Cold and Hot Media: The Mass as a Medium

“Let’s Throw the Microphone Out of the Church!”

Paweł Jarnicki

Part 3

(See Part 1 | Part 2)

The difficulties in understanding McLuhan’s views on microphones may also stem from the fact that he assumes that the reader is familiar with his concepts presented in other texts. It is obvious that a microphone is a transmitter, that it is a medium. There is the one who speaks, there is the one who listens, and there is the message transmitted through the microphone.

But a casual reader may be surprised that McLuhan seems to suggest that the use of what he considers a “cold” microphone could “warm up” the Latin Mass (which he considers “cold”). What does it mean for media to be “cold” or “hot”?

In the simplest terms, a hot medium delivers information in “high definition”, in a form that minimizes the cognitive activity of the recipient. Take, for example, a contemporary entertainment film with surround sound and special effects. The recipient does not have to conjecture the details, does not have to imagine how something explodes, what someone is wearing, what a given interior looks like, what the background of a scene is, etc. (to stick to the realm of appearances). The recipient simply sees it, and is cognitively passive, because everything is “served on a plate.”

Cold media, on the other hand, provide information in “low definition”, in a form that requires cognitive activity on the part of the recipient; in order to assimilate the message, the recipient must “warm it up”. Someone who reads a novel has to conjecture a lot, has to imagine what the scene described in words looks like, has to complete a lot of details, construe a lot, and can do it in many ways to a certain extent. [1] So, although on the surface, just like a movie viewer, they do nothing (they do not move or speak), we understand that a book reader is more active than a viewer who simply surrenders to impressions.

Hot media make the audience cognitively passive, while cold media force cognitive activity, which is why, among other things, “the medium is the message,” because in the long run it changes the level of knowledge of a larger group of recipients. Continuing with our book-film example, let us note that the knowledge of students who have watched the film adaptation of a school reading is different from the knowledge of students who have carefully read the book.

In this sense, the type of medium has a greater impact on culture and society than the content of the message being conveyed. Regardless of whether it is Pan Tadeusz [the Polish national epic] or another story, more is “gained” from the reception of a cold medium. This is because a cold medium requires cognitive activity on the part of the recipient, an act that de facto creates a community.

After all, it is not state-issued ID cards or church baptism certificates that make us a community, but rather socialization into similar ways of “warming up” – completing, conjecturing, construing. If this seems too abstract, try to recall a social gathering. Jokes are often told at such gatherings, especially at the beginning, to build a shared mood. Jokes often involve some kind of understatement or mistake; the audience has to make a mental effort to “get it,” and shared laughter is proof that despite the ambiguity of the message, we “get it,” meaning we understand each other better and think alike. A momentary community is created. [2]

Another device that requires completion is... the parable. We usually think that their ambiguity served to ensure that only the chosen few understood them, so as not to cast pearls before swine, and we do not notice the other – or perhaps the first – side of the coin, that the ambiguity of certain statements, by forcing similar cognitive activity, builds a community.

Pius XII offering Mass at an altar with four microphones (only three visible). Photo courtesy of Nico Fassino

McLuhan writes about the microphone, but he also seems to think of the Mass as a medium, although he does not make this distinction explicitly. [3] If the Mass is a medium, then the speaker is the Church, the listener is the people of God, and what is communicated through the Mass is the deposit of Faith. Viewing the Mass as a medium helps us understand why the “cold” microphone “warmed up” the Holy Mass, because in the new Mass – with sound amplification, in vernacular, with the priest facing the people – everything is to be “high definition”: visible, audible, and understandable.

The traditional Mass was “low definition” – cold (“demanding”), like reading a book: the faithful had to complete for themselves what the priest was doing. They had dogmas as their guideposts. The new Mass is hot (“easy”), like watching a movie. However, even though the priest says everything loudly and in understandable language, it does not help at all to feel that he is addressing God and re-presenting the Sacrifice of Christ in an unbloody manner on behalf of the faithful. Continuing our analogy, the “plot” is supposedly the same (the deposit of Faith has not changed), but the level of “knowledge” of the faithful is radically different.

It is possible that illiterate people of past eras (raised on the old Mass) had a deeper faith than those among contemporary intellectuals (raised on the new Mass) who have remained in the Church and so “actively” participate in the new Masses. They read the readings, carry the gifts, and above all, they do not pray the rosary during Mass (a very common example!). “Traditionalists” often mock this “activism.” However, no one can explain what is wrong with it.

The paradox is that although the theoretical goal of the Mass reform was to increase the participation of the faithful (participatio actuosa), in practice the effects are the opposite of what was intended. The changes introduced (which were intended to increase clarity and comprehensibility, i.e., to “warm up” the Mass) have only increased external activity and suppressed internal activity, which is truly community-building. Contemporary Catholic communities that shake hands after meetings and say, “It’s good to have you here,” may in fact be superficial communities. Only internal, cognitive activity creates a deeper community, creates the Church.

If during the new Mass, where everything is seemingly clear, obvious, and understandable, the faithful do not have to complete anything themselves or conjecture anything (which is very difficult anyway, because they are flooded with many more stimuli), then they absorb the content of the reading to a much lesser extent, and their membership in the Community becomes increasingly formal. They cease to feel unity with other members of the Mystical Body. This is the first, painful consequence of introducing the microphone into the Church, concerning the Community. The second concerns the Word.

The church of St Matthäus in Düsseldorf, Germany. Notice the obligatory centrality of the mic, with the processional cross and candles to the side. The overhead crucifix only partly cancels out the effect.

Omnimediatization

After my conversion, I saw and heard many Masses. Very different ones. I quickly turned to traditional Masses, although I never rejected the new ones. I read about the reform, about non-believers and Protestants who once converted, enchanted by the beauty of the Latin Mass. And then they experienced the reform and the pentecostalization of Catholicism. And I began to wonder if today’s Mass could “captivate” someone enough to convert them. If I bring a non-believing friend to Mass in my parish, is there anything here that might delight them? It’s a difficult question...

The vast majority of new Masses are chaotic, and at times even noisy and cacophonous. The new Mass is not appealing at all. I have often wondered whether it is inertia or a miracle that people still come here. In today’s churches, too many things are shoddy, kitschy, and inconsistent. Plastic chasubles and hubbub stand in stark contrast to the thoughtful design and ornamentation of old churches.

Among the more “difficult” experiences, I include the contemporary new Masses known as “children’s,” “for children,” or “family” Masses. Much could be written about them, but I will focus here on one way in which the microphone is used during them. The moment of the homily arrives. The priest does not approach the pulpit or climb into the ambo, but takes a portable microphone, leaves the presbytery and goes into the nave (in front of the balustrade, which is not there) and calls the children to him. They crowd around him. Instead of a sermon, he gives a catechesis and asks the children questions. The children answer. The priest is happy, the parents are happy, because the children are “actively participating” and the content is good and pious. What’s wrong with that?

