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IMAGE: CNS photo/Lisa Johnston, St. Louis Review

By Carol Zimmermann

ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- In today's age of cyberbullying and online vitriol, be sure to take the high road and build people up rather than tear them down, Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Burlington, Vermont, told Catholic communicators attending the Catholic Media Conference.

"What can I say to make things better? What are the words that may impart grace to those who hear?" the bishop, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Communications, asked the group to consider June 2.

He said he knew the journalists in the room were "acutely aware of the significant decline in the tenor of public discourse" during the last few years, a fact that is readily apparent in publications' comment boxes and social media.

In such an environment, the bishop urged communicators to lift up good examples of humanity, charity and grace and if possible, "engage in some form of active ministry to others: feeding, housing, counseling, visiting or praying."

"We have to be even more careful to be reflective rather than reactive," he added saying there is already enough anger and coarseness out there. "Let's just not add to it."

Bishop Coyne also noted that the church is not immune from such negative discourse, saying: "one of the most destructive activities in the church today is the internecine fighting among people and groups who claim to be Catholic."

Echoing this message, he quoted Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, who delivered the keynote address May 11 at the Brooklyn Diocese's observance of World Communications Day and said: "The character assassination on the internet by those claiming to be Catholic and Christian has turned it into a graveyard of corpses strewn all around."

Father Rosica, CEO of Canada's Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation, also described Catholic online conversations as sometimes "more a culture of death than a culture of life," the bishop said.

Instead of responding in kind, Bishop Coyne urged the journalists and communication leaders to follow the example of St. Therese or Lisieux who saw every task as a chance to make the love of God more concrete.

With this in mind, he said every news story, video, blog post, tweet, email or response to an online comment can "become an opportunity to manifest God's love."

He also reminded the group that the world they are writing in is constantly changing and is shifting to one that is largely non-religious and secular.

"We are now missionaries," he said, which should influence writing, podcasts, videos and blog posts because these forms of communication might be bringing people the Gospel message for the first time.

"And here is something more to consider," he said. "One cannot give what one does not have." In order to help others know Jesus, he said, "We must first know him ourselves."

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(Vatican Radio) French President Francois Hollande has declared a state of emergency in areas worst affected by deadly flooding that also impacted other areas in Europe killing at least 10 people, most of them in Germany.

Holland announced the emergency Thursday as torrential rains across France forced thousands of people from their homes.  

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Stranded motorists were rescued by soldiers as flood waters rose, while in the capital Paris a metro line was shut and staff at the famed Louvre museum were told the venue was likely to close.

Amid the misery an 86-year old woman was found dead in her flooded house in a small town southwest of Paris late Wednesday, apparently the first casualty from the heavy rains that caused several rivers to burst their banks. Many others died across Europe especially in Germany.   

In the town of Triftern in Germany's flood-stricken Bavaria region houses have been partly submerged. Flooding blocked roads and left residents stranded.  
Some residents had to be rescued by boat or helicopter.  

Yet not everyone could be saved: German police said they've found the body of a fifth victim after floods swept part of Bavaria. The body of a man was found Thursday at a property in the town of Simbach am Inn. The human remains of three other victims were found in the same town on Wednesday evening. In nearby Julbach, the body of a woman was also discovered in a stream late Wednesday. And police said some roads remain closed in the area near the Austrian border.

BELGIUM HIT HARD

Belgium also endured a fourth day of heavy rain, with flooding reported in several areas across the country. After widespread flooding hit northern Antwerp and the west of Flanders early in the week, waters kept rising in eastern areas around Limburg and Liege. Several neighborhoods have had to be evacuated as cellars flooded and streets were submerged in overflowing creeks and rivers.

One major train line linking eastern Limburg to the capital had to be temporarily suspended early Thursday. The neighboring Netherlands, much of it already below sea level, also experienced days of flooding in several areas.    

And several other countries in Central and Eastern Europe also saw heavy rains, flooding roads and towns.  

