Communicating the Church in the Middle East: Voice of Charity

How does the Church communicate in a region where Christians are a minority which is sometimes “just tolerated” ? And where is there room for improvement? Well, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications is sponsoring a seminar for bishops from across the Middle East this week in Harissa, just north of Beirut, Lebanon to seek some answers to those questions.

President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, says the event, part of a series of seminars planned in cooperation with bishops’ conferences around the world, is just one response to the new challenges created by new technologies…

“We think one of the more important challenges that the Church has to face in this moment is how to have a real, concrete dialogue with the digital culture...with our people today," he says. "Especially the young generations because these young generations are involved in the digital culture. It’s their way of living.”

The April 17-20 seminar is bringing together some fifty bishops and twenty priests working in the field of communications in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, the Holy Land, Jordan and Iraq and is being coordinated with the help of the Council of Catholic Patriarchs of the Middle East. The four day encounter, focusing on the theme “Communications in the Middle East as an Instrument of Evangelization, Dialogue and Peace,” follows on the heels of the 2010 Synod for the Church in the Middle East. Pope Benedict XVI himself is due to pay a pastoral visit to Lebanon in September to present the post-synodal exhortation of that Synod.

One seminar participant, Fr. Fady Tabet, calls the communications seminar “timely” especially given the recent conflicts in the Middle East and the Arab Spring. Director of the Voice of Charity Radio in Jounieh, Lebanon, Fr. Fady told Tracey McClure about some of the challenges facing the Church in the Middle East as it tries to transmit Christ’s message of peace in a region in upheaval and not always tolerant of the Christian minority.

Fr. Fady says he expects the Lebanon seminar to send a message of unity within the Catholic Church, comprised of many Eastern rites in addition to the Latin rite – something particularly urgent now, he suggests, as Christians in the region look to the future with a certain degree of trepidation.

“The role of social communications and media (in the Church) now,” he says, “ is to spread the word of God and to strengthen our Christian people who are living this fear…in the Middle East.”

Fr. Fady knows all about fear. He has been the target of death threats, a 2005 bomb attack on his radio station, and an Israeli airstrike on its antennae the following year.

But these threats to his life and to his job have done little to deter Fr. Fady from continuing his mission of bringing the Christian voice to the Middle East. What the Church there urgently needs now, he says, is to meet emerging challenges posed by traditional forms of communications and new media.

“We need to understand today that the mass media is the first power in the whole world. Because unfortunately we don’t know how to talk to the youth. We don’t know how to talk to the people who don’t come to the church.”

“We don’t have the ‘link’ to talk to the youth, to talk to the people who don’t come to the Church or who don’t care about the Church. And this is a big and fragile thing.”

Fr. Fady points to the myriad of distractions that keep today’s young people from giving more attention to their spiritual life – and high on the list are drugs, alcohol, t.v. and the internet.

“What can I offer them to give them the attraction to come to hear the Voice of Charity or to see the Christian t.v. (stations)? We have to talk and think about this.”

The way the secular media portrays Christianity in the Middle East also poses a real challenge.

“In the Middle East, the ‘other’ media is very strong…because they have money and the money (comes) from Saudi Arabia…and from the Persian people and from the Muslims. They have a lot of power and for sure, they are very strong…their technology is very high.”

Lamenting a lack of funding for Church communications, Fr. Fady says, “We are very fragile if we don’t have money, if we don’t spread a lot of money to reach these people…who are far away from the Church.”

But ironically, he notes that Christian-run secular media in the Middle East also poses a significant challenge to Christianity in the region.

“For example, during Lent they don’t have any special programs about the Church on the secular t.v.’s. They talk about Muslims, about Ramadan, but they don’t do the same thing with the Church.”

He cites the specific example of a procession of thousands of Christians who traditionally hold a pilgrimage from the port of Jounieh up the mountainside to Our Lady of Harissa. “They don’t say anything about it.”

In order to make up for the lack of media coverage of this and other Christian events, Fr. Fady does his best to spread the Good News through the Voice of Charity Radio but he doesn’t stop there as he seeks new ways to reach out to people young and old.

“We’re not just a radio; we have our theatre, the Christian theatre, and we started our new t.v.: TV Charity.”

Despite his hard-won successes, he says his funding worries are never far away. “For sure, we need your prayers – and I hope everything’s going to be o.k. with time.”

Vatican Radio (17 April 2012)

Source: news.va