We already know that the content is actually secondary, because the primary message is the medium. And no one at this Mass is surprised that the priest speaks through a microphone to the children who are within arm’s reach. No one is surprised that they answer him through the same microphone, even though they are standing right next to him. And once during such a Mass, the priest, who after his sermon-catechesis had already asked all the children about their Mass intentions, turned – of course through that portable microphone, of course – to the adults remaining in the pews with the question: “Perhaps the floor has some intentions?”

This servant of the Lord’s constantly devasted vineyard, whose piety and good faith I am firmly convinced of, simply picked up the message from the microphone. He called the faithful who participate in the Sacrifice “the floor.” But it’s really not his fault. He was about 40 years old, so he was raised on Mass with a microphone.

It was only while writing this article that I realized how mediatized our world is, how it is mediated by the means of communication. [4] I tried to find contemporary social events that are not mediatized, and the only things that came to mind were school classes and some funerals of “insignificant people.” It was a shocking discovery for me that there are basically no more social events that are not mediatized. We have to see and hear everything.

Nothing should be left unbroadcast.

And yet, a hundred years ago in Fatima, over 70,000 people came, even though they couldn’t see. They came because they heard that something was occurring. But there was no sound system or zoom on site. They had no guarantee that they would see or hear anything, even if they were right in the center of events. The photos from Fatima in 1917 are, of course, a means of communication, but they are only documents; the events in Fatima themselves were not mediatized for their participants. That is, the means of communication were there, but they were... children, flesh-and-blood children.

Our world has changed significantly over the past hundred years. This would not have been possible without microphones and sound systems. The first such systems were developed around 1915, and two years later, during Christmas 1917 in San Francisco, the Magnavox sound system was publicly presented. In the same year, Our Lady of the Rosary appeared in Fatima. The carbon microphone was invented forty years earlier, in 1876. In 1877, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception appeared in Gietrzwałd. And seven years later, in 1884, Pope Leo XIII had a truly Job-like vision, or rather “hearing,” because the revelation was (indeed!) acoustic in nature. Jesus spoke with Satan, who, wanting to attempt to destroy the Church (the deposit of Faith!), demanded [5] time (from 75 to 100 years) and greater power over those who would devote themselves to his service. Jesus was to allow this, and Satan chose the “coming” century (usually interpreted, but on what basis is unknown, as the 20th century).

Terrified by this revelation, Leo XIII decided that all priests would recite a set of prayers after low Masses (during the week), kneeling at the foot of the altar (the old one, i.e., together with the people, versus Deum), which were later called “the Leonine Prayers.” These prayers are no longer recited today except at the old Mass (though sometimes their echo can still be heard when, after a parish Mass, the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel is recited). The obligation to recite the Leonine Prayers as an “add-on” was abolished by the Consilium led by Bugnini in 1964.

I must admit that when I heard that the new pope had chosen the name Leo, I felt hopeful that this was not a random choice. Although the content of Leo XIII’s revelations is known to many believers, and many believers are familiar with other predictions of a crisis in the Church, priests today do not explain this to the faithful in a convincing manner. For believers, can such temporal coincidences as those mentioned above be purely accidental? Is the intensification of Marian apparitions accidental? Has Jesus really allowed Satan to destroy the Church? When? When will it end? Has it already begun? What would it consist of? Is it a coincidence that God’s people are lost in conjectures and conspiracy theories when the voice of the shepherds has become a processed voice?

Although succession in the Church must still be accomplished through the direct laying on of hands, the Word that priests proclaim today is transmitted. This may seem insignificant to us, but the sound that comes from the speakers is, contrary to appearances, heavily processed, so that the sound does not overlap with the echo of what was said a moment ago. [6] In addition, the priest’s voice today reaches the faithful from all directions (the nearest speaker may even be behind them); it is a “dis-placed” voice. In the past, it had one natural source in the priest’s body. This causes confusion, which is not visible in adults today because they are already accustomed to it, but it can be seen in some of the youngest children (who enter the space of a mass event with a transmitted human voice, not only in church). The microphone created, as McLuhan put it, a “sound bubble.”

This led to the actual elimination of the age-old division of the Temple into three zones (tabernacle – Holy of Holies; presbytery – Holy Place; nave – vestibule), which, in short, does not help the faithful understand that the most important part of the Mass takes place there, in the presbytery, in a slightly different space behind the balustrades. In fact, today the balustrade is often no longer there, because the sound bubble has made the space of churches a homogeneous space of encounter around the Table-Altar.

The voice also sounds at a similar volume all the time (in the old Mass, the priest sometimes spoke loudly, sometimes moderately, sometimes in a whisper). The microphone not only dis-placed the Word proclaimed during Mass, but also, as McLuhan puts it, discarnated it. It is precisely this second, painful consequence of the introduction of the microphone into the Church that concerns the Word.

TLM, Rome (Italy), Church of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims. A medium-sized church during a traditional Mass does not require a sound system; the cross is the axis of the celebration.

TLM, Vilnius (Lithuania), Church of St. Anne. A church without a single microphone, neither at the altar nor at the ambo.

Discarnation of the Word

The lord of death is unable to be born of a virgin like God. The lord of death cannot have his own body. At most, he can enter the bodies of those born naturally. The Church has developed methods to combat possession. But it has not noticed the new trick of the lord of death – a trick with a much greater destructive power than possession: the trick of the discarnation of the Word, which distorts the transmission of the deposit of Faith. That is why I say: Let’s throw the microphone out of the Church!

“Even then Cassandra, who, by the god’s decree, is never / to be believed by Trojans, reveals our future fate with her lips.”

I saw that on most of the new altars, the microphone had taken the place of the cross. The cross stood to the side or behind and became an ornament. Priests today move around the microphone.

But whatever happens, as the Church says, the Lord will come. He was born at night, he comes in silence, he will rise from the heights and illuminate the darkness.

Christmas Day, 2025

NOTES

^[1] Let us note in the margin that after a film with special effects, it is more difficult to have a meaningful conversation with other viewers (often these conversations do not go beyond “did you see that” or “that was great”), it is more difficult to talk about such films because we saw the same thing and everything was obvious. When, on the other hand, someone has read the same novel (I don’t mean a crime novel) at the same time, it is often easier to talk about it because we understand many issues and imagine them slightly differently.

^[2] Of course, it happens that a narcissistic character dominates a party that consists only of jokes, or that jokes quickly reveal that we will not understand each other, that there will be no community, because completing them would mean repeating stereotypes that offend us. Metaphors are a community-building device similar to jokes, although not as easy to notice. Due to their ambiguity, they also force the listener to make cognitive effort and create a community. In the presence of those who use metaphors that do not offend us, but are close to us, ones that we understand almost instinctively, we feel better.

