MASS MEDIA: ANOTHER FORUM FOR ONGOING CATECHESIS OF THE URBAN YOUTH
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Date
2005
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
As a youth training in pastoral communication, I was moved by reading that.
"The media are invaluable helps for Christian education L.) their resources make
possible the radical changes that are required in the whole style of religious
instruction today." Living in a period characterized by critical and swift upheavals
rampant through out the world I thought of how the Church, can utilize the
indispensable modern means of communication in her pastoral care to the Catholic
urban youth. Looking at our young people in urban parishes, they are actively
yearning for a place where they can be accommodated without being judged,
received with their myriad questions, and responded to respectively. Majority have
questions about Jesus, about their faith, and how they can construct an authentic life
in today's modem cultures.
Although young people profess believe in Christian faith, majority seem to lack
an experience of active participation in the Church beyond their infant baptismal
ceremony. This is because the responsibility of accompanying them in their believe
rests no longer on parents and teachers of faith, but on the modern media. Modern
media come along with a popular culture full of feign attitudes, beliefs, values and
ideas contradictory to the long standing Christian values. Conforming to such a
A. FLANNERY. ed., Vatican!! Council. Decree on the Means of Social Conintunication. 129.
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culture, an overwhelming majority of urban youth are left confused and without
identity.
Nowadays the Church stresses on considering the great possibilities offered by
the means of social communication and the means of group communication2 in the
field of pastoral activity. The achievements in this domain are such as to promote
the greatest hope in Catholic youth who are the future of humanity. However, the
fact that media exerts counter-productive influence on the youth it cannot be
overlooked. Therefore, the aim of my study is to investigate the media effects on the
Catholic Urban youth and to clarify how the same modern media can be utilized as a
forum of fostering an active, living and conscious Christian faith in them. The
concern here is also to establish which mass medium can better be used to gratify
their emotional, physical and spiritual needs
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MASS MEDIA: ANOTHER FORUM FOR ONGOING CATECHESIS OF THE URBAN YOUTH