When that happens I reread the deeply insightful thoughts of St. John Paul II who was addressing members of the media when he said: “Your work can be a force for great good or great evil. You yourselves know the dangers, as well as the splendid opportunities open to you. Communication products can be works of great beauty, revealing what is noble and uplifting in humanity and promoting what is just and fair and true. On the other hand communications can appeal to and promote what is debased in people … All the media of popular culture which you represent can build or destroy, uplift or cast down.

“You have untold possibilities for good, ominous possibilities for destruction. It is the difference between death and life – the death or life of the spirit. And it is a matter of choice. The challenge of Moses to the people of Israel is applicable to all of us today: "’I set before you life and death.... Choose life.’"

I believe I could search the depths of the Internet and not find anything more meaningful about the power of how and what we communicate. 

On the other hand, I have learned that sometimes works of great good, revealing, or reminding us, what is noble and uplifting in humanity, sometimes require presenting challenging ideas; ideas strong enough to overturn long-held prejudices or misconceptions, reminiscent of Jesus’ teaching during his three years of ministry.

Sometimes when I forget that Jesus was not all flowers and sunsets, but was also the storm whose swirling waters changed the landscape, I remind myself of the words of Blessed Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who championed the poor and delivered a consistent, powerful message against the brutal violence being perpetrated from all sides on those who were most vulnerable: “A… gospel that does not unsettle, a word of God that does not get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that does not touch the real sin of society in which it is being proclaimed – what gospel is that?”

And then there is Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk whose understanding of the deeper meaning of communication could change the world if we could just embrace it: “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words. It is beyond speech. It is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity, but we discover an old unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be, is what we are.”

Mary Clifford Morrell is the author of “Things My Father Taught Me About Love,” and “Let Go and Live: Reclaiming your life by releasing your emotional clutter,” both available as ebooks on Amazon.com.