^[3] This is how, by the way, Ashil D. Manohar develops McLuhan’s idea in his thesis entitled The Mass is the Medium: Marshall McLuhan and Roman Catholic Liturgical Change (2021). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/8817. Such an approach may seem strange at first, but it is not foreign to official church documents. Cf. e.g. p. 11 of the pastoral instruction on social communications Communio et progressio: “Communication is more than the expression of ideas and the indication of emotion. At its most profound level it is the giving of self in love. Christ’s communication was, in fact, spirit and life (Jn 6:53). In the institution of the Holy Eucharist, Christ gave us the most perfect and most intimate form of communion between God and man possible in this life, and, out of this, the deepest possible unity between men.”

^[4] I also realized that this world is coming to an end because of “Artificial Intelligence,” because it is beginning to eat its own tail. Trust in the media began to crumble earlier (because we began to realize that “the press lies” and “television lies” also today, and not just “during communism” behind the Iron Curtain), but AI will complete this process — once we realize that with its help, our and foreign intelligence services, criminals, and enlightened minds are able to generate hyper-realistic fake news, we will completely lose trust in our “extended senses.” In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before zones free from all kinds of technology begin to emerge. Churches could be at the forefront of this!

^[5] I do not have access to the relevant sources, but in reports that can be found on the Internet, Satan’s voice is described as “guttural” or “harsh” , and Artificial Intelligence confirms that early microphones caused such sound distortion and that the human voice transmitted through them was often described as “harsh,” “distorted,” or “raspy.”

^[6] This is necessary due to the “outdated” architecture of churches, which was designed for natural voices. Traditional methods of amplifying sound, apart from architecture, were based on the construction of the ambo — raised above the people. A canopy was installed above the pulpit, whose function was not only decorative — the canopy reflected the sound and directed it downwards towards the people, and in addition, a soundboard was often placed in it. However, all these measures amplified the priest’s live and unprocessed voice.

The Microphone as a Social Actor

“Let’s Throw the Microphone Out of the Church!”

Paweł Jarnicki

Part 2

(See Part 1 | Part 3)

McLuhan coined two well-known phrases, the first being “global village” and the second “medium is the message.” While it is easy to understand that, due to the rapid circulation of information, we all live in a “global village” today, it is more difficult to comprehend that the medium itself is also a message. McLuhan meant that the medium itself has a strong influence on the audience. It is not that, for example, the type of telephone affects the content of everyday conversations, because intuitively this influence seems minimal, but that the telephone (especially in the form of a “smartphone”) has changed the nature of interpersonal relationships in the long term and even influences our personality and perception. The impact of landline telephones was not as easily noticeable as the impact of instant messaging on the peer relationships and state of mind of young people is today, as seen from the perspective of people in their forties and fifties.

Some inventions profoundly change life in the world, in ways we cannot predict at the time of their implementation. This was obvious to McLuhan in the 1970s. A decade later, Bruno Latour popularized this idea by developing the “actor-network theory.” In this theory, society is not just people, but a network of “actors” that influence it, including material objects and... abstract concepts.

When society adopts a new technology, it does not usually discuss the possible long-term consequences of the actions of such an inhuman actor. We have imposed a series of tests on the production of new drugs, but we did not discuss the possible effects of social media before its introduction. Only after some time do we begin to realize the consequences of including them in our network: serious analyses appear that show that these new actors have a destructive effect on democratic systems, and artists also begin to explore the topic of their negative impact on young people (let us mention the recent success of the difficult mini-series Adolescence).

In the actor-network theory, the concept of bacteria is also such a social actor. It is not that bacteria did not exist before this concept. The point is that the organization of the human world did not take this concept into account. And when this concept became an actor in our societies, our behaviors and habits in terms of hygiene changed fundamentally.

The Church had always been very cautious about introducing technical innovations, especially in churches, so the influence of such worldly, soulless actors on the liturgy was relatively small. And sometimes the Church was able to harness technical innovations to achieve its own goals. When it came to “media” inventions, this was certainly the case with the invention of printing.

NOM, Vilnius (Lithuania), Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy. At the new Mass, everyone must hear and see everything.

The Church’s reactions to the inventions of printing and the microphone

For McLuhan, as a media theorist, two inventions were revolutionary for our civilization: the printing press and the microphone. He realized that these (from today’s perspective) simple creations radically changed the world we live in, and changed it in ways that the people who witnessed the introduction of these inventions could not have predicted. These two inventions have twice reinforced the position of vernacular languages, i.e., the languages we speak every day.

The first reinforcement was visual, because printing completed the process initiated by the invention of the phonetic alphabet and caused us to move from an oral-acoustic culture to a visual-linear culture. It sounds complicated, but the point is that sight became the dominant sense in our perception of the world and in our culture. Earlier culture was more “auditory,” centered around hearing, and in fact multisensory with a slight advantage for hearing. According to McLuhan, printing has led us to a visual culture, one in which sight clearly dominates. What is the difference?

Hearing does not “see” contours [1] and works more synthetically. It integrates our experience of the world into a whole; we also hear from many sides at once. Sight sees contours, analyzes and divides our experience of the world into pieces – it has made our perception more sequential and abstract; we also focus our sight in one direction. Thus, our perception of the world and our culture have changed, which, thanks to printing – thanks to the shift in emphasis to visuality – has gained unprecedented momentum. But at the same time, all contours have become more important: divisions, segmentations, specializations, and in the longer term... nationalisms.

These cultural changes also had an impact on liturgy. As McLuhan writes, it might seem that “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.” [2] According to McLuhan, the fact that greater emphasis was placed on preaching in the 16th century and that Protestant priests turned to face the people was a consequence of the invention of printing. According to him, “Medieval liturgy was mostly acoustic,” and in Reformed churches it became more visual.

In response to the invention of printing, the Council of Trent developed the Decretum de edendis sanctis litteris et facultate utendi iis, and Pius V issued the apostolic constitution Quo primum tempore, thus defining the rules for the use of the new invention and regulating its use during ceremonies. Thanks to this, Catholics living in the world after the invention of printing, in the (as McLuhan describes it) “Gutenberg Galaxy,” that is, those who already had the need to see everything, accepted that there are certain things that cannot be seen in the sacred liturgy of the Church. This is important because we use our sight to construct the world as a set of static, permanent objects that have contours (for the ear, everything is more “fluid”), so making everything visible, to put it mildly, did not facilitate belief in the transubstantiation and Real Presence of God in the sacrament of the Altar. When you see the contours, it is more difficult to believe that the host is transformed into the Body of Christ. The effects of shifting the emphasis to visuality are clearly visible among Protestants, who have lost their belief in the Real Presence.

In the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church not only resisted the worldly impact of the invention of printing, but also harnessed the new technology to standardize and consolidate existing liturgical practices and centralize the one and only Church. And how the Church transformed the worldly emphasis on visuality, i.e., the need to see that was created among the laity living in the world, can still be seen today in Baroque churches.

NOM, Vilnius (Lithuania), Catholic church; I don’t remember which one. This beautiful high altar surmounted by a crucifix became simply a decorative background.

The second historical reinforcement – auditory – was given to vernacular languages by the microphone.

