Media Hype: in whose interest?
09/06/2005
- Opinión
The mass media drunkenness following the death of one Pope and the enthronement of another, or the feast of Corpus Christi, mobilizes millions of persons, and could led us into error as to the true meaning of religious expressions. These events utilize symbols that, by nature, are inevitably ambiguous. Every symbol points in two directions. One directs us outward, to the Sacred - that's why it exists-, the other turns inward on itself, where it risks forgetting the Divine and the Sacred and seeing itself as an end. This is what most frequently happens. This causes a profusion of religious images, very well manipulated by masters of hype, to produce emotions and more emotions, without concern as to whether or not they evoke the Sacred. Life changes do not occur, and are never intended. The faithful are electrified, explode in tears and screams, begging for miracles, and instant canonization of their religious leader: "Suddenly saint," and "saint now." Many cardinals, bishops and priests are satisfied, because they see in this the triumph of religion over the criticisms and suspicions raised by modernity.
But, be careful: there could be a trap here. Emotion is not enough, reflection, (theology) is needed to clarify the problem. Mass hysteria is anathema for the original praxis of Jesus and of the Church of the Apostles. Seeing such crowds, Jesus would deliver a speech that no modern mass media outlet would reproduce, because it unquestionably would be, for them, a disquieting noise: «Convert, change your lives, take care of the hungry, do justice to the oppressed and do not disassociate the love of God from the love of the other, because they are one and the same thing.»
As in the times of Jesus, listening to such a speech, the crowds would dissipate, or diminish. And those who took the message seriously would set in motion a true molecular revolution that would build a healthier humanity. Can you imagine the social revolution that would occur in Brazil and the world if the thousands of Christian schools and the many Catholic universities would only teach, and lead their students to live this precept of Jesus: «love the others as you love yourself and take good care of the poor»? Why that does not happen?
It is because we are facing two types of Christianity: the devotionist and the liberator. Devotionism came with colonization and is hegemonic. It does not accentuate change but accepts the doctrine as defined by the Church. Without the "sane doctrine," it is said, no one is saved. But due to generalized ignorance, few know what the "sane doctrine" is. The resource, then, is the devotion to strong saints, whence devotionism. Escadinha, a well known Brazilian assailant, before committing a crime, would cross himself and grab the scapulary of Our Lady Aparecida, because, according to him, the Holy Woman would help him. That is devotionism, without links to ethics and to life changes. That type of faith is not Christian, it is fetishist. But that is what is commonly practiced.
Liberating Christianity has always been with us, but only in the 1950s did it begin to acquire relevance. The saving graces are not the preaching, but the practices. A doctrine that has no relation to the practice of justice, according to Jesus, is but dead words, it lacks the enlivening spirit, and makes the human being for the Sabbath, rather than making the Sabbath for the people. If we do not rescue His vision, we play into the hands of the market of the media. This, using religion, seeks only to entertain, to make money; it never seeks to change the people and the world. But that is what is important.
- Leonardo Boff, Theologian
https://www.alainet.org/fr/node/112311
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