A HUNDRED WAYS OF COMMUNICATING
STRENNA 2009, by Pascual Chávez Villanueva
A VAST MOVEMENT FOR THE YOUNG
Today we are witnessing how the young have created their own space, the so-called digital world, a virtual habitat where they feel they are in charge. At first this was viewed with a certain unease. But it is only right to recognise that – having left behind the age of stone and chisel, of paper and ink, of walls and class-rooms and of passive listening, the young are adopting new languages, new methods and new forms of education and evangelisation. They want to be the script-writers and the actors in their own space, with their language and their contents. They discover and recreate themselves and demand the freedom to navigate and to dialogue in cyberspace. Well then, if that is where they are, that is where we should be too: educating, making our voice heard, giving witness. Outside these spaces and these languages we are neither seen nor heard, nor understood by the young. We would not be able to educate nor make an evangelising impact on culture.
• This new situation should not frighten us, but neither can we ignore it; we would run the risk of abandoning the young who are already at home there and forming by far the vast majority. That is where they were born, where they live and work and where they enjoy themselves, form relationships, experience joys and sorrows, and, I would even say, many are dying there: it is enough to look into the social networks: Second Life, or MySpace, or Facebook, or any blog, or Youtube, or…
If the preventive system demands the presence of the Salesian “in the playground,” among the youngsters, then we need to be thinking about, bringing up to date, and putting into practice the presence of the Salesian educator/evangeliser in the new playgrounds of communication, where so many forms of the media are to be found, where the walls are not made of bricks or cement, the connections are not only made of metal or fibre but also by electronic waves, picked up and transmitted by satellites through space. I close quoting Pope Benedict XVI: “I would like to conclude this message by addressing myself, in particular, to young Catholic believers: to encourage them to bring the witness of their faith to the digital world. Dear Brothers and Sisters, I ask you to introduce into the culture of this new environment of communications and information technology the values on which you have built your lives!”
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