First, new mass media appeared, thanks to the microphone, radio and television developed. The circulation of information, this time also in the form of sounds, accelerated even more. In public spaces, we began to hear different sounds from all sides at the same time. Television began to use sight like hearing, and we began to perceive images as sound, with our eyes focused on a single point, we could begin to see and hear the entire scene.

Secondly, the nature of mass events changed: without the microphone, there would be no numerous competitions and championships, popular concerts, or demonstrations.

Thirdly, thanks to the microphone, new figures emerged. As McLuhan significantly notes, without the microphone there would have been no Gandhi or Hitler. The vernacular began to reign supreme in the public sphere, in a version increasingly close to colloquial language.

According to McLuhan, the overall impact of the microphone on culture is the opposite of that of print; because of the microphone, we have begun to return to an acoustic culture. Today’s culture is in some ways more reminiscent of that of the pre-literate era; we are returning from individualism to tribalism (we are more empathetic today, but only towards people from our own “tribe”); our perception has become non-sequential (non-linear), but immediate and holistic (rather than abstract, because it is difficult to “hear” contours).

So how could a microphone, which reversed the “visual” effects of printing on culture, cause the same “visual” changes in Catholic liturgy that printing caused among Protestants? Although the overall impact of the microphone on culture seems to be the opposite, both inventions have intensified the mediatization of our experience of the world. Today, we have a deeply rooted need to see and hear everything through the media, which are like extensions of our senses. If we cannot see and hear something through the media, we find it difficult to believe in it. [3] And since, with the microphone, we introduced into the Church the worldly need to hear everything, its older sister – the need to see everything – came along with it. And that is why, in the liturgical dimension, thanks to the microphone, the Church quickly “made up” for what it had previously “neglected” during the first visual reinforcement of vernacular languages. Priests who turn to the people and speak in their vernacular often behave as if they do not believe in the Real Presence.

The Church did not notice that the microphone was a new “actor.” Although the Second Vatican Council issued the decree Inter mirifica in 1963, it concerns social media, i.e., those used in the world. [4] The last council did not issue any document that would harness the microphone for the Church’s own purposes. And since the Church did not consider the issue of the microphone, this new worldly “actor” has been influencing the liturgy for almost a hundred years in the same way that it influences the world. And Catholics born into servitude should know who rules this world.

This approach sheds light on the contemporary crisis of the Church without attributing ill will to anybody, and explains the reason for the pentecostalization described in contemporary academic literature, i.e., the similarities between contemporary Catholic liturgical practices and Protestant practices. Some “traditionalists” (I believe in good faith) suggest that the new Masses imitate Protestants. This superficial observation often rightly outrages “new Catholics.”

In fact, these are deeper processes. “New Catholics” do not imitate Martin Luther, but succumb to the worldly influences of printing technology and microphones; they enter God’s temples with the same expectations there as they have in the world. Moreover, even many Church documents from the second half of the 20th century say that the faithful should “hear without difficulty.” [5] However, no one has considered whether it is really necessary for the faithful to hear everything during Mass. Isn’t it enough for them to assist at Mass, as they have done for eons?

By placing microphones on altars – in the place where God appears – we have introduced a Trojan horse into the Church: the microphone, and in it, the worldly need to hear and see everything. However, just as it is not necessary to see everything during Mass, it is also not necessary to hear everything. It is enough to look, listen, and... believe.

Against appearances, these are not subtle but fundamental differences, because the need to see and hear everything introduced into the Church by microphones has serious consequences. In Part 3, I will discuss two of them: those concerning the Community and those concerning the Word. [6] 

NOM, Vilnius (Lithuania), Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn. If the altar can’t be turned around, the speaker will ensure that everyone can hear everything

NOTES

^[1] The piano keyboard is an artificial creation.

^[2] Pierre Babin, Liturgy and Media: (Marshall McLuhan’s) Third Conversation with Pierre Babin, in: Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The medium and the light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart 1999, p. 142.

^[3] This trend will most likely be reversed by artificial intelligence; see footnote 22.

^[4] Subsequently, based on Inter mirifica, a very enthusiastic pastoral instruction on the means of social communication, Communio et progressio, was developed in 1971 (“So, ‘among the wonderful technical inventions’ (Inter mirifica) which foster communication among human beings, Christians find means that have been devised under God’s Providence for the encouragement of social relations during their pilgrimage on earth”). On its twentieth anniversary, another instruction was published, entitled Aetatis Novae, which is no longer so enthusiastic (“the application of communications technology has been a mixed blessing”), but fails to identify the cause of the problem. These documents are about the press, radio, and television, and do not recognize the inventions from which they originated. It is like considering the impact of various computer programs without noticing the invention of the computer.

^[5]General Introduction to the Roman Missal (2010), point 311: “Care should be taken to ensure that the faithful be able not only to see the Priest, the Deacon, and the readers but also, with the aid of modern technical means, to hear them without difficulty.” See also no. 34 in the General Introduction to the Lectionary (1981): “Provision must also be made for the readers to have enough light to read the text and, as required, to have modern sound equipment enabling the faithful to hear them without difficulty.”

^[6] I will present more arguments against microphones in churches in a separate text, which will be included in an anthology that I will publish in Polish.

Could the Introduction of Microphones Have Caused the Reform of the Mass?

We are very pleased to share the following thought-provoking essay by Paweł Jarnicki, which was first published in Polish at Christianitas. The text has been translated into English with the support of machine translation and will be published at NLM in three installments, this week and next. It is one of the most insightful treatments of the question I have ever seen, and deserves a careful read. – PAK

“Let’s Throw the Microphone Out of the Church!”

Paweł Jarnicki

Part 1

I narrated battles
bastilles and ships…
and forgot about tamarisk. [1]

Eleven years ago, shortly after my conversion, as I listened to a priest muttering a bland sermon, a postulate arose in my mind that has returned to me regularly ever since: Take the microphones away from the priests! After all, if this priest spoke without a microphone, he couldn’t mutter like that. He would have to know what he wanted to say. He would have to speak loudly and clearly. He would have to exert his body... Since when have there been microphones in churches anyway?... I looked around. There were definitely no microphones when this church was built. How did everything work before microphones came along? At that time, I knew nothing about the reform of the Mass.

I talked to several people about my postulate from time to time, and even started taking some notes, but it was only a year ago that I checked if anyone had already written anything on the subject. I searched exclusively on the Internet. I found literally a few valuable texts in English and a few paragraphs in Polish. I am trying to put my own thoughts and what I have read into a coherent whole here. This is by no means an academic text or a complete study of the subject, but rather a text written by a believer in the hope that it will spark discussion and provoke more competent people to conduct in-depth research and take action.

Let’s start with what is certain. It is certain that microphones are found in almost every Catholic church today — at organs, pulpits, ambo, and altars. Sometimes portable microphones are also used. They are accompanied, of course, by an amplifier (usually in the sacristy or near the organist) and loudspeakers — at least a few — even in the smallest churches and chapels.

