Was he wrong?

Against the persistent chant of modernism which insists that the Church must change or die, there was a warning sent forth in 1933 by then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (and later Pope Pius XII) against that very thing-- change.  We have lived with the change and the mantra of change for so long we no longer question its veracity or relevance in an age unhinged from its own past.  On so many borders, the problem we have is not tradition but the lack thereof, a nod toward the present that refuses to listen to the past much less be ordered by it.  Yet the Cardinal was closer to the truth than the merchants of transformation whose empty promises of making all things new has only made us forget anything old.

"...the danger that threatens the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent."  That is what was set forth in a world soon to be changed right down to its core by rise of Nazism and the brutality of World War II.  Sadly, I do not guess many were listening.  "I hear around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her historical past. Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or else she will dig her own grave."  How we love innovation!  How we love the idea of dismantling the past and making the present disdainful of it until we are adrift from our moorings both on how we look at Scripture and how we live out its vision of the new life of worship and service.

We do not honor the past because it must be given deference but because we have no promise of being able to see the future but, through the lens of the past, we are able to see the missteps and errors of those felt it was a burden upon their time.  If we had paid a bit more attention, we might be in better shape today.  Since we have not, we have witnessed how we have made the Bible into a dead book of irrelevant facts instead of the living voice of God.  In the same vein, we have decided that relevance and contentment are more important gauges of fidelity than continuity so we reinvent things that we only yesterday invented while insisting the past is as important as myth and not much more.  Finally, we have given value to the idea that the unpredictability of what happens on Sunday morning is a better way to grow the Church and catechize the faithful than liturgy, lectionary, or life together.  Have you ever wondered about the irony of churches which insistently broke ranks with and condemned as false worship the lectionary and liturgy of the past only to become barometers of what is in style and what people will pay for in worship?

The way we have always done things seems to be laughable until you find yourself completely adrift from the anchor of yesterday and completely unequipped to handle the present, much less the future.  Tradition is hardly the ball and chain some presume it to be.  The dead have no veto power over the living because they are dead -- only because they were faithful!  “Tradition,” Jaroslav Pelikan famously said, “is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should  
add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called is also 
for innovation and insight in place of tradition.” (The Vindication of Tradition, 65).  We certainly offer to the future the best of that which is the present, but it is a gift that is yet untested and therefore not yet worthy of the same esteem as tradition, tested and tried and sifted until it has been deemed faithful from age to age.

Rome is even now reaping its own fruits of its own break with its past following Vatican II.  Lutheranism has found that its own liturgical change has brought an unwelcome diversity in which worship is all over the page.  Others are having their own issues with worship and doctrine -- including the idea that the form can be preserved (creed) but its own words emptied of meaning (e. g. Virgin birth).  It is as if both doctrinally and liturgically some have insisted of the Church, we must kill her to maker her live.

The great evil. . .

In the Pope's first encyclical, he has dismantled the just war theory Christianity has defended for a very long time.  In his mind, it is an antiquated concept no longer in step with the complex and changing reality of the present.  I am sure that the rest of Christianity will be happy to know that Leo has rendered his opinion on this -- except that his opinion counts for a bit more than an opinion.  To some, at least.

I am not at all sure that Rome, with its own history of brutal persecution of those whom it calls heretics or witches or whatever, is in a great position to speak of how justice, dialogue, mutual, sacrifice, and the affirmation of the human dignity of every person.  I guess that is a small thing -- since Leo is about to end the whole idea of war with the power of love.  Perhaps he could apply this locally to the situation in the Middle East, for example.   

As one wag put it, war is often a symptom of evil rather than the evil itself. The problem is that we tend to treat war as the problem in the same way we assign the problem of violence to guns.  Of course they are related but not perhaps in the way some presume.  The evil that set man against man happened long before there were nations and armies.  The first death of Eden happened before a military industrial complex or drug cartels or adultery or a lot of things.  In case the pope forgot.  War is the result of what lives in the heart of man from the departure from Eden to the present.  It may not be politically correct to say that but every Christian theologian worth his salt surely knows the truth of it all.  Or should.  Even Leo has to admit that today, “the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life.”  That

He also addresses artificial intelligence.  It should not be served but serve us.  That makes me feel better.  Magnifica Humanitas is about the much larger transformation of human life in our time -- even bigger than war, it would seem.  It is about technology, work, education, truth, communication, political power, economic inequality, war, transhumanism, and the temptation to treat the human person as data, material, or an instrument.  On this we both agree:  AI needs to be governed and not simply regulated.  But it is probably a little late for that statement to make much of a difference.  The world is already in the camp of fear that if the good guys do not develop AI, the bad guys will so every one must take it over and make it work for their cause.  Amid Leo's warning is this odd statement:  "The artificial imitation of positive human communication—words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love—can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful.” Exactly how he does not say.

