This article attempts to analyse the media discourse on the notion of gender in the most renowned Polish opinion journal Newsweek Polska weekly in the context of the letter that the Polish Episcopate of the Catholic Church issued for the Sunday of the Holy Family in 2013, which concerned gender and its ideology. The author this article presents a brief analysis of viewpoints discussed in Newsweek Polska: of the Polish Episcopate and of the journalists of Newsweek Polska. In the latter part of the article, the author analyses selected rhetorical means employed by the journalists. The last part is devoted to pastoral and educational guidance for religious and medial educators. The analysis ventured in this article gives grounds to the conclusion that the journalists of Newsweek Polska noticeably adhered to one side of the debate on gender – to the supporters of the ideology.
As part of the symposium entitled “School Religious Retreats and Contemporary Forms of Transmission of Faith,” held at KUL JP II on 21-22 January 2013, a panel debate was held, devoted to evangelization in the global world of the media. The panellists – Fr. Zbigniew Paweł Maciejewski, Fr. Artur Godnarski, Fr. Tadeusz Zasępa, Fr. Jarosław Woźniak, Fr. Witold Kawecki and Jacek Kurzępa – undertook two main threads that dominated over the rest of the issues mentioned and signalled by the panellists and the other participants of the panel: 1. The role of school retreats in the process of catechization and evangelization; the need of shaping the evangelizing and kerygmatic mentality of the preachers of the Word of God. 2. The medial culture and the world of the media as an explicit challenge for evangelization – represented in part by school retreats. This text is an abbreviated script of the debate in question.
P. Drzewiecki’s dissertation under analysis takes up the problem of media education in its relation to religious education at school. P. Drzewiecki discusses this problem in three parts of his text. The first part deals with the problem area of contemporary media education. It settles some terminological disputes, determines the objectives and tasks of the methodology of media education, exhibits the status quo of media educational programmes in selected member states of the European Union, presents the Church’s teaching on the media, reveals educational problems generated by the media, discusses the role of media education in the curricular philosophy of the Polish educational system, and – last but not least – it approaches the problem of employing media education in religious education at school. The second part of the volume offers an in-depth study of the tasks and objectives of the teacher of religion – also in his/her role of media educator. The third part of the study is an attempt to define directions for development of media education in the context of its employment in religious education at school. The dissertation subject to this review is targeted at the reader who shows a keen interest in media education as part of contemporary Polish educational system. It can also be of much use to students of academic courses that are in some way related to media education and to the task of communication of faith in contemporary reality (e.g. journalist studies, media education, education studies, theology).
The more and more dominating medial culture constitutes one of the direct contexts for the Church preaching. It generates a new listener to homilies and sermons– homo medialis. Among the many attributes of the mediatized addressee of the Word of God is his/her openness to interpersonal communication and readiness to not only acquire but also to create content. A contemporary listener to sermons expects visual communication and he/she assimilates the content also through its affective layer. Contemporary preachers face the challenge of finding new ways to communicate faith to this newly defined, contemporary human being. One of such ways is a type of Bibliodrama, proposed by Peter Pitzele, which is referred to in the literature of the subject as Bibliolog. This method can be an efficient form of preaching. In this paper, the author presents the theoretical outlines of the method and gives suggestions for it practical application in preaching.
Fr. Witold Kawecki’s monograph entitled To see faith. Image perceived as a communication of faith. A study from the perspective of the theology of culture and the theology of the media represents this current of contemporary ecclesiastic theological thought according to which faith is not only inspired through listening to the Word of God (fides ex auditu), but also through the visual experience (fides ex visu). The author points out a variety of images that constitute a fundamental phenomenon of contemporary culture and a means of ommunicating faith to contemporary human being through theological sciences. The monograph consists of four chapters: 1. Image as a fundamental cultural phenomenon, 2. To see the invisible. Communicating faith through image, 3. Television image in transmission of the content of faith. The case of the broadcasts of the Polish public television TVP. Editors of Catholic Programmes, 4. The new evangelization in the field of visual culture. W. Kawecki’s monograph is a source of many accurate analyses and conclusions that reach beyond his research in the field of culture and visual theology. The book can also be inspirational for deeper theological investigations and lectures on e.g. media education, theology of communication, theology of evangelization, catechetical education or anthropology of the media.
In autumn 2012, XIII General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops was held, devoted to the issue of new evangelization. The aim of the congregation was to conclude upon the thought and action undertaken so far by the Church in the field of new evangelization. The Synod points out three categories of addressees of the evangelization mission. One of the Synodal recommendations concerns seeking new forms and methods of proclaiming the Good News to contemporary man. The author of this article responds to this Synodal appeal and attempts to focus the reader’s attention on social media as tools of new evangelization. The text starts with the definition of terms used in the title – “new evangelization” and “social media.” Then, one context of new evangelization is picked out of the six pinpointed by the Synod and discussed: the medial context. The third part of the article attempts to determine the points of convergence of new evangelization and the tools of social media. Finally, the fourth part deals with practical application of the discussed ideas and expounds the criteria that need to be met in planning an effective strategy of using social media in the evangelization efforts of a parish. In the concluding remarks, the author highlights further research directions in the domain, such as ethical and legal codes for Christian leaders undertaking evangelization activities in social media, or research on the assimilation of the evangelization content by homo medialis.
As part of the symposium entitled “School Religious Retreats and Contemporary Forms of Transmission of Faith,” held at KUL JP II on 21-22 January 2013, a presentation was delivered by the youth from the Nicolas Copernicus Secondary School no. 9 in Lublin. X The presentation was entitled “Retreats the Way I would like them to be.” The author of this article reports on the open round-up of the debate that the youth had participated in their religion classroom before the symposium. The debate gathered nine groups of students, and was conducted with the use of metaplan. The structure of this method also allowed a clear definition of the particular stages in which the youth presented their response to the following questions: How do the youth truly assess the organization and conduct of school religious retreats? (What is the status quo?); What should the retreats look like? (Prognosis); What are the reasons for why the retreats are not what they are expected to be? In the round-up session, the participants got acquainted with the conclusions and postulates formulated by the youth as regards the steps to be taken to make the school religious retreats match the assumptions of the organizers and the expectations of the young participants.
This article presents school retreats as a major element of evangelization conducted by the Church. The retreats addressed at children and teenagers at school must be seen in a wider perspective of the extraordinary pastoral activity of the Church, often realized in various forms of retreats. The authors of the article discuss the genesis and the growth of the tradition of school retreats in Polish catechetical teaching. These twenty years of tradition brought enormous experience in realizing the Lent retreats for children and teenagers. Analysing the literature of the field, the authors were able to distinguish between a number of types and models of retreats, which constantly evolve.
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