It is also certain that for the vast majority of time, there were no microphones in churches. Although the carbon microphone was invented in the 1870s, and the first sound systems (microphone + amplifier + loudspeaker) were developed in the mid-1910s, they were not installed in churches until the 1920s and 1930s.

Available publications indicate that there were no serious discussions about the use of microphones in churches. And yet, at that time, there were disputes about broadcasting Mass on the radio or introducing projectors and players... But microphones? It seems that they were treated as something natural and fundamentally good. Just as glasses allow us to see more clearly, microphones allow us to hear more clearly. What could be wrong with hearing better?

In official church documents, the first mention of the amplification system can be found in the 1958 instruction On Music. It prohibits the use of automatic organ, phonograph, radio, tape or wire recorders, and other similar machines (71), and projectors (73), but “loudspeakers may be used even during liturgical functions, and private devotions for the purpose of amplifying the living voice of the priest-celebrant or the commentator” (72). [2] The microphone was therefore treated as something that merely “amplifies the living voice,” as an object as neutral, in fact, as a pair of glasses. Later documents that I have been able to find treat the “altar microphone” as something so obvious that they only require a second, separate microphone to be placed on the pulpit. [3]

Today, practically no one is surprised by microphones in churches, because they are ubiquitous in the world, transparent, and we swim like fish in water in amplified sounds, both in public and private spaces. Since microphones and loudspeakers are everywhere, it seems normal that they are also in churches. However, reading texts about microphones by other authors led me to the surprising thesis that the microphone caused the reform of the Holy Mass. I have read a lot about the reform over the last nine years, but that it was caused by the microphone?

NOM, Łukęcin (Poland), Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland. In newly built churches, the cross is usually placed next to the altar, and the microphone becomes the axis of the celebration.

Two narratives about the reform of the Mass

In order to reconstruct the impact of the microphone on the 1969 reform of the Mass, it is good to familiarize ourselves with the current narratives about this reform. Especially since many contemporary Catholics know nothing about it, even though many “epics” have already been written about the controversy surrounding it... There are basically two narratives. Those enthusiastic about the reform and its critics. The enthusiastic narrative says: The reform of the Mass is the work of the Council, so it is good. The critical narrative says: The reform of the Mass is a consequence of the invasion of modernism, so it is bad. Although today (after Benedict XVI) the enthusiasts of the reform more often speak of continuity, and its critics of a break, there are also reverse variants. There were and are enthusiasts of the reform who speak of a break, and there are also critics of the reform who acknowledge continuity.

Critics of the reform argue that the world and people have not changed in essence, so there was no need to change the Mass, yet it was changed significantly. Enthusiasts of the reform say that as a result of increased well-being and technological development, “times” have changed, so the reform of the Mass was necessary to adapt it to contemporary pastoral needs, and only the envelope has changed, not the essence of the Mass.

The most radical critical narrative can be found among sedevacantists (those who believe that there is currently no legitimate pope) — recognizing the new Mass as invalid must also undermine recent pontificates, because several popes have already celebrated the new Mass. Therefore, the greatest concern of humble critics of the reform is how to criticize the reform without denying the validity of the new Mass and the continuity of the Church as an institution headed by the pope, and how not to cast the Second Vatican Council as the “villain.” The latter term allows reform enthusiasts to easily place critics outside the Church, because the Holy Spirit is at work during the council, and it is clear on whose side those who fight against the Divine Person are.

More moderate critics of the reform point out that the conciliar constitution on the liturgy neither recommended that the priest turn towards the people (versus populum) nor recommended a complete transition to vernacular languages. This was only done by the Consilium led by Annibale Bugnini — the reform is therefore a “distortion” of the Council’s decisions. Enthusiasts say that the Consilium implemented the “spirit” of the Council, while critics say that there is no such thing — that its “letter” has been violated. More radical critics point out that the errors of modernism (the omission of some ideas and the vague formulation of others) were already present in the conciliar documents and that the last council was not dogmatic, but only pastoral.

In any case, the common denominator of both narratives is the awareness of a crisis in the Church, the most striking manifestation of which is the decline in the number of priestly vocations. And no one has any idea how to break out of the trenches of their own convictions. Those on one side of the dispute see aggressive madmen, while those on the other see thoughtless blind men. This inability to reach an agreement confirms that some kind of break has indeed occurred. After all, it is easy to see that the new Mass is unlike the old one and that Catholics behave differently during the new and old Masses. Catholics raised on the new Mass who are unaware of the reform, when they encounter the old Mass, even have the impression that it is some kind of “different faith.” In the critical narrative, it is pointed out that since the way we pray has changed, our faith has changed (lex orandi lex credendi), but enthusiasts treat these critics as a threat to the unity of the Church, which today prays mostly according to the new Mass. These “accomplished facts” are the final argument of new Mass enthusiasts, but critics who emphasize continuity consider them dishonest because they imply a profound break — can the Mass on which the saints from before the last council were raised be so bad that it is forbidden to celebrate it in all parish churches? There seems to be no possibility of agreement.

The weaker, critical side feels — not without reason — that it is a victim of institutional violence (which to some extent explains, but does not excuse, the “aggressive” behavior of “traditionalist” circles). The problem, or perhaps its solution, is that here the “perpetrators” may also turn out to be victims of deception... For both narratives, both radical and moderate, forget about the microphone... which, like a Trojan horse, we ourselves introduced into the Church without considering the possible consequences.

NOM, Wrocław (Poland), St. Faustina Church. The object between the altar and the cross is not a Paschal candle but a portable loudspeaker.

Could the microphone have caused the reform of the Mass?

Although the hierarchs did not debate the issue of microphones, there was one layman who, in 1974, five years after the reform of the Mass, wrote:

“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.” [4] And he repeated this thought three years later: “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.” [5]

The statements of Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) have gone almost completely unnoticed, even in today’s so-called “traditionalist” circles. [6] Why? I think that the rest of his text is too “dense.” It is a challenging text, difficult to understand even for readers educated in the humanities. Although McLuhan was a Catholic, he was neither a historian nor a theologian; his voice was the voice of a representative of what was then a new discipline of knowledge — media theory. What McLuhan says in this text also contradicts the (enthusiastic) intellectual mood that prevailed after the Council and for decades thereafter — McLuhan points to church architecture as a second victim of the microphone, alongside the Latin Mass, and predicts that the publication of the Holy Scriptures in vernacular languages by official committees will be counterproductive to the spread of the Good News. In a situation where literature adapts subsequent variations of the living colloquial national language, the Church rigidifies the vernacular in its official and archaic translation. And yet every vernacular continues to evolve, so rigidifying it detaches faith from the living language of national communities and significantly hinders the transmission of faith.

McLuhan says all this in a deliberately vague way, wanting to force readers to make a cognitive effort. In addition, it seems that in the following years, the prevailing belief was that the widespread use of microphones in churches was a consequence of the reform of the Mass (chronologically, microphones were first introduced in more important churches, and only after the reform in all churches).

