His Grace Bishop Macarie of Northern Europe conveyed a message of congratulation to the Basilica News Agency on its 11th anniversary, noting the ‘the difficult, but necessary and blessed task’ carried out by Basilica.ro.
He said that the Romanian Patriarchate’s News Agency has the task ‘to create an alternative environment in contemporary media,’ which ‘seems to be increasingly reduced to the function of amplifier of passions, lies, evil and misinterpretation’.
The Basilica News Agency has the vocation to be a genuine alternative
I was writing on the occasion of another anniversary of the Basilica Agency that ‘in a world increasingly assaulted by prefabricated products of the secularized thought, fake news and cynical emotional incitements, the Basilica News Agency is an oasis of decent, adequate and true communication. We live times when the mission through the new media is a great challenge for the Church.’
The not so long time that passed since then has strengthened and confirmed the findings. Mass media, whether ‘traditional’ or ‘new’ virtual media, seems to be reduced on the one hand to an amplifier of passions, lies, evil and misinterpretation, and on the other hand, develops exponentially the panoply of increasingly fine and subtle tools of affective and cognitive manipulation.
The feeble voice of truth barely sneaks in, it is hardly heard through so many thousands of pictures, sounds and words thrown into the air of our minds.
It is therefore a duty for us, Christians, to seek to make a real difference, not only through the content of what we communicate, but also through the style, the form we use, so as to offer, in this media context, a real alternative.
We know that ‘everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken’ (Matthew 12:36). By cherishing every opportunity to communicate, we will use it to transmit ‘the good to know’, ‘the word of truth’, and ‘profitable words’. We must communicate truth and good genuinely and with proper, correct means.
I appreciate and congratulate the Basilica News Agency on its 11th anniversary, because it is part of a conscious effort to mark this difference, to create an alternative environment in contemporary media. It is a difficult, but necessary and blessed task.
I pray to the Compassionate Lord to bless the staff of the Basilica News Agency and to increase their good work!
†Macarie Dragoi
Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Northern Europe
Photo: Diocese of Maramures and Satmar
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