VIDEO-CONFERENCE OF ARCHBISHOP FOLEY ON CHURCH AND INTERNET

VATICAN CITY, MAY 21, 2002 (VIS) - Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, participated yesterday from Rome in a video-conference about the "Church and Internet," with San Antonio Catholic University in Murcia, Spain.
Today, during a gathering organized in Venice, Italy, he spoke about "Ethics in Social Communications, Advertising and the Internet."

In the video-conference on the Church and new information technology, Archbishop Foley, who celebrated forty years in the priesthood on Sunday, emphasized that "the Church is not content to use the media and use it only for the communion and progress of the people; she also reflects upon it in the light of the Gospel and offers some criteria for its use."

Referring to the two documents published by his dicastery on February 22, "Ethics in Internet" and "The Church and Internet," the council president underlined that both "indicate the value of the electronic media in itself." In addition, "they recognize the novelty of the computer as a medium and from there the necessity for formation and information about its own characteristics."

The documents, he continued, "clearly identify the virtues and risks of the electronic media. They do not idealize them, nor do they condemn them in themselves." Furthermore, "the centrality of the real person and the real community is proclaimed in this 'virtual' medium. Direct contact among people will not be able to be replaced in the life of faith."

"The last aspect that I wish to emphasize is the social sensitivity of the documents which invite the Church to work actively in order to avoid the 'digital breach', that is, the chasm between the so-called 'info-poor' and 'info-rich'."

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