The best novels and films dramatize key problems of their generation. This is the case with To Kill a Mockingbird, the 1960 novel by Harper Lee. The themes of racial justice and strong, loving fathers were so powerful that it won a Pulitzer Prize. A couple of years later it was magnificently adapted for cinema. Gregory Peck played such a convincing Atticus that he won an Oscar.

Fifty years later, American still respond to films about racial justice, as the critical acclaim for last year’s film The Help attests. However, today it is the decline of fatherhood in the sexual revolution which touches us most deeply nowadays. Terrence Malick’s recent film The Tree of Life is an elegy for  a generation which has lost a deep sense of paternity.

Let’s look first at To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee wrote only one novel and then retired from public view for the rest of her life. But her one creation is priceless.

Some time in the 1930s, Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer and father of two young children, agrees to defend a young black man accused of raping a white woman in the racially divided town of Maycomb, Alabama. Townspeople try to convince Atticus to decline the case, but he is adamant.

Faces, People, Stories: the eighth international seminar being hosted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross' department of communications explores the unique challenge of communicating the human element of the Catholic Faith through modern mediums of communication which are in a constant and rapid state of growth and flux. The seminar concludes Wednesday, and is being held at the University, located just north of Piazza Navona in Rome.

Some of the diverse themes which were explored in today's sessions included a talk by Marcus Vetter on effectively bringing human stories to the screen, and a talk by Jack Valero of Catholic Voices on how to constructively communicate the faith to the secular media.

Award-winning documentarian Marcus Vetter, from Stuttgart, Germany, spoke about his films, including Das Herz von Jenin, which won the German Film Award for Best Documentary in 2010. He has since founded a non-profit organization called Cinema Jenin, which aims at rebuilding a theater which was closed in Jenin, West Bank, in 1987.

When the reputation of a student, teacher or school can be brought down by a YouTube posting, blog or anonymous email, educators need to be "more vigilant than ever."

That was the advice for hundreds of participants attending an April 12 workshop during the annual National Catholic Educational Association convention in Boston.

More than 10,000 educators attended the April 11-13 convention filled with workshops focusing on professional and spiritual development and the challenges faced by Catholic schools and religious education programs in today's modern world.

During the convention, several workshops focused on the use of technology and the problem of online bullying. Sister Mary Angela Shaughnessy, a Sister of Charity of Nazareth, Ky., and executive director of the Education Law Institute in Louisville, Ky., told Catholic school teachers and administrators that they cannot ignore what students are doing online.

She said she gets asked often by school leaders: "Can't we just say it's not our problem?" since Facebook postings, for example, are not school-related activities.

Her response is point-blank: "No."

For five days, I went cold turkey. My mobile was off, my laptop far away. And time slowed down

Here’s a business idea that could make someone millions of pounds: a travel agency that – wait for it – runs holidays exclusively to black holes. Not the sort that excite Stephen Hawking. No, I mean the kind of “black holes” here on planet earth where you’ll find no internet connection, no mobile reception and no television. A black hole is a technology-free paradise.

Strictly speaking, I can’t claim the glory for this idea. It’s stolen from Pico Iyer, the British-born author, who recently wrote in the New York Times: “The future of travel… lies in ‘black-hole resorts’, which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.”

This is because, Iyer says, “In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them… The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.”

"Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God...

One of my favorite scenes from the 1984 film Amadeus has the protagonist, Salieri, dragging notes from Mozart’s disintegrating brain as the great composer lays dying. Under the guise of friendship, Salieri pushes Mozart to describe the breathtaking arrangements of his final work, the Requiem Mass in D minor. Salieri hates him, but adores his music.

I always felt a certain kinship with that portrayal of Salieri: a man of some talent whose true skill was the recognition of real talent. He loves music, but knows deep down that he is not as great as Mozart. He wishes, desperately, that he could match his love of music with a response equal to its grandeur. But he cannot.