency précis. When the respondent replies that he or she has not read the document, the journalist may well oblige by quoting from the agency report. The respondent, also anxious to oblige, may comment on what he or she hears; but this may be a serious misrepresentation of the text, or be a sentence quoted out of context and unrepresentative of the document as a whole. It might be thought prudent, in such circumstances, to refrain from comment until one has read the entire document. This admittedly, is made difficult by the speed and urgency of modern communications.
I am not suggesting that there is any malice in this process at any level; but clearly theological dialogue is extremely difficult in this kind of context. First reports and early headlines, followed by first reactions, can give the document a label which is very hard to remove and may give the debate a direction which it is nearly impossible later to change. Dominus Iesus suffered even more than most documents of its kind in this process. More thought needs to be given in Rome and also at the level of Episcopal Conferences and Dioceses to the method of publication and distribution and explanation of Roman documents. Such documents are a service to Bishops and theologians and they too have a responsibility in respect of their diffusion and correct understanding. Perhaps an official summary could be issued along with the document, outlining its main points in simpler language, so as to avert misunderstandings. I believe, however, that it is now possible and timely to pause and read the document more calmly and make a more balanced appraisal of it. Read the rest, beginning under the heading “interreligious dialogue”