For Leo, safeguarding human dignity is the criterion for judging what is good and what is not -- even in the sphere of technological development and artificial intelligence.  He is rightly concerned about the risk of moral irresponsibility in the use of artificial intelligence as well he should.  But what remains to be seen is how a dismal record of human violence and war will give way to reason and the power of love when it comes to the implementation of artificial intelligence.  I guess he has more hope than I do.  He apologizes for slavery as if it were his or Christianity's to apologize for and then fails to admit that Silicon Valley is headed full speed while any calls to consider the impact of it all are not even a distraction for the powers that rule AI.  In the end it would be wise to admit that the improvement of the human condition is not exactly the reason for a Savior who suffered and died and rose again.  The redemption of humanity, not the same as its improvement, seems to be God's higher concern.  Leo should know that as well.  Christian thinkers should weigh in on the morality of this technology, to be sure, but our primary concern ought to remain the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen for sinners but not quite for semi-sentient silicon chips.

 

Dropping recognized faiths from the DOD. . .

The Department of Defense, for the first time in almost a decade, dramatically reduced its number of its recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180.  These reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since the March 27, 2017 memo, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, in a memorandum issued by the Under Secretary.

Secretary Hegseth said his department would be significantly streamlining the number of faith code affiliations for service members, including a separate but related change to replace rank insignia military chaplains wear on their work uniforms with religious insignia.  The faith and belief coding system, renamed to "religious affiliation codes,” was simply due to a system that had become too big, according to the secretary.

In what will certainly be claimed is a moved enhancing Christianity, the numbers of faith code affiliations had become inordinately long and complicated.  What it will mean going forward remains to be seen. I am sure we have not heard the last of this.

The new list now only includes: 

Agnostic (AN)
Baha'i faith (BH)
Buddhism (BU)
Christian - Assemblies of God (AG)
Christian - Baptist (BA)
Christian - Brethren (BR)
Christian - Catholic (CA)
Christian - Church of Christ (CC)
Christian - Church of God (CG)
Christian - Church of the Nazarene (CN)
Christian - Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
Christian - Evangelical (EV)
Christian - Jehovah's Witnesses (JW)
Christian - Lutheran (LU)
Christian - Methodist (ME)
Christian - Non Denominational (ND)
Christian - Orthodox (OX)
Christian - Other (CO)
Christian - Pentecostal (PE)
Christian - Presbyterian (PR)
Christian - Quaker (QU)
Christian - Reformed (RE)
Christian - Scientist (SC)
Christian - Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)
Hindu (HI)
Islam (Muslim) (IS)
Judaism (Jewish) (JU)
No Religion (NR)
Other Religions (OR)
Sikh (SI) 

 

From the ear to the eye. . .

In several previous posts I referenced Marshall McLuhan who famously coined the phrases the medium is the message and global village.  In his own estimations the two most profound revolutions for all of civilization were both means of communication: the printing press and the microphone (public address system).  According to McLuhan, these rather ordinary innovations (at least by today's standards) radically changed the world in which we live -- ways that only now, long after their introduction, have had consequences well beyond their own application.  Both of them made language more important than ever before and communication the premier industrial innovation.

With the printing press, language was no longer acoustical.  It was visual.  We hear so much about people being visual learners today but with the advent of this medium of communication.  Although it sounds rather complicated, the reality is revealed in a shift of senses from ear to eye.  As true as this is for everything else, it is equally true for the Church and, in particular, for the liturgy.  

Just like you cannot "see" the tone on a text message or email or printed page but must imagine it, the ear pays great attention to all the contours of the sound -- the inflection in the voice, the tone that is heard, and the volume.  All of these interpret what is heard along with the actual words.  Thanks to the invention of print technology and its evolution to the present day, we more narrowly focus on language itself than the fuller experience of hearing.  The microphone or public address system has amplified the power of words in a strange way.  Though the emphasis is on hearing, the print more often accompanies what is heard.  In the liturgy, for example, the worship folder or mass leaflet or printed readings accompany what is heard and, indeed, the importance of the ear is minimized by the printing of all of the words that are also heard.

This has had profound impact on the liturgy.  Is it no secret that, as McLuhan posited, “the demand for a vernacular liturgy arose spontaneously in the sixteenth century, but it isn’t so. In fact, that demand was linked to the invention of print, an invention that accentuated people’s need to push towards individualism and nationalism. Add to that the fact that printed texts gave rise to textual exegesis from the pulpit. And finally, the new accent on the visual favored placing the celebrant face to face with the congregation: we needed to see him and he wanted to be seen.”  No one but a fool would suggest that Luther and even Rome did not exploit the new technology of the printing press in their respective causes.  It is obvious that the printed pamphlets of the 16th century actors advanced their positions or that the sermon took on a greater power than ever before.  But the need for worship to be understood appealed to the visual influence of the printed word well beyond the acoustical.  Prior to the Reformation, people watched what they could and heard the sound track of the chant but in a language that was not their own.  After the Reformation, people heard the sound of the liturgy in their own language and the focus was more on the printed word than it had ever been before.  

