The principles of social ethics in the decree Inter Mirifica 60 years after Vatican Council II

Abstract

Sixty years after its publication, the Second Vatican Council's decree on the media, Inter Mirifica, continues to be a guiding text in the field of media communication. The study analyzes the document based on the principles of Christian social ethics, which were organized hierarchically decades later, but which make it possible to configure an ethical approach, of a moral order, based on the Council. The guiding principles for the approach were: human person, common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, participation, and solidarity, with different words associated with the conceptual and theoretical line of the criteria of social ethics. Among the relevant results, the prominent vision of the audience in the communication process, over the broadcasting and the technique, and the global perspective that becomes the expression of world citizens with the use of the media in the search and dissemination of news, for the formation of public opinion, as well as the role of the producers and the civil authority in the social communication process, stand out.