Says Press Is a Meeting Place for Many Traditions
ROME, APRIL 30, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Modern means of communication can become a venue for interreligious dialogue, says a professor of theology and ecumenism.
Joan-Andreu Rocha Scarpetta is the director of the master's program "Church, Ecumenism and Religions" at the Regina Apostolorum university in Rome.
He addressed participants in the meeting on "Religion in the Press: Catholicism and Other Religions in Both Lay and Religious Daily Newspapers," which was recently held at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Rocha explained: "The press becomes a space for dialogue between various religions in the strict sense that it offers a space for believers of different religious traditions to get closer, for example, through interviews with representatives of various religions on specific social questions.
"It is also a place of dialogue when it echoes the concrete ecumenical process of cooperation and dialogue taking place between the different religious groups."
In the end, it becomes a place for dialogue "when it contributes to overcoming stereotypes and tries to transmit the religious reality in accurate terms," he added.
Language conflict
Rocha nevertheless noted that "there is a conflict between the language of the press and religious language."
While "the language of the press, for reasons of space and time, tends toward simplification," one can see how "speaking about religion requires subtlety and long essays," he said.
The professor contended that "the goal of interreligious dialogue is not to negotiate one's identity or create one religion overcoming religious pluralism," but rather "to try, above all, to establish a relationship of the identity of the other, to recognize him in himself as an 'other,' different but similar, overcoming centuries of prejudice and misunderstandings."
"Interreligious dialogue in the press in possible," Rocha concluded, as long as "the journalist tries to overcome stereotypes and gives a voice to all the various factors that make up a religious tradition" and as long as "the followers of that religion themselves learn to speak about their religious identity in a language that is understandable to public opinion."
Code: ZE07043001
Date: 2007-04-30