Catholic Media: Fides Quarens Rem Publicam

I wrote a piece over on FrMatthewLC.com about how Catholic media needs to start with being Catholic, with faith:

Catholic media is part of the Church. It is often where those both inside and outside the Church get their information. This media tells what is happening in the Church and/or what the Catholic view about public events is. But so often, we have failed in that.

I think like the role of the theologian, the role of Catholic media has often been lost in recent times. In theology, we always return to Fides quaerens intellectum (Faith seeking understanding). This goes back to at least Augustine and whose formulation is usually attributed to St. Anselm. An important point of this definition is that faith is the starting point. Someone who does not believe can do comparative religion or even Biblical analysis, but they cannot do theology.

In Latin, Res Publica is a Latin phrase meaning approximately “public affair” so refers to what is newsworthy and the news itself. By extension, it refers to related fields like opinion and analysis. Thus, following Augustine’s / Anselm’s lead, I want to propose to all of us in Catholic media that we look at our job as Fides quarens rem publicam. We begin with faith in all the church teaches and we then look at the news to apply it. Catholic Media does not exist apart from Catholicism.

We need to avoid the extremes of both sides. We also need to look at ways to do theology and apply them to media.

Read the rest over there. I will be posting more and more over there and less here. So, bookmark it and subscribe over there.