WRITTEN BY REV. FR. OBINNA DIKE

Today is World Communications Day. It is an annual event when the Church invites media practitioners and the human society at large to reflect on the virtues and challenges of communications in the world. 

This year’s celebration is the fifty-third in the series since 1967. In his usual manner, Pope Francis captures the hopes and challenges of our time with regard to media and life. He titles it “WE ARE MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER’, taking from the book of Ephesians chapter four verse twenty-five.

The Pope praises the advent and advancement of the internet and reaffirms the Church’s commitment to promote its use in the service of the encounter between persons, and of solidarity among all. However, the Pope is quick to note that today’s media environment has become so pervasive, most exposed to misinformation, targeted distortion of facts and interpersonal relationships, manipulation of data, aimed at obtaining political or economic advantage, and most painfully, drawing an alarming number of youths into cyber bulling.

These, the Pope rightly observes, have created a big gap between the cyber world and relational human community, stressing the need to use the Net to better connect, rediscover and assist one another.

In drawing the metaphors of the net and community, the Pope posits that, in the present scenario, social network communities are not automatically synonymous with community. This dangerous situation has given rise to young people becoming what he calls ‘social hermits’ who risk alienating themselves completely from society.

The solution, however, can be found as the Pope says, in the metaphor of body and the members which he draws from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that preaches reciprocal relationships among people; “Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth, each to his neighbor, for we are members of one another”.

For the Pope, this relationship is based on communion of love, and, drawing from the communion of the Holy Trinity, leads to growth, peace, love and is desirous. That is the communion that engenders healthy relationships that should nourish people within the cyber space.

Suffice it to say that the social web is complimentary to an encounter in the flesh that comes alive through the body, heart, eyes, gaze, and breath of the other. If the Net is used as an extension or expectation of such an encounter, then the network is not betrayed and remains a source for communion. If a family uses the Net to be more connected, then it is a resource. If a Church community coordinates its activity through the network, then it is a resource. If the Net becomes an opportunity to share stories and experiences of beauty or suffering that are physically distance from us, in other to pray together and together seek out the good to rediscover what unites us, then it is a resource”.

The choice of the 2019 Pope’s World Communication Day Message could not have come at a better time, now that the world is being battered by manmade ills. From incessant terrorist attacks to abuses in extraordinary proportions; from Religious extremism to suicide trend; from human degradation to deviant sexual attitudes; all have significant links to the net, thereby justifying the Pope’s insight that the gap between social network communities and human communities needs to be bridged in communal love not divisiveness.

It is on record that brains behind terrorist attacks across the world have impeccable presence on the cyber space, weaving up a community of hate messengers and enjoying the attention of a wide number of people, many who later become direct or indirect victims of their schemes. Same applies to Religious extremists and other social vice harbingers.

In Nigeria presently, the worrisome trend is suicide. The victims have left messages on their social media walls long before their actions. As we mark the world communications day, let us all, be they individuals, groups, the Church, government, the Media, hearken to Pope Francis’ call to make the network environment a community of love, peace, compassion, problem solving, hope and most importantly, human. Happy Communications Day!

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