It was only Nico Fassino’s article three years ago that showed that McLuhan may be right, that the opposite may be true [7] – that there would be no new Mass if it weren’t for the microphone. Not only because during the Council it could have been turned off and Cardinal Ottaviani silenced, [8] but above all because the microphone was placed on the altar.

Fassino’s article is, so far, the only one that begins to describe the process of introducing microphones into churches from a historical perspective. Thanks to him, we know that in the 1920s, microphones began to be used in pulpits and the first Masses were broadcast on the radio. However, the first radio broadcasts did not necessarily involve sound systems in the church itself. It was probably Pius XII, who had been in office since 1939 and still celebrated the old Mass, who was the first pope to place microphones on the altar. [9] We do not yet know the exact date when this happened, but it was most likely between 1939 and 1945. And since microphones were placed on the papal altar, this must have gradually become more common practice in the post-war years.

But could such a seemingly neutral object have brought about a reform of the Mass? How? In the following reconstruction, I draw heavily on McLuhan’s text:

1. The microphone on the altar made the Latin texts audible, which until then had largely reached the faithful only as incomprehensible whispers and murmurs (especially during quiet Masses celebrated on weekdays, but also during the quiet parts of solemn Masses on holidays).

2. The amplification of the words spoken in Latin created a need to hear them clearly — if someone amplifies sound, it means that they want to be heard, that there is something that needs to be heard). [10]

3. And since the faithful began to hear words rather than murmurs, the need to hear clearly was followed by the need to understand what was being heard [11], and thus

4. the need to speak during Mass in the languages used in everyday life, in languages known to the faithful — in their vernacular languages.

5. And since the faithful began to hear and needed to understand every word, the impression arose that it was they who were being addressed.

6. This led to an inconsistency in the communication situation — when someone speaks to us and we speak to someone, it is natural to expect that we will have our faces turned towards each other.

The priest’s reversal was therefore a consequence of placing a microphone on the altar. But at the same time, it also reinforced the needs created by the use of the microphone – hearing and understanding – and thus speaking in an understandable vernacular language. This is why reversing the Mass reform seems impossible today – the faithful must now see and hear everything. In any case, it was the microphone that set off the avalanche of the reform. If anyone doubts this, let them imagine the new Mass at the sanctuary in Łagiewniki, Krakow – without a sound system. [12]

Wait a minute, someone will say, microphones are now used even in “Latin rite ministries”. I think that microphones at traditional Masses are only acceptable in “ghettos” where rebellious believers are sent, who are not only resigned to hearing Latin, but actually consciously want to hear it (which is often the basis of their sense of superiority, and for “new Catholics” this “exaltation” is an unacceptable barrier). Moreover, microphones have become so ubiquitous in the world today that almost no one – even the most ardent “traditionalists” — would dream of questioning their use. Why should we give up the achievements of science and technology?

This question will be taken up in Part 2.

NOM, Jarnice (Poland), St. James Church. Today, sound systems are installed even in the smallest churches (both inside and often outside).

(See Part 2 | Part 3)

NOTES

[1] Zbigniew Herbert, Tamarisk, 1961.

^[2]Instruction on Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy of the Sacred Congregation for Rites according to the guidelines of Pope Pius XII’s encyclicals Musicae Sacrae Disciplina and Mediator Dei of September 3, 1958. The role of the commentator may seem peculiar today, but it was someone who translated what the priest was doing and saying (in Latin) into the vernacular.

^[3] See, for example, the Polish Episcopate’s Instruction in connection with the publication of the new altar missal of March 11, 1987.

^[4] 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.

^[5] Pierre Babin, (Marshall McLuhan’s) Third Conversation with Pierre Babin, in: Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart 1999, pp. 141-149, quote from p. 143.

^[6] It seems that the issues surrounding the microphone escaped even Marcel Lefebvre, the most vocal critic of the Mass reform, and even the Society of St. Pius X uses microphones in its chapels and churches.

^[7] Nico Fassino, Lift up thy voice with strength, handmissalhistory, October 10, 2022, https://handmissalhistory.com/feature-microphones/, September 25, 2025.

^[8] As an aside, let us ask ourselves how earlier councils were possible without microphones? If there had been no microphones, would the “progressive” faction have been audible enough to significantly change the preliminary documents?

^[9] “By 1945, Pope Pius XII regularly celebrated mass with four microphones installed on the high altar in St. Peter’s Basilica and even had two microphones on the altar in his private chapel.” [Nico Fassino, Lift up thy voice with strength, handmissalhistory, October 10, 2022, https://handmissalhistory.com/feature-microphones/, September 25, 2025]

^[10] Nico Fassino notes that, paradoxically, the microphone has led to the creation of “cry rooms” for children in American churches. If the words spoken by the priest are to be heard, other sounds, especially noisy children, must not interfere.

^[11] To understand what this is all about, it is enough to experience at least once a new Mass in a country where the language is so foreign that we are unable to distinguish individual words from the stream of speech (for me, these were Latvian and Finnish). During such a Mass, it is difficult not to ask yourself the question: “What am I doing here?”

^[12] The Basilica of Divine Mercy in Łagiewniki (Kraków, Poland), consecrated in 2002, elliptical in shape, the interior — covering approximately 5,000 square meters and accommodating around 5,000 worshippers.

What Killed Sacrosanctum Concilium

There have been many laws, decrees, constitutions and such in the Church’s long history which, without ever being formally revoked, simply faded into disuse and obscurity. Very often, it is impossible to say when such laws became dead letters. But in the case of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the liturgy, we know the exact day on which it became a dead letter. That day was September 26, 1964, when the Sacred Congregation for Rites published the decree Inter Oecumenici, billed, falsely, as a step towards its implementation, but in reality, a guarantee that it would not be implemented, but rejected.

I say this because it was the decree that enshrined the celebration of the Mass versus populum. “The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people.” (parag. 91) The problem with this was not principally that it was based on an egregious scholarly error, one of many that marred the process of liturgical reform well before Vatican II was even thought of. It is rather that there is not one word of Sacrosanctum Concilium that hints in any way that this should be done, and yet it was done in the name of implementing said constitution. The document was signed by Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro (archbishop of Bologna, and an avowed liturgical revolutionary), the first president of the “Consilium ad exsequendam – the committee for implementing” SC. Its 2nd paragraph contains the statement that “(t)he Consilium … has promptly taken up its two appointed tasks: to carry out the directives of the constitution,” and yet it declared as “preferable” a novelty which the constitution in no way envisioned.

I have no doubt that this part of the post-Conciliar litany of failure is well-known to our readers. I repeat it nonetheless as a reminder of something essential, which I also stated in my recent assessment of the oddly forgetful liturgical memorandum shared by Cardinal Roche with his fellow Eminences during the recent consistory. The liturgical reform was not born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium, as was stated incorrectly in Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi (quoted by His Eminence). It was born out of the rejection of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Enter Gianmarco Busca, who was appointed bishop of the northern Italian city of Mantua on June 3, 2016. By an interesting coincidence, this date is the anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII, initiator of the Second Vatican Council, and one of the patron Saints of unintended consequences. After nearly ten years of his episcopate, His Grace has decided to involve his beautiful cathedral, which is dedicated to St Peter the Apostle, in a year-long pastoral “experiment”, to update the building to the “Conciliar (sic) liturgical reform.” These pictures were taken by a friend during a recent visit.

