(12/29/09)  In early December 2009, The Vatican published a communiqué concerning the fourteenth meeting of the Special Assembly for America of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, which took place on November 17 and 18.  The four cardinals and six archbishops and bishops in attendance at the meeting “examined the ecclesial and social situation on the American continent, and the inculturation of the Good News there.”  The communiqué explains that “the process of inculturation depends to a large extent on a balanced education in the faith.  This task falls to families, schools and Catholic universities and, especially urgent today, to the media which, if used correctly and competently, are a vehicle of extraordinary pastoral effectiveness.”  Source: The Criterion Online Edition