wfn.org | Fr. Patrick Anthony tells religion communicators, humanize your stories

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

Religious Communication Congress 2000
http://www.rcc2000.org
Dan Gangler, coordinator of news and information
DRG1946@aol.com
Newsroom telephone during Congress 312-595-3151

By Linda Green

	CHICAGO  - Religious communicators were challenged by a well-known 
Catholic priest to avoid being "mediacentric" and seeing people only as 
images, during the first plenary session of a once-in-a decade event in 
Chicago on March 30.
	The Rev. Patrick Anthony, editor of Theology in the Caribbean Today, urged 
his peers to tell the stories of pain and suffering and become the 
humanizing conscious of the media.
Using the conference's symbol of the flower, he said after flowers fade, 
the image is destroyed and no pain, love or human suffering is felt.
	"When a little boy like Elain Gonzalez becomes an image, he will fade 
tomorrow, but there will be many other boys who will not fade because they 
are flesh and blood."
	A native of St. Lucia, a small island in the Caribbean region, Father 
Anthony told a story about the mission of communicators. He told of a 
Bamboo, a tree that loved God so much it allowed itself to be cut down and 
cut-up by God to be used to transport water to a nearby village where the 
people were dying of thirst.
Telling stories is what it is all about in communications, he said.
	He said today, the media victimizes small island countries and advanced 
technology.  He said the people are called to be like David and stand up to 
the modern Goliaths and proclaim their right to exist.
	"As religious communicator, we must proclaim that message loudly and 
clearly. As we seek to communicate, people must not be transformed into 
images but sown into the hearts of human beings, never compromised. We must 
recognize that what is important is not the almighty dollar but the human 
soul."
	Anthony presented three situations to highlight the role religious 
communicators in the North America and in the south have in the life of 
people in the Caribbean. He talked about the challenges of communications 
in small developing states. The stories he shared included: the case of the 
boy Elian Gonzalez of Cuba; the struggle of the people of Vieques, an 
island in Puerto Rico, against the United States Navy; and the role of 
community radio in the struggle for development in Haiti.
I	In the Gonzalez case, Anthony said, "what has been played out through the 
media is a human story. It is not a story about Elain Gonzalas but a story 
of a small state in the Caribbean region whose destiny is being taken by 
the Goliaths of the world."
	He said the Gonzalez story is not just about the images already seen, nor 
about one little boy, but one about the hundreds of Haitian little boys 
being returned to Haiti because Haiti is a poor country located in the 
Caribbean.
In spite of whatever political ideologies they feel, religious 
communicators ¾ collectively and individually ¾ must be the conscious, the 
voice of truth. "In Cuba, there are people who want to be free but that 
freedom is being crushed in the name of ideology."
	He said, that within the United States there are those people who claim to 
be religious but see no human beings in Cuba.   Elian, he said, has become 
many things for many people. "Don't be mesmerized by images," he warned.
Anthony said that the media in the north victimizes communicators in the 
south. There are 10,000 people on the island of Vieques and those people 
there have been protesting for many years the Navy's use of the island for 
military exercises. He said Vieques was not heard about internationally 
until the people of Puerto Rico began demonstrating, after a man was killed 
from a Navy bomb last year.
	He said that although the churches in Puerto have led demonstrations, that 
included 100,000 people marching in the streets against the Navy to 
proclaim their right to survive, the media in the north provided moderate 
exposure.   He said it wasn't until people began spending the night and 
camping on the bombing range in protest that media in the north began to 
take notice.
	"The people were prepared to be like Bamboo and be killed to let the world 
know that human beings lived there," he said.
	Anthony asked the communicators to be the voice of those who cannot speak, 
to tell stories of faith, hope and love.