Elements for the formation of Salesians in Communication DEPARTMENT FOR FORMATION DEPARTMENT FOR SOCIAL COMMUNICATION ROME 1 2 ELEMENTS FOR THE FORMATION OF SALESIANS IN COMMUNICATION TABLE OF CONTENTS Presentation ......................................................................................................5 GENERAL BIBLIO THEOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALS The God Who Saves by Communicating Himself, Needs Communications .........................................................................10 JUAN JOSÉ LAFUENTE BARTOLOMÉ, SDB Homo Communicans, in the Image of the Trinitarian God ..............................22 JOSÉ LUIS MONCAYO PLASCENCIA, SDB THE EXPERIENCE OF DON BOSCO AT VALDOCCO Don Bosco, Communicator of God's Word .....................................................31 MORAND WIRTH, SDB "Teatrino" A Critical Element of Don Bosco's Pedagogy ................................61 MICHELE NOVELLI, SDB Printing and Publishing in Don Bosco's Mind and Mission ..............................72 ALBERTO RUI, SDB Salesian Bulletin ...............................................................................................83 BRUNO FERRERO, SDB SOME GOOD PRACTICES: PUBLISHING, RADIO, MULTIMEDIA Società Editrice Internazionale at the service of the Italian school ..................94 SERGIO GIORDANI, SDB Elledici: A publisher Under the Banner of Don Bosco and Following his Dream ......................................................................102 VALERIO BOCCI, SDB CCS Publishing, Madrid .................................................................................112 JOSÉ ANTONIO SAN MARTIN, SDB ABYA Yala Publications ..................................................................................121 JUAN BOTTASSO, SDB The Salesian Charism in the Vatican ...............................................................125 SERGIO PELLINI, SDB 3 Salesian Educational Radio and TV Association, Bolivia Artesbol .................136 JUAN FRANCISCO APARICIO, SDB TEJ-Prasarini: 20 Years of Passionate Media Initiatives .................................145 JOAQUIM FERNANDES, SDB Sampari Pictures: Agent of Cultural and Social Tranformation ......................151 JOSEPH PULINTHANATH A Paradoxical Approach to New Media! .......................................................159 JACQUES REY, SDB Beams: Multimedia Services AFE Province (Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan) ................................................182 SEBASTIAN KOLADIYIL, SDB WALKING WITH THE YOUNG COMMUNICATING WITH THE YOUNG Social Communication in General Chapter 20 to 26 .....................................188 JOSEP LLUIS BURGUERRA, SDB Being Educated and Educating to "Right Thinking" in the "Digital World" ...........................................................................199 MAURO MANTOVANI, SDB Credible and Fruitful Salesians: An Ongoing Challenge ...............................224 FABIO PASQUALETTI, SDB Communication in Social Networks ...............................................................253 GILDASIO MENDES, SDB Some Guidelines for Formation to Communication ......................................260 DONATO LACEDONIO, SDB Social Networks and Salesian Assistance .......................................................274 JAVIER VALIENTE, SDB Marketing and Salesian Ministry: Importance, Possibilities and Risks ...........290 MARIANO DIOTTO, SDB Theology and Communication .......................................................................316 JULIAN FOX, SDB HORACIO LÓPEZ, SDB Organizing Social Communication in the Province Using the SSCS ..............323 FILIBERTO GONZÁLES, SDB 4 PRESENTATION The mission and rationale of the Church is evangelization. This means: to communicate the good news of the merciful and unconditional love of God the Father to his children, to people, a love manifested in the Word made flesh. The Salesian vocation places us, as consecrated persons of apostolic life, in the heart of the Church and puts us entirely at the service of that mission, sending us to be signs and bearers of God’s love to young people, especially the poorest. To be able to constantly grow and mature in the Church’s mission, the Salesian is to enter into a process of comprehensive, uninterrupted formation, that increasingly makes him more like Jesus the Good Shepherd, in a constant evolving culture and society. It is a formation that helps him become, like Don Bosco, a sign and bearer of the love of God for young people, in each context and age. In this sense the Salesian formation is already defined from the start, as an ongoing and undeniable process of configuration to Christ - the Good Shepherd and the Communicator of the Father. It is for this reason that the Salesian Social Communication System (SSCS), placing the person and the quality of human relations at the center, maintains as a priority that the Salesians, their collaborators and the youth be formed to be communicators of God’s love. We put our best efforts at this because we are convinced that the integral and ongoing formation of people is our present and our future as a Congregation and as a Communication Sector at the service of the mission. To realize this conviction, the Departments for Formation and Social Communication, jointly developed a program of basic formation to Social Communication in 2005. To continue and strengthen the process started, the Department and the World Advisory Council for Social Communication have endeavored to offer a range of topics to help formators and formees, teachers and students, to deepen the communicative dimension of the charism, mission and Salesian vocation among the young and the ordinary people. Some of the themes point to the ever faster cultural changes that affect all of society, but in a special way the children, the adolescents and the young, and those who want to help understand and live in environments and spaces hitherto unimagined. The themes seek to help us understand these changes and live in the new cultural, social and pastoral fields where we mature in our vocation and where we develop the mission along with the other Salesians and collaborators and together with the young, who are the natural inhabitants of these new times and spaces. It is impossible to live outside of these, if we wish to be faithful. Our vocation and mission are conditioned by them, just as they 5 have modified the way we interact with others and with God; they modify our concepts of space and time, our work habits and consumption, our ability to know and learn, our moments of fun and fellowship, our way of feeling and valuing. This anthropological and cultural movement that transforms the whole society including the people, the young and ourselves too, is irreversible although we are not aware of it. This is the context and the people who need from us more attention and understanding in view of drawing up a new formation and a new communication that responds to the mission to whom we are sent. The Salesian must acquire new skills to respond to the needs of the young. The frames of reference, indicated by the Formation (Ratio), the Youth Ministry, the SSCS and the Missions sectors, all help towards this purpose. All sectors are born from the same charism that begun in Valdocco, hence, these sectors are all at the service of the formation of the Salesians and the promotion of the same mission. It is undeniable that the new vocations to the consecrated life and the generations of teenagers and young people to whom we are sent, belong to another era and live in a different dimension to that of Don Bosco and ours whether we like it or not. We ourselves and our collaborators, live there, almost by inertia, understanding and using, with more or less success, these technologies and new languages, feeling close or distant to the new generations. A formation that ignores or does not sufficiently value something obvious, runs the risk of not having new vocations, of not inculturating the gospel into this new context and of not being understood by the recipients. Formation to communication goes far beyond regulating the use of technology and the internet, although in some moments control is necessary; it more than just offering random topics and workshops for critical understanding, although they also are important. We must promote ecological communication systems in communities, schools, parishes, oratories. It is our way to make alive the conviction that “people created in the image of the Triune God, are those that communicate and therefore they ought to communicate as persons created in the image of God.” The media and mediations, although culturally important, will continue to remain as media. Pope Francis says that communication starts from the mother’s womb and then develops into the “womb” of the family, in the group of friends and in the ecclesial community. The high quality of the media is not necessarily a guarantee of the quality of content, of processes or of languages. It is the formation of qualified people that will give quality to communication. 6 In his message for the XLIII World Day of Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI said that new technologies are new relations based on dialogue, respect and friendship. For both the secular and consecrated, a solid education to responsible freedom is indispensable. However, for the consecrated, besides this, it is fundamental to have a formation to an authentic life which includes the love for one’s vocation, for the mission, for the institution and love for the recipients to whom we are being