Here is the official explanation of it, posted on a placard in the cathedral.

Diocese of Mantua - Cathedral of St Peter the Apostle

Experimental interventions for updating to the conciliar liturgical reform.

“Dear pilgrim, tourist, or whoever you are. (This is just as weird and rude in Italian as it would be in any other language.)

As you enter this cathedral, you will find yourself a little disoriented compared with the traditional arrangement. In fact, you find yourself in a space that is hosting a process of liturgical updating, inspired by the criteria of Vatican II. ...

This important council in the 1960s dedicated one of its principal documents to the theme of the liturgy, as an expression of the Church’s highest prayer. This is the Constitution called Sacrosanctum Concilium.

In light of the criteria of the liturgical reform, a team of men and women, specialists, liturgists, and pastoral operators have worked together for months, with the goal of thinking up an effective way to re-order the liturgical space of the cathedral. The objective of their work has been to translate into the cathedral (n.b. here) the indications of the Council, the intent of which, we must not forget, is to favor the rediscovery of the deep sense of the liturgy, and the people of God’s participation in it.”

It goes on to explain that this is only an experiment, and the faithful will be invited to express their opinions of it, with a view to a more definitive project in the future. It also explained that these graceless wooden lumps squatting in the nave are “temporary models”, and that they were not expensive. But sadly, if past experience with these kinds of projects has taught us anything, we can guess that A. the project will be done as we see it here with some minor adjustment; B. the completely negative assessment which the ordinary faithful give of it will be ignored, and C., the permanent furnishing which are finally commissioned and installed will be just as ugly, and shockingly expensive.

On the rare occasions when I write about these kinds of things, I have been wont to use rhetorical phrases that begin with something like, “It hardly needs to be said…” or “It hardly bears repeating…” But in this case, it does need to be said, and it does bear repeating: this is a betrayal of what Sacrosanctum Concilium asked for, and has nothing to do with what the bishops at Vatican II asked for, or expected to come out of a reform of the liturgy.

I ended my previous commentary by stating that sooner or later, the Church is simply going to have to start asking itself a lot of hard questions about the failure of the post-Conciliar reforms. Since Pope Leo has determined that there will be now consistories on a regular basis, and since consistories are exactly the forum in which such questions are meant to be asked and answered, I make bold to formula one as follows:

More than six decades have passed since Sacrosanctum Concilium was issued, and bishops are still claiming to “implement Sacrosanctum Concilium” by doing something that it in no way envisioned, or even mentioned. Is there any realistic possibility left of untangling what that council actually said from these ubiquitous, willful falsehoods?

The answer, Your Eminences, is No. We pray that you will find the courage to recognize this, and act accordingly.

Some more pictures of the hitherto beautiful cathedral of Mantua, to cleanse your palate...

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Peculiarities of Constantine’s Basilica of St. Peter

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship with her fifth part, “Le singolarità della basilica costantiniana di San Pietro”, originally published in Italian on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on November 30, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4)

The rule of praying towards the east, which determined the orientation of churches, had some exceptions. This is neither surprising nor scandalous. It has already been mentioned that the east-west axis was sometimes not feasible, either because the buildings already existed and were converted for religious use, or because new buildings had to take into account the presence of roads and other factors that made traditional orientation impossible.

Karl Otto Nußbaum argued (see Part 4) that Italy, and Rome in particular, had no traces of oriented prayer, at least until the eighth century. On the contrary, Monsignor Stefan Heid has shown that evidence of such exists both archaeologically and literarily.

The churches of Rome deserve special attention, particularly the Constantinian Vatican Basilica. Guillaume Durand (1230-96), bishop of Mende, who lived for many years in Rome in the service of Clement IV and Gregory X, stated in his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (V, 2, 57) that “although God is everywhere, nevertheless the priest at the altar and in divine offices must pray towards the east, by order (ex institutione) of Pope Vigilius.”

He explained more precisely that in those churches where the entrance was located to the west, and therefore the priest celebrated facing the apse, he had to turn towards the faithful for the liturgical greeting (Dóminus vobiscum); if, on the other hand, the entrance was located to the east, it was not necessary for him to turn towards the faithful, since he already had them in front of him.

The reference to Pope Vigilius indicates that, as early as the sixth century, prayer in Rome was also directed towards the east. The expression ex institutione does not necessarily indicate that he was the first to establish this rule. According to Heid, it is possible that the provision arose from the fact that this rule was not universally followed, not so much because someone celebrated “towards the people,” but rather because some priests celebrated facing the apse, and therefore with their backs to the faithful, even when the entrance was to the east. It is also unclear whether Pope Vigilius’ provision was addressed to the churches of Rome or the churches of Gaul.

It seems clear, however, that Vigilius wanted prayer to be directed towards the east, regardless of where the entrance (and therefore the nave) was located; and it seems rather unlikely that he gave this instruction in opposition to a previous tradition, rather than to restore a practice that was no longer understood and was partly disregarded, in Rome or in Gaul.

In fact, in the wooden door (5th century) of the early Christian basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill, we find a panel depicting the Parousia. The woman, placed between Saints Peter and Paul, symbolizes the Church in prayer, recognizable by the position of her hands, awaiting her Lord and facing the sun, the east. This important relief testifies that the orientation of prayer and its meaning were also well established in Rome.

Complicating the understanding of liturgical orientation in the ancient basilicas of Rome is the fact that they contained a singular “pole” of orientation, namely the tombs of the martyrs. Churches had to be built in such a way as to combine the orientation of prayer with the possibility of celebrating super corpora martyrum.

If we consider the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican from the Constantinian era, we can note some peculiarities. It is well known that the basilica had (and has) its façade facing east; on the western side there was a mosaic apse, with the traditional depiction of the Traditio legis in the center, that is, Christ, between Saints Peter and Paul, offering the scroll of the new law to the former. A few meters from the apse, where the altar is normally located, was the Trophy of Gaius, a small funerary aedicule indicating the location of the tomb of the Apostle Peter, protected by a marble structure with a pergula, almost a sort of early Christian canopy. The structure was about 3 meters wide and high and 1.80 meters deep. The aedicule appeared lower because the new flooring had raised the level by 35 centimeters, thus incorporating part of the Trophy, which now rose just over a meter above the floor.

It is not at all clear where the altar was located, nor whether it was fixed, but it is more than likely that, due to the extreme importance of the presence of Peter’s tomb in the basilica, celebrations were held not towards the east but towards the monument, thus ending up accidentally facing west. To hypothesize a celebration towards the east, in the architectural context of Constantine’s basilica on Vatican Hill, would have meant turning one’s back on Peter’s tomb; it is therefore understandable that the focal point of the liturgical celebration was the tomb of the Apostle.

