Poking the Protests out of the Printing Press

Poking the Protests out of the Printing Press

Anonymous

Lyons—The printing press is not all that it’s cracked up to be, and sometimes the truth can slip through those cracks.

That’s the message Father Bonaventure Aveugle, OFM, CEO of Superior Sheepskins, passed on about the wild frontier of print when he gave a talk to 65 priests from the diocese of Paris. Father Aveugle was visiting the diocese of Lyons from Paris to give a number of talks. His clergy lecture was on March 22, 1491.

Father Aveugle focussed on new challenges to the Church in the areas of books, newspapers and pamphlets. “These are really important areas, so much so that a big part of the last meetings I was heavily involved in myself, the last two rounds, has been spent on this,” he said. “The printing press is an international phenomenon.”

There are serious ethical questions that must be addressed by the Church and by individuals, he continued, making sure to distance the concept “Church” from the concept of “individuals”, e.g. ordinary parish priests and laypeople. These include issues of the dissemination of information the laity ought not to know, and “frank criticism of shepherds by sheep.”

“The printing press is not only a source of problems, it is a source of great benefits to the human race when used properly,” he said. “The benefits can be fully realized if only the right people have access to it.”

He said the three main issues are: the destruction of the privilege of the very few to control information, the challenge of mass literacy, and the lack of accountability which permits laypeople to comment on Church life without getting punished for it.

He discussed the importance of assessing content found in the print media, and not believing any of it. Father Aveugle used the example of a priest he knows who takes homilies from books and preaches them at Mass without reading them first.

“There are some things that are being proclaimed from the pulpits that are questionable,” he said. “Discernment is required in what you take from print books. It’s no substitute for texts carefully written on sheepskin.”

Print materials, he said, are becoming a major topic of discussion amongst scribes as well as at the Vatican. He said they were useful for disseminating news and such doctrines as ordinary folk can handle.

A relatively tiny number of people read his own newspaper every week, he noted. “We use it as a teaching tool,” he noted. “Thousands of priests rip off our stuff to write their homilies, and that’s fine with us.”

However, since anyone—not just Superior Sheepskins—can set up a printing press, readers must be wary.

“I have rules for my scribes,” said Father Aveugle. “We don’t say anything that defames anybody except LifePrintNews, other newspapers, pamphleteers, other sheepskin suppliers and other utilizers of the printing press.”

Father Aveugle said that a study of Catholic print materials involving Catholics and heretics looking at Catholic print materials found they were filled with “filth, hate, conjecture, and innuendo.” The printers try to look official by including woodcuts of their favourite popes and saints.

Many of these printers say nasty, negative things, he said, citing rival LifePrintNews as a notorious sinner.

“I don’t care how many people at LifePrintNews are Catholics or how many of their readers are Catholics or how much they write about Catholics,” he said. “It’s not a Catholic blog. It has no authority, unlike me. It is causing division in the English Church, not just in France.”

He cited how upset unnamed English bishops are by LifePrintNews. One English Cardinal assumed LifePrintNews had its own glittering fortress in Paris. “I said, non, non, monsieur. They operate out of someone’s parent’s root cellar in Rouen. And may I say how much I have admired you all these years?”

LifePrintNews and other print materials are dangerous when clerics and laypeople read them more than they hear the Scriptures or Vatican documents proclaimed. He said people were citing print materials more often than those teachings selectively chosen by Superior Sheepskins for dissemination.

Some print materials have muddied the waters of Catholic dialogue in past years, said Father Aveugle. “The anti-Borgia pamphlets, the anti-infanticide pamphlets which are, indeed, anti-infanticide but too critical of those prelates who aren’t as concerned as they are about infanticide, the pamphlets criticizing me criticizing the pamphleteers—ooh, it makes me crazy.”

He added that powerful and influential heretics read these materials