Massa-communicatie en godsdienstige beïnvloeding

This study tends to describe the communication problems round Roman Catholic religious teaching and bears, above all, the character of a theoretical reflection, based on research material. In order to localize the problem it is dealt with within the scope of the literature on mass communica tion, and rather, in the vaster context of mass communication as a form of enculturation in our present-changingculture. After Stappers, mass communication is here defined as the public presentation of sources of information which, as a matter of principle, bar nobody from decoding. Enculturation ,is here understood, with Scharmann, as the explicit conveying in words of what is already latent in the existential or social situation, so as to invite, through its presenta.tion, the members of the community to shape their existence in a specific way. In affinity with Weber, religious instruction is here seen as a conveying in words of giving an ultimate meaning to human existence and as a humanly motivated set of actions to be described and understood by the socicologist.