There is no shortage of evidence to support the idea that the travertine slab of the first aedicule was used as an altar; the celebration would thus have taken place inside the shrine that incorporated the Trophy, right above the tomb of the Apostle. The importance of the celebration super corpus should not be underestimated, as evidenced by the clash between the presbyter Vigilantius and St. Jerome. Among the practices in use in the fifth century that were challenged by the presbyter was the custom of offering the Holy Sacrifice over the bones of the martyrs. In Contra Vigilantium 8, Jerome asks rhetorically whether perhaps the popes were wrong to offer sacrifices to the Lord above the venerable bones of Peter and Paul – thus supporting the hypothesis that, at the time, in the Vatican basilica, the celebration took place inside the shrine itself and not simply in its vicinity.

Whatever the case, in the fifth century it was not possible to celebrate towards the east in St. Peter’s because of the location of the Confession. It was only with the elevation of the altar that both the super corpus celebration and the correct orientation could be preserved.

An interesting hypothesis is that Pope Vigilius’s decision, mentioned above, may have been motivated by the need to correct incorrect prayer orientations, which arose from the fact that the pope himself celebrated facing west in the Vatican basilica. The misunderstanding of why, in St. Peter’s, the pope had to celebrate in the opposite direction to the traditional one may have led others to celebrate towards the west in churches with an east-facing façade.

Ancient Altars Facing the People? Nußbaum’s Misinterpretation

We continue Luisella Scrosati’s series on the orientation of Christian worship, with her fourth part, “Altari antichi verso il popolo? L’errata interpretazione di Nußbaum”, originally published in Italian on the website of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on November 30, and reproduced here by permission of the editors. (Read Part 1; Part 2; Part 3)

A constant feature of revolutions in the liturgical sphere is the encounter between novelty and antiquity, the convergence between progressivism and archeologism.

In the recent book dedicated to the practice of Communion in the hand, Il cibo dei Serafini. Comunione sulla mano, sì o no? [The Food of the Seraphim: Communion in the Hand, Yes or No?], an attempt was made to show how this phenomenon came about precisely through a misunderstanding of the meaning of ancient sources, interpreted in the light of ideological convictions completely foreign to that context, resulting in a new ritual form that has very little to do with the Church of the early centuries, but much to do with more modern heterodox ideas.

Something similar has also happened with regard to the orientation of prayer and sacred buildings. This misunderstanding was reinforced by a great scholar, Karl Otto Nußbaum (1923-1999), professor of liturgy at the University of Bonn and author of a highly erudite two-volume book published in 1965, Der Standort des Liturgen am christlichen Altar vor dem Jahre 1000. Eine archäologische und liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchung [The Position of the Celebrant at the Christian Altar before the Year 1000. An Archaeological and Liturgical-Historical Investigation].

Nußbaum recognized that the first Christian churches were built on an east-west axis, with the apse or façade facing east, but he came to the incredible conclusion that “when proper religious buildings appeared, there were no precise rules determining which side of the altar the celebrant should stand on. He could stand either in front of or behind the altar.”

In practice, for Nußbaum, the almost universal orientation of churches did not necessarily indicate an equally universal orientation of prayer and, therefore, of the location of the celebrant, who could freely stand in front of or behind the altar, facing either east or west. According to him, when the apse was located to the east, the priest could celebrate either towards the people or towards the east; however, when the entrance faced east, the priest always faced the people, with the altar between the celebrant and the assembly. It was only from the sixth century onwards that things changed and the priest ended up between the altar and the assembly, facing the apse.

Reviewing Nußbaum’s book in the journal of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Innsbruck, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie (no. 88, 1966), another great expert on the history of liturgy, the Tyrolean Josef Andreas Jungmann, a member of the Liturgical Commission during the Second Vatican Council, had no hesitation in declaring that “the often-repeated assertion that the early Christian altar presupposed as a rule that it should face the people is a legend.” A scathing criticism.

In fact, Nußbaum did not conclude in favor of celebrations facing the people on the basis of unequivocal archaeological or written data, but on the basis of highly questionable interpretations of some of this data. For example, the existence of the cathedra and the steps for the presbytery in the apse would, for him, be proof of the celebration versus populum. But this location (see Part 2), provides indications about the first part of the Divine Liturgy, dedicated to singing and listening to the Word of God, which took place from an ambo usually located between the nave and the presbytery, but does not testify to anything relating to the liturgy of sacrifice itself.

Another example of a free interpretation: he believed that the church of Kalat Siman, built on the site where St. Simeon Stylites lived, 30 kilometers from Aleppo, was an example of celebration towards the people, although the archaeological remains do not allow the altar to be located with precision, and although the most likely hypotheses place the altar very close to the apse wall, suggesting that the celebrant had to stand on the west side of the altar, facing east.

It is quite evident that Nußbaum’s interpretation of the archaeological data is strongly influenced by prejudice, which, among other things, clouded his view of the numerous written testimonies according to which the orientation of prayer was an established fact, and even attributed to the teaching of the Apostles themselves. Suffice it to consider his reading of the presence of the remains of two churches in Abu Mena, Egypt: although both have their apses facing east, he believed, without any solid evidence, that in one the liturgy was celebrated facing east and in the other facing west. Or to the interpretation that the orientation of churches, particularly the basilicas in Rome and North Africa, with their facades facing east, was evidence of a celebration facing the people.

But what was this prejudice? 

The logical justification given by Nußbaum for systematically giving priority in his theory to the versus populum celebration is that it was “the original form of the Eucharist.” Nußbaum believes that the early Christians participated in the Liturgy of the Word in the temple, but celebrated the Eucharistic banquet in their homes. When the two forms of worship were finally united, it was customary for the presider to stand behind the sacred table, facing the people like an orator in front of an assembly. (Uwe M. Lang, Facing the Lord. Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, 2006, p. 45)

And so we return to where our investigation began: the myth of the domestic church (which I discuss here) and of tables as communal tables (see here, here, and here). Once they had places of worship, the early Christians would (on this theory) have celebrated facing the people, because the Eucharist had been celebrated in homes as a fraternal meal in memory of the Lord. The Lord’s command at the Last Supper – “do this in memory of me” – would have been understood as the perpetuation of the convivial model, in which, of course, all the diners face each other. Only later, when the convivial model was joined by, and then superseded by, the sacrificial model, did the celebrant end up turning his back on the people.

The problem with this interpretation is that, although it is now widespread in the common imagination, it is not based on solid evidence. Instead, the evidence points to an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice (and therefore also as a sacrificial meal) from the beginning, testifying to buildings dedicated to worship and not to common dining rooms, and to actual altars and not to dining tables.

Similarly, there is a great deal of evidence confirming that the orientation of the Church’s prayer since the early centuries was towards the east and was by no means ‘free’. The exceptions, as we shall see, can be explained by specific circumstances that have nothing to do with a celebration facing the people.