J
Joe_Stong
Guest
zenit.org/english/
And this being their premise, they have a criteria for judging whether or not some method or attempt is useful or not.
If the criteria is a subjective “richness of the experience” then you’ll never be able to know it by measuring reactions. If the Church adopts this muddled idea then we’ll never know whether a given approach is a good or poor use of limited resources and time.
For example, the whole point of preaching the Gospel is to get people to make a change in their lives - to accept Jesus, to turn from sin, to open their hearts to grace, to “put on the New Man”… and not merely to have a nice chat ala Paul in Athens where people listen, are amused and then say “we’ll hear from you again sometime”.
Similarly, the point of a symphony is to evoke emotions in the audience; it’s something you can measure by their reactions… Hollywood knows this - thus the attention and expense given to soundtracks in movies… the goal of the musician is not solipistic “richness of the experience” or “music for musics’ sake” but to use the universal language of sound to lift hearts or create moods that dispose an audience to be receptive to the scene and dialogue of the movie.
Why go to a school at all, spend time, money, and effort learning modern techniques of communication if at the end of the day you will not know which method or which style does what in a given audience?
There just so happens to be a little thing called “human nature”, which just so happens to be taught by the Catholic Church as true, and just so happens to have a boat load of phenomenological proofs that show beyond all doubt that people respond to certain stimuli in largely the same way unless they are mentally deficient or ill.
For example, there are chords one can play that almost universally create a sense of dread or anticipation - seen in the movie Jaws as well as other horror flicks. Other chords dispell dread and create a vastly different mood in the vast majority of audiences REGARDLESS of language, culture, and age differences.
People almost universally appreciate harmony and instruments that are in tune - if a soloist flubs the Kyrie, it distracts most congregations… if she nails the Ave Maria, it contributes to prayer… the “richness of the experience” is found in the COMMUNICATION of beauty, truth, goodness - the universals, which are not subjective or arbitrary.
In literature, many authors are wonderful wordsmiths but just because they write well doesn’t mean they’re right! Nitzche was a clever man, his phrases and coined expressions memorable. But the content he communicated - albeit in a very enjoyable “rich” way, was and is wrong.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” song is a great piece of music, the lyrics ‘fit’ with the melody. But the lyrics are also wrongheaded. You won’t ever find ‘peace and love’ without God and religion because men don’t need any belief to wage war over. All they need is ambition and lust - and those are entirely self-contained passions. So while the “richness of the experience” of Lennon’s “Imagine” is there, what it communicates is complete bunk.
The criteria needed therefore for Church communication must be a) the truth communicated and b) the effectiveness of the methods and means used, not some arbitrary, relativistic gobbledegook about ‘richness of experience’.
The full story is worth careful reading - but my opinion is that it’s complete BS dressed up as sophistication…after all, Marketting 101, the secular world’s use of the means of communication is premised on the ability to actually get across an idea, need, or value to the viewer or ‘consummer’.
And this being their premise, they have a criteria for judging whether or not some method or attempt is useful or not.
If the criteria is a subjective “richness of the experience” then you’ll never be able to know it by measuring reactions. If the Church adopts this muddled idea then we’ll never know whether a given approach is a good or poor use of limited resources and time.
For example, the whole point of preaching the Gospel is to get people to make a change in their lives - to accept Jesus, to turn from sin, to open their hearts to grace, to “put on the New Man”… and not merely to have a nice chat ala Paul in Athens where people listen, are amused and then say “we’ll hear from you again sometime”.
Similarly, the point of a symphony is to evoke emotions in the audience; it’s something you can measure by their reactions… Hollywood knows this - thus the attention and expense given to soundtracks in movies… the goal of the musician is not solipistic “richness of the experience” or “music for musics’ sake” but to use the universal language of sound to lift hearts or create moods that dispose an audience to be receptive to the scene and dialogue of the movie.
Why go to a school at all, spend time, money, and effort learning modern techniques of communication if at the end of the day you will not know which method or which style does what in a given audience?
There just so happens to be a little thing called “human nature”, which just so happens to be taught by the Catholic Church as true, and just so happens to have a boat load of phenomenological proofs that show beyond all doubt that people respond to certain stimuli in largely the same way unless they are mentally deficient or ill.
For example, there are chords one can play that almost universally create a sense of dread or anticipation - seen in the movie Jaws as well as other horror flicks. Other chords dispell dread and create a vastly different mood in the vast majority of audiences REGARDLESS of language, culture, and age differences.
People almost universally appreciate harmony and instruments that are in tune - if a soloist flubs the Kyrie, it distracts most congregations… if she nails the Ave Maria, it contributes to prayer… the “richness of the experience” is found in the COMMUNICATION of beauty, truth, goodness - the universals, which are not subjective or arbitrary.
In literature, many authors are wonderful wordsmiths but just because they write well doesn’t mean they’re right! Nitzche was a clever man, his phrases and coined expressions memorable. But the content he communicated - albeit in a very enjoyable “rich” way, was and is wrong.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” song is a great piece of music, the lyrics ‘fit’ with the melody. But the lyrics are also wrongheaded. You won’t ever find ‘peace and love’ without God and religion because men don’t need any belief to wage war over. All they need is ambition and lust - and those are entirely self-contained passions. So while the “richness of the experience” of Lennon’s “Imagine” is there, what it communicates is complete bunk.
The criteria needed therefore for Church communication must be a) the truth communicated and b) the effectiveness of the methods and means used, not some arbitrary, relativistic gobbledegook about ‘richness of experience’.