Some experts claim the weather is linked to global climate change and that Europe should prepare for more troubles to come. 

Whatever the reason, forecasters do agree that more heavy downpours are expected right through the weekend in an area from France to Ukraine, with as much as 50 millimeters of rain falling in some parts in just a few hours. 
    

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(Vatican Radio) Pushing its agenda to step into situations where conflict threatens to break out and prevent disasters before they happen, a small NGO was present at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul last week telling world leaders to focus more on prevention.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, established in 2008 to promote acceptance and effective operational implementation of the norm of the "Responsibility to Protect" populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, was represented by its Executive Director, Dr Simon Adams, who also met with the Vatican Delegation present at the Summit.

He spoke to Linda Bordoni about the contribution the Global Centre has to make in preventing humanitarian disasters as well as about his meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the rest of the Vatican Delegation at the Istanbul Summit:

Listen: 

Pointing out that he had many values and ideals in common with the Holy See delegation present at the Summit, Dr Adams expressed his appreciation for the Vatican’s engagement in issues of human rights and social justice.

Regarding his meeting with Cardinal Parolin and the shared ideals pursued by the Global Centre and the Vatican, Adams spoke specifically of the attention for situations in the world where mass atrocities are happening.

The discussion, Adams says, focused on the role of the Church in situations of conflict and on the way religion is used, in a number of these circumstances “to enflame them and make them worse” while the “Church believes that religion can play a positive and progressive role in solving those conflicts and bringing people together, not pitting them together as enemies”. 

Adams said he complimented the Holy Father for his visit last November to the Central African Republic, a visit – he says - which is “a great example of the role of one of the greatest faith leaders of the world”.

He points out there was a lot of pressure on the Pope not to make the visit for security reasons, but Francis went ahead and visited the conflict-ridden nation and “I think this played a very positive role in the country”.

“We talked about the role the Vatican is playing more generally as being a very important voice standing up for civilians in a number of situations, regardless of their faith, and we talked specifically about the very vulnerable situation a number of Christians communities find themselves in the Middle East for example, and what can be done in those situations” he said.

Adams explained that the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect is a very small Human Rights Organization that works mainly with the Security Council in New York and with the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and that it was “set up by Kofi Annan and others who care about the issues of mass atrocity crimes and stopping them in the world today”.

“What worries me about the Istanbul summit, he says, is that a lot of the focus is very much on the bandages and blankets end of the occasion. What we do when people are on the move, when they are displaced, when disaster has struck them”.

Adams expresses his belief that it is very important to focus on prevention and he says this was mentioned by the Secretary General right at the start of the Summit when he pointed out that 80% of humanitarian funds go towards armed conflict situations.

“What if we could stop those conflicts before they broke out? Adams says.

What we need, he stresses, is to get better at the preventive work: “its upholding human rights, its preventing disasters before they happen. We can’t stop cyclones and tornados and earthquakes but we can stop the human disasters that human beings inflict on one another – war being the most obvious one”.

And speaking specifically about what the Global Centre brought to the table at the World Humanitarian Summit, Adams says that hopefully – thanks to the fact that it is a voice with the most powerful council in the world –the UN Security Council – it is hopefully able to help shape the way these situations are viewed, “particularly those situations where mass atrocities are being threatened or are happening”.

“We try and keep prevention at the heart of the discussion and try and keep ideas about human rights paramount in the minds of the world leaders so it doesn’t become a discussion about how do we buy more blankets and how do we distribute more bandages, but actually how do we stop these disasters from happening in the first place” he said.

And true to the core mission of the organization he heads, Adams says it is of vital importance to keep a focus on preventing conflict and on “how we look at the situations in the world today where civilians face violations of international humanitarian, international human rights law - where they face mass atrocity crimes which are prohibited under international law - and on how we can get better at protecting them”.  

For more information on the work of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect click here.  

 

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