Now we have a microphone on the altar as well in the pulpit.  It would seem that this contradicts the move to visual from oral and yet by making clearly heard and even explained in print, the shape of the liturgy changed from an encounter with the mystery of God's presence to an appeal to the mind proving rational propositions of truth designed to gain acceptance or even a decision.  It is no secret that this is true of the churches of the radical reformation but it could be said that it is also a true of Lutheranism, decidedly not a radical reformation church, or even Rome itself (especially after Vatican II).

This is part one of a look at this topic.  More to come.

The microphone problem. . .

A while ago I read what I had thought was an odd opinion piece by a guy arguing that microphones have
killed preaching.  Seemed odd at the time.  Was it?  According to the guy,  if a preacher spoke without a microphone, he couldn’t simply mutter pious platitudes or speak in dull monotone without emotion or conviction.  At least if he did, no one would be able to hear him.  So, most likely, he would not simply babble on with words he had not prepared saying things without intention or passion.  At least that is what this author said. The preacher would have to know what he wanted to say and how to say it -- without benefit of a microphone to amplify his speech.  Without a microphone, the preacher would have to speak loudly and clearly in order to be heard.  Without a microphone doing the bulk of the work of projection, the preacher might actually have to exert himself in the pulpit.  Was he on to something or was this complainer simply searching for reasons in the all the wrong places?

The carbon microphone was first invented in the 1870s.  The whole idea of a sound system (microphone + amplifier + loudspeaker) took longer -- sometime in the mid-1910s.  Except for a very few, these contraptions were rarely installed in churches until the 1930s.  Now you cannot go without them.  I was once in a very small parish with a very small building but they still had microphones.  People have to hear.  Except they did hear long before microphones became standard equipment in churches.  People heard preachers great and not so great.  They heard them preach and not simply speak into microphones.  Sure, they did have sounding boards and raised pulpits and pulpits located nearer the people to help them but the preaching was up to the preacher -- without benefit of sound amplification.

Have they helped preaching?  We can certainly hear better but the question of whether microphones have helped preaching is a very different question.  To tell you the truth, I had not thought about this at all.  I always hated microphones and still do -- especially those that hang on the ear and extend around the cheek toward the mouth.  But you cannot get away from them.  They are literally everywhere in churches.  We have them for a variety of reasons -- many of them also not ancient but modern.  We have to have microphones because we record these services and broadcast them and we need to have something to broadcast and record.  We have them because we presume that it is too much for the preacher to preach without them and so we have microphones to amplify the voice of the speaker to replace the need for him to learn how to preach, how to project his voice, and how to provide a room in which preaching does not need amplification.  But have they helped preaching and not just the hearing of the sermon?

The complainer I referenced was not the first to raise this question.  “Many people will lament the disappearance of the Latin Mass from the Catholic Church without realizing that it was a victim of the microphone on the altar.” [Marshall McLuhan 1911–1980).  He was Roman Catholic.  The guy who said the medium is the message.  He later said: “Latin wasn’t the victim of Vatican II; it was done in by introducing the microphone. A lot of people, the Church hierarchy included, have been lamenting the disappearance of Latin without understanding that it was the result of introducing a piece of technology that they accepted so enthusiastically.”   McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist and educator, was a critic of the potent influence of television, computers, and other electronic means of disseminating  information over the information being disseminated.  I don't know about his comments regarding the Latin Mass and the Vatican II Mass but I would apply his words to preaching.  PA systems have not exactly helped preaching even though they have helped mediocre preachers to be heard.  I am not opposed to the preacher being heard.  What I am worried about is the lack of preparation and conviction that seems to be a description of preaching problems today and, I would emphasize, the confusion of talking with preaching or imparting information with preaching.  Preaching is not the same as talking and not simply imparting information.  Preaching is the application of the Word to the situation of the hearer.  The words of the sermon surely do inform but they proclaim, convict, absolve, and direct the hearer.  I fear the the sound amplification systems across the churches have given preachers an opportunity to be lazy -- if not by what they say then by how they say it.  So much for my rant today.

[Marshall McLuhan, Liturgy and the Microphone. First published in: “The Critic” 1974, vol. 33, no. 1, October-December, pp. 12–17; reprinted in: Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The medium and the light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart 1999, pp. 107-116, quote from p. 112.]