“The Catholic Dilemma,” Chapter 3 of Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther, by Mark U. Edwards, Jr.
pgs 57-82.
Summary:
This chapter talks about the disadvantages faced by Catholic
supporters in responding to Luther and his supporters. Edwards’s main argument is “both the medium
and the message favored the Evangelical position” (57). He discusses how
vernacular pamphlets can be bought and accessed (either by reading it or having
it read to them) by anyone and encouraged lay involvement. This was an advantage for Luther, but for his
opponents “the Catholic pamphlets did what they argued should not be done”
(58), i.e. they granted the public access to debates the Catholic church felt
should be privately discussed among the clergy.
Additionally, in order to rebut Luther’s arguments, his opponents had to
first restate them. This meant that by
publishing rebuttals they were actually helping spread the Reformist
message! Edwards also discusses how
Murner, one of Luther’s greatest opponents, confused some of Luther’s arguments
as he restated them. Whether this was
done inadvertently or willfully cannot be determined. Edwards noted, “Catholic publicists could
propagate ideas they deplored in the mistaken belief that that which repelled
them would repel others” (73-74). In the
last part of the chapter, we learn that it “was not until the second half of
the sixteenth century … that the institutional church began an organized effort
to counter Evangelical controversial writing” (78). Edwards gives several reasons for this lag of
several decades:
·
The Church “thought mainly in terms of
intervention by authorities,” not printing (78).
·
Catholics “were defending … an existing
institution, whose faults and flaws were apparent,” while the Evangelicals were
only defending ideals. “It took some time
for the Evangelicals to build their own imperfect institutions and thus become
vulnerable to the criticism that reality differed significantly from the ideals
they espoused” (79).
·
“Normally one does not even argue with outlaws…
Further debate only gave apparent legitimacy to the Evangelical claim that
there was something to debate” (79).
·
“Dissonance between the medium—hundreds of
easily circulated pamphlets—and the message—common people should not discuss
matters of faith since the discussions subverted proper authority—may have
inhibited the Catholic response” (80).
·
“The Evangelical message was more easily
propagated by the press than the Catholic message. Evangelical emphasis on the word, and
especially the word of Scripture, lent itself to written argument. Catholicism, in contrast, was more ‘visually’
and ‘ritually’ oriented,” relying on the authority of tradition, which the
Evangelicals did not accept (81).
My Opinion:
I chose this selection, because it is a point of view that I
never considered before. Particularly
the ideas about how the medium can support or detract from the message are
fascinating to me. I’ve been thinking
about other messages and how this idea ties in.
One example is today’s political messages. Media today is fast, and emphasizes style
over substance. This type of medium
lends itself really well to the sound bite and negative ads, but would actually
detract from any kind of substantive policy descriptions, making them seem weak
and less important, when in fact they are what the public actually needs in
order to make informed decisions. I
think that this happened with the Catholic response to the Evangelicals—the medium
weakened their arguments. For them, they
just had to concede the point a little as they began publishing. What can we do in the political arena
today? The politicians’ answer has been
to turn more and more to negative campaigning, sound bites, and staged photo
opportunities. Yet the more substantial
messages need to be heard—we have a very uninformed public. It seems that the only choice is to choose a
different medium. The problem is that
there is not much of a market for a different medium. In thinking about this example and reading this
chapter, I really started to feel for the Catholic Church—their dilemma was
much bigger than they probably realized at the time. I also got a better understanding of why the
Reformation really took off as it did, and how the printing press could have
made such a big difference even in a mostly oral society. The existence and availability of printed
material, regardless of the words it contained, was a message all on its own—one
that supported the cause of the Reformation.
I’d like to discuss another idea in this chapter that
conflicts me a little. This quote is
Edwards summarizing Murner’s opinion: “Commoners could not separate the ‘sound
and Christian’ from that which was ‘false and mixed with poison [and] also
pungent with acidic comments.’ The ‘pious
simple Christian’ did not understand how subtly falsehood is mixed with truth
and the devilish angel transforms itself into the angel of light” (62). I am very conflicted by this, because,
honestly, I agree with Murner. People
are very gullible, easily distracted by media hype and misled by unfounded rumor
and gossip. Look at things like the “Y2K”
crisis. Companies had to spend a lot of money on advertising that their clients
were safe from the Y2K bogeyman because the public got so hyped up about a
nonexistent problem. And don’t get me
started on all the crazy gossip about various public figures—and we just eat it
all up, and aren’t even fazed when half of it turns out to not be true. We’re still hungry for more. In matters of religion, a lot of this happens
as well. There are so many completely
different messages out there that a lot of people don’t know what to believe,
so they often either believe everything or nothing. On the other hand, I believe we do have a
right to know, to think for ourselves, and to make informed decisions. And I also believe in freedom of the press
and am against government censorship. I
think the only way out of what Murner describes is education. I think a lot of it needs to happen in the
home—parents need to teach their children to sift through the mass of
information available to us, and to distinguish truth from lies. Teaching a healthy skepticism to your
children probably seems counterintuitive to most parents because, like the
Catholic church in Luther’s time, they don’t want “the way things are” and “because
I said so” to be up for debate. But with
children being faced with decisions that can affect the rest of their lives at
younger and younger ages, we need them to know how to think critically and sift
the sound information from the falsehoods.
I don’t know how feasible that is, but it’s all we’ve got.
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