CSDC 560

In the promotion of an authentic culture, the laity will place great importance on mass media, examining above all the contents of the countless choices that people make. These choices, while varying from group to group and from individual to individual, all have a moral weight and should be evaluated in this light. In order to choose correctly, one must know the norms of the moral order and apply them faithfully.¹¹⁷² Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree Inter Mirifica, 4: AAS 56AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 56 (1964) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1964), 146. The Church offers a long tradition of wisdom, rooted in divine Revelation and human reflection,¹¹⁷³ Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, 36-48: AAS 91AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 91 (1999) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1999), 33-34. the theological orientation of which provides an important corrective function to both “the ‘atheistic' solution which deprives man of one of his basic dimensions, namely the spiritual one, and to permissive and consumerist solutions, which under various pretexts seek to convince man that he is free from every law and from God himself”¹¹⁷⁴ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 55: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 861.. Rather than judging the means of social communication, this tradition is placed at their service: “The Church's culture of wisdom can save the media culture of information from becoming a meaningless accumulation of facts”¹¹⁷⁵ John Paul II, Message for the 1999 World Day of Social Communications, 3: L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, 3 February 1999, pp. 1-2..