On Friday, in his annual message for the Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, Pope Francis asked families to put down their iPhones and re-engage in the art of conversation. Email and social media can help far-flung family members and friends keep in touch, he conceded, but "the great challenge facing us today is to learn once again how to talk to one another, not simply how to generate and consume information."
Under Francis, the Catholic Church is spending two years focusing on the family, which the pope defined Friday as a group of people of different ages and experiences "who did not choose one another yet are so important to one another." But that diversity is why teaching children to communicate is so important, he added. "A child who has learned in the family to listen to others, to speak respectfully, and to express his or her view without negating that of others, will be a force for dialogue and reconciliation in society." Or, at the very least, that child will know how to carry on a conversation.
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