| How did Catholic religious educationists 1950 - 1980 use modern communication theory to change traditional catechetics to contemporary religious education? How useful was the theory to this task?;Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965) brought modern communication theory to the official leaders of the Catholic Church. Incarnationalists at the Council supported this modernization; transcendentalists opposed it. Major Council documents, which are examples of dialogic communication, implicitly support modern communication theory; minor documents, which are examples of proclamation, ignore the theory. These texts instead teach and judge the media-world only from a strictly moral view.;In the post-Council era, religious educationists, such as Gabriel Moran, Pierre Babin, Maria Harris, and Thomas Groome advocated modern communication theory as a tool for updating Catholic catechetics. Moderate episcopal supporters acknowledged its importance also. Critics denied the validity of modern communication theory; they urged the retention of printed catechisms and of the values associated with the traditional literate culture of Catholicism.;Modern communication theory has provided the Church with a valuable conceptual tool for its task of modernization. The theory has enabled educationists to distinguish catechetics, which belongs to an oral Catholicism; theology, which belongs to a literate Catholicism; and religious education, which belongs to the contemporary Catholicism of the mass media. Adequate Church education now and in the future will be an integration of all three communication eras and the teaching methods associated with them.;Modern communication theory emerged 1932 - 1982 from Lewis Mumford, Norbert Wiener, Jacques Ellul, Harold Adams Innis, and Neil Postman. Catholics Marshall McLuhan and Walter J. Ong claimed the theory explained contemporary change in the Church and its education.;The immaturity of modern communication theory as an academic discipline, the internal conflicts within the Catholic Church about its contemporary educational task, and the premature advocacy of ending print communication in Catholic teaching all contributed to preventing a full acceptance of the theory in the Church. Also, its usefulness to contemporary religious education was limited since it concentrated on communication and had little to say about justice for the poor and disenfranchised, which is of great importance to today's Church. |
