Often overlooked with the promulgation of its big sister Sacrosanctum Concilium, Inter Mirifica, was actually the first council document promulgated, along with SC, at the end of the council’s second session in December 1963. The DECREE ON THE MEDIA OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS has missed my attention. I don’t ever recall reading it in grad school or in any other circumstance. Its framers might not have envisioned a social communications medium like the internet. Perhaps though, its content can be applied well to those of us who engage in the peculiar form of hyperspace flattery known as a weblog. Let’s start in with the document’s introduction, shall we?
Among the wonderful technological discoveries which (people) of talent, especially in the present era, have made with God’s help, the Church welcomes and promotes with special interest those which have a most direct relation to (human) minds and which have uncovered new avenues of communicating most readily news, views and teachings of every sort. The most important of these inventions are those media which, such as the press, movies, radio, television and the like, can, of their very nature, reach and influence, not only individuals, but the very masses and the whole of human society, and thus can rightly be called the media of social communication.
