The Decree On The Instruments Of Social Communication, Inter Mirifica

• Published in: Vatican II
• Main Author: Neuhaus, Richard John
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Oxford University Press 30.04.2008
• Subjects: Religious Studies; Instruments; document; Catholicism; communicating; Christianity; communication
• ISBN: 9780195332681; 0195332687
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195332681.003.0018

ȁThe original language of Christianity is translation.” So I was told by a missionary priest in Nigeria. The language of Judaism is Hebrew, and the language of Islam is Arabic. But what is the language of Christianity? While Catholicism has a particular, although now attenuated, attachment to Latin, the language of Christianity is the language most appropriate to communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ. This understanding is reflected also in Inter mirifica, the Decree on the Instruments of Social Communication. The new curial dicastery called for by the decree is called the Pontifical Council for Social Communication. Some have remarked that “social communication” is an awkward construction. Isn’t all communication, by definition, social? When the council adopted the decree, it was suggested that the document was something of a departure from earlier magisterial texts. The Church has always emphasized that human beings are by nature social, but the social groups that received attention were the family, work associations, national societies, and so on. The media “instruments” discussed by the decree, it was said, are creating something new: a communications society. Many years later, after the “digital revolution” began to take off in the 1990s, people would speak of this communications society as “the global village.”One could argue that Inter mirifica was prescient in anticipating this development. There is some evidence in the text itself to support that argument.