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"We must always lead others towards heaven. But we must lead those who live today, not those who lived ten or more centuries ago. We have to take the world and mankind as they are today, in order to do good today." Bl. James Alberione The Media as Wondrous Gifts of God, Given for Our Sanctification Part Two: By Fr. Bob (Bernard R.) Bonnot, S.T.L., Ph.D. Twenty-two years after the start of Vatican II, Pope John Paul II called together representative bishops from around the world to assess that Council’s impact. The intervening years had seen enormous efforts to implement the Council -- rethinking our tradition in terms of its concepts and experimenting with their application. The Extraordinary Synod of 1985 sought to put its arms around that rich experience and sort it out. In the end, it asked what Vatican II was really all about "Communion," the Bishops decided (in Latin, communio). That word and notion emerged as central and fundamental to understanding what God’s Reign is effecting in our lifetimes and what the post-Vatican II Church was experiencing. Communio had not been the focus of attention up to that time. Other concerns, such as recovery of the Bible, renewal of the liturgy, seeing ourselves as the People of God, being the Church in the modern world, and ecumenism had dominated Catholic attention. When the Extraordinary Synod asked what was central to all those issues, what was God effecting in us through our attention to them, they concluded that communio put it best. Communio means "being one with" or "becoming one with." The word itself is a noun for a state of being, but behind the noun is a verb, a dynamism, an action bringing about that state. The Synod concluded that Vatican II had discerned God effecting a profound unity, a sacred communion of hearts and minds both in the Church and in the human family as a whole. During the Council, the Church came to see herself as a gathering of persons made one with the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our very language for God deepened through Vatican II’s renewed appreciation that God is triune and that behind the Three is a Oneness. The Oneness is imaged as an intimate and interpenetrating dance of the Three with one another (perichoresis is the technical term, drawn from Greek). God’s inner reality itself came to be called communio. God’s being consists of a totally free and pure sharing of knowledge and love, a rich communication among Father, Son and Spirit, constituting them as persons in the fullest possible relationship. Communio is the sacred reality at the heart of all that is. We are called and invited into this communion. Communion is the essence of holiness. And that, of course, is why Vatican II’s first fruits, Inter mirifica dealing with communication and the media and Sacrosanctum concilium dealing with the liturgy, constituted a foretaste of deeper things to come. The Spirit guided the Council Fathers by profound spiritual instinct to affirm something at the start that seemed marginal but was, in fact, central -- communication! And they associated it with liturgy. In the judgment of nearly all observers and critics, Inter mirifica was the worst-conceived and -stated document of Vatican II. It used abstract and simplistic language and embodied negative, moralistic attitudes. It drew more negative votes when it finally passed than did any other document of the Council. In adopting it the Council Fathers almost seemed to say, "We find this document weak, but we need to get something done; so let’s pass this and move on to other pressing matters." Inadequate though Inter mirifica was, it signaled the Council’s almost mystical insight that beneath and behind all of its work was the reality of communication as the medium of (means "path to") communio and its realization that the media are important to the Church’s pastoral work in today’s world. Inter mirifica’s counterpart in gaining passage on December 4, 1963, the "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy," was a more substantive and better done document. It pointed in the same direction from another angle. God’s work in the Church is one of communicating divine wisdom and life to people so they can celebrate it and give thanks. Thus, in its very first assertions, the Second Vatican Council in effect said that God’s People must participate in God’s communication more richly at all times and especially when we gather to pray. Then when we leave the sanctuary and return to our homes and to the world, we must communicate the gift we received and celebrate more fully as best we can. Somehow or other -- and the Council Fathers really did not understand too well just how -- the media are "among the wonders" God has provided in our times to enable us to do that. We must use them, and use them well. Communio requires communication. Communication brings people together and builds the community that gathers to live God’s life and to worship God in liturgy. Then communio requires communication to share the good news and joy of the community. Our ever deepening dance with God, our participation in communio, constitutes holiness. Next we shall look more closely at the role of communication and the media in helping us respond more fully to God’s call to holiness. Fr. Bob Bonnot is a priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.A. currently serving as Senior Vice President of Programming for the Hallmark Channel in Los Angeles, California. Ordained in 1967, he has spent nearly 25 years in communication ministry.
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