HERE is a brilliant essay by the Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui on mass media and Catholic liturgy. He writes:

I have heard many times the claim that the Catholic Church should have great success in her New Evangelization, because Catholicism is a visual religion and contemporary society is also visual. But to call Catholicism a visual religion is a meager assertion; it is no more visual than any of a thousand kinds of paganism. It would be more accurate simply to say that human beings are visual animals. The visuality of Catholicism is only remarkable because the religion’s most obvious alternatives in the West are rather inhuman.

And contemporary society, judging by (for one example of many) its reductive architecture, is not very visual at all. Its interest in visual things is almost entirely concentrated on its movie, television and computer screens; it is not any images, but specifically moving images, that interest contemporary man. Even the static pictures now ubiquitous – advertisements, posters, billboards – are meant to be looked at while walking or driving or rapidly flipping pages in a magazine; they may not move, but their frame of reference does, which gives the same subjective result. In contrast, a study taken in 1980 indicated that most visitors look at a painting hanging in an art museum for about ten seconds. The same study, taken in 1997, lowered the time to three seconds. Contemporary man does not love images; he loves motion.

I believe that much of the iconoclasm of recent decades can be blamed on the influence of television and (especially) cinema. Cinema is the most convincing false reality yet devised by technology. The intensity of the imagery, the sophistication of the editing and the ever-more impressive special effects fill the modern mind with an inventory of powerful, nearly unforgettable images. Regardless of his life experience, every man now knows what a cavalry charge looks like. He knows what a dinosaur in the flesh looks like. He knows what an exploding planet looks like, even though no man has ever seen a planet explode. These images become the references for his visual imagination; when he pictures death, judgment, heaven or hell, he pictures something resembling a cinematic special effect he has seen.

Traditional iconography and traditional liturgy are symbolic; to appreciate them, a man must recognize that his senses are unworthy of the greatest realities, and that hieratic and canonized types, arrangements and gestures are needed to suggest them. It is a logic entirely contrary to that of cinema, which attempts to show anything and everything “as it really looks”.

A lifetime of moviegoing creates in a man a sense of spectatorial entitlement. He who pays ten dollars to see a movie feels that he is owed certain production values and conventions of direction and editing. Any important dialogue should be recorded audibly, and dubbed or subtitled if spoken in a foreign language. Any important actions should be filmed from unobstructed angles, close enough so that details may be seen. If the moviegoer is unable to see, hear or understand something, he feels cheated, and criticizes the movie. When he attends Mass, these same expectations come with him – and the very idea of a silent Canon, of untranslated Latin, of veils and screens, of a priest “with his back to the people” becomes offensive. [cont.]

                                                                                                                                — Comments —

Alan writes:

Thanks for highlighting that essay.

It seems to me that the liturgy, being centered in God and man’s relationship with God, points inward and up. It then returns to and sanctifies the world. Today’s entertainment, being centered in the material, points outward and down and then returns to and secularizes us.

There is a movement natural to us as part of the body of Christ in his Church, but it is the exact opposite to the movement given to us by today’s entertainment.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Thank you for linking that piece. It is profound.

Sage adds:

One thing I’m surprised I didn’t see Mitsui mention is the connection between contemporary Church architecture and “spectatorial entitlement” (a nice phrase). The popular theater-in-the-round style creates a situation in which the congregation bends an all-seeing, all-encompassing gaze on the celebrant and the Eucharist itself, so that the sense of mystery and of “hiddenness” is obliterated. Besides this, contemporary liturgy is an unceasing cacophony of discordant hymns, responses, and psalms that careen one to the next, preventing the slightest possibility for reflection. The hatred of silence that is everywhere in modern society has inflicted itself on the liturgy as well, so that newcomers to the traditional rite will fidget and become agitated during its long periods of quietude.

I can remember my first Novus Ordo Mass after spending a year completely immersed in the traditional rite–it was an unflinching assault on the eyes and ears, constant movement accompanied by a succession of straight-forwardly ugly tunes and banal “responses” written in language so profane that all sense of the sacred was drained out of them. Can we not say, at last, that all of this endarkenment must be willful? To think, this parade of effrontery is the liturgy I grew up on. For that reason I can have some pity on people–they can hardly know any better than I did, before I was exposed to something more.

Mercedes Duggar writes:

Thank you for linking to that excellent piece by Daniel Mitsui.

Recently, your site has put into words all of the things that disturbed me when I returned to my childhood church after decades of absence.

When I returned, the small church that I attended as a child had been abandoned and turned into a meeting room. Services are now held in a large new church that features seating that spreads 3/4 of the way around the altar, which is now on a large platform. It reminded me very much of a stage when I first laid eyes on it.

The new physical setting was jarring, but the form of the service itself made me very sad. It is no longer the solemn and reverent worship service that I loved as a child. Now it seems more like an entertainment, complete with inappropriate applause. The congregation is also encouraged to ‘meet and greet’ those sitting near them, which does break all sense of the sacred, as one of your readers wrote a little while back.

But perhaps the most disturbing thing of all is the announcement segment at the end of the service. Among other things, the pastor hawks ‘scrip’ like an advertiser on an infomercial, which I find completely appalling.

I stayed for a few months, hoping that I could overlook all of these things, because I really wanted to get back into a formal worship service and have some fellowship with other believers. But I had to stop going, as the whole thing just seemed too irreverent, and the contrast with my childhood experience of church made me too sad. I feel closer to God when I read my Bible alone at home than I ever did at one of those services.

I’m grateful that you brought up the subject of applause in church, because your comments (and those of your readers) reassured me that I wasn’t being overly critical to find such things disturbing.

Laura writes:

I understand your frustration.

Unfortunately, reading the Bible at home, while very valuable, is missing that participation in the sacrifice. Mitsui expresses this point well.

Mercedes responds:

Thank you for your comments.

One of the other reasons I wanted to return to church, aside from the opportunity to worship God with fellow believers, was to participate in the Eucharist (or Lord’s Supper, as we call it). As a Lutheran, I don’t hold to the belief that the Eucharist is a sacrificial act on our part, but rather that it is God’s gift through which He imparts forgiveness and strength. I agree with my Catholic brethren that the Eucharist is one of the sacraments and that Christ’s true body and blood are present in, with, and under the external elements of bread and wine – but without the doctrine of transubstantiation. For Lutherans, the Real Presence is a divine mystery beyond human comprehension or explanation.

So much for doctrinal differences. We are still brothers and sisters in Christ through our belief in the First Things, and that’s what really matters.

While I do miss participating in the Lord’s Supper, I am still able to petition God for forgiveness and strength through prayer.

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