Could We Drop the Mic?

Technology changes things. Perhaps that seems obvious; one need think only of the advances made in areas such as medicine and agriculture in the last century. But when it comes to modern media like radio, television, and the internet, we can be guilty of a certain level of naiveté about the effects of technology on our lives, especially as people of faith. In the twentieth century, religious leaders often made statements encouraging attempts at putting the ancient content of the faith in contemporary forms for the sake of “modern man.” A major part of those calls concerned the felt imperative of making use of modern media like radio and television for the advance of the gospel. Now, in the wake of the relatively recent rise of the internet (I still remember using it for the very first time and doing email in DOS), the calls grow ever louder to bring the gospel to the internet, to engage digital culture.

But the medium assuredly affects the message, even if one doesn’t want to go as far as Marshall McLuhan and assert that the medium is the message. I was glad to see Kevin White’s piece on the effects of microphones on the Mass in the recent issue of First Things (“Drop the Mic,” December 2012), for microphones have been on my mind lately as I hear homilies at Masses several times a week and as I reflect on and teach about mission, liturgy, and preaching in various contexts for the Year of Faith. Indeed, better preaching has become a major concern for Catholics recently. In 2007 in Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict baldly stated, “given the importance of the Word of God, the quality of homilies needs to be improved.” Quoting these words three years later in Verbum Domini, Benedict also warned against “generic and abstract homilies which obscure the directness of God’s word . . . as well as useless digressions.” And in recent weeks the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a major document on preaching, “Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily.”

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