Aid to the Church in Need: Caribbean: New media, new era

Caribbean: New media, new era

Posted by Press release on 15/6/2009, 10:45 am
Board Administrator

ACN News, Monday, 15th June 2009 – CARIBBEAN

New media, new era

By John Newton

The only Catholic media institute in the Caribbean is to introduce an enhanced programme enabling communications experts to use the very latest technology to spread the Good News.
Celebrating 15 years of spreading the Gospel, the Caribbean School for Catholic Communication (CSCC) will be launching a Pastoral Communications Diploma in January 2010.
The school and the diploma are the initiative of the Living Water Community – a Catholic lay community which runs TV and radio stations in Trinidad & Tobago – and the University of Dayton.
Asked by Pope Benedict XVI to encourage the promotion of the Good News through modern media, the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), is supporting the production of programmes by the Living Water community’s TV station with a grant of more than $24,000.
The community has also requested a grant of $5,000 from Aid to the Church in Need, to help students from across the Caribbean learn to effectively communicate the Gospel using modern technology on the diploma course.
Students studying at the school commit to attending an intensive week of seminars and lectures every year for a period of three years.
In the first year students will study audio and interpersonal communication, in the second film and visual media, with print and new digital technology being explored in their final year.
Course tutors keep abreast of emerging communication technology, and even the use of iPods and their application within ministry is explored.
The course stresses using appropriate methods from communicating the faith within the Caribbean.
According to course tutor Sr Angela Ann Zukowski the CSCC “is about nurturing [students’] call to discipleship for proclaiming the Good News.”
The course, which will be held in Port of Spain, Trinidad, emphasises the importance of spiritual and moral grounding as the underlying basis for the communication skills which they are taught.
Every study day begins with Lauds (Morning Prayer) and includes daily Mass.
The centre was set up in response to the 1992 Vatican document on communications Aetatis Novae.
According to Sr Zukowski of Dayton University: “We believe our students need to be embedded with a deep understanding and appreciation of the Church’s Communicative theology [as] expressed in Church documents.”
Since the centre was set up in 1995, 900 men and women from various Caribbean countries have studied there.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org