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                               VIS-Press releases

THE CULTURE OF COMMUNICATION AND NEW LANGUAGES

VATICAN CITY, 3 NOV 2010 (VIS) - In the Holy See Press Office at midday today a
preference was held to present the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council
for Culture, which is due to be held from 10 to 13 November on the theme: "The
Culture of Communication and New Languages".

Participating in today's press conference were Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi,
Msgr. Pasquale Iacobone and Richard Rouse, respectively president, head of the
"Art and Faith" department, and head of the "Communication
and Languages"
department of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Bishop Gerhard Ludwig
Muller of Regensburg, Germany, who is a member of the Pontifical Council for
Culture.

Msgr. Iacobone explained how the plenary will examine "the use of language and
communication to study the current situation and suggest guidelines for action
in the evangelising mission of the Church".

The participants in the plenary will discuss "the new languages, in particular
cinema, music, figurative and plastic arts, the internet and multimedia
platforms, in order to discover the words, colours, sounds and images capable
of presenting Christian life as a valid experience for everyone today.

"In order to favour inter-personal communication there will be no written texts
to read or follow but conversations with experts such as Ennio Morricone, Dario
Vigano, Robert Barron and the managing director of Microsoft Italia". Msgr.
Iacobone explained.

The plenary will also serve to examine "the characteristics of interactivity
and participation, of clarity and simplicity - while avoiding simplification -
and to study figurative and narrative languages in order to transmit to our
fellows what we have received".

Bishop Muller then presented the twelfth German-language volume of Joseph
Ratzinger's "Opera Omina", entitled "Kunder des Wortes und
Diener eurer Freude
- Theologie und Spiritualitat des Weihesakramentes" (Announcers of the Word and
Servants of your Joy. Theology and Spirituality of the Sacrament of Holy
Orders).

Bishop Muller, who is overseeing the publication of the complete works of
Joseph Ratzinger, explained how the contents of this latest volume cover nearly
half a century, beginning with a number of texts which predate by some years
the opening of Vatican Council II. "That fundamental event in recent
ecclesiastical history is usually associated, depending on the point of view,
with the beginning of a transformation in keeping with the spirit of the times,
or with a profound crisis in the Church and particularly in the priesthood", he
said.

In section "A" of the book, entitled "Theology of the
Sacrament of Holy
Orders", Joseph Ratzinger analyses the causes of this crisis and
"illustrates
the biblical foundation and coherent historical-dogmatic development of the
Sacrament of Holy Orders". In section "B", entitled
"Servants of your Joy",
readers will find "a collection of meditations on spirituality already
published as an individual book with the same title". Section
"C" contains
"various homilies delivered on the occasion of consecrations of priests and
deacons, first Masses and jubilees".

"In order to rediscover priestly identity in the relationship with Christ we
must be ready to consider ourselves as servants of the Word and witnesses of
God in the succession of Christ, and to live in communion with Him. To this
end, the priest must have a good theological formation and a permanent
reference in academic theology".

With the writings in this book Joseph Ratzinger "indicates the way out of the
crisis into which the Catholic priesthood has fallen as a result of inadequate
theological and sociological approaches, and of declarations that tend to
arouse in many priests who began their journey with love and zeal, a sense of
insecurity and discomfort concerning their role within the Church". This
volume, Bishop Muller concluded, "achieves the desire of its author to dedicate
an entire book of his complete works to the theology of the Sacrament of Holy
Orders".
OP/VIS 20101103 (640)

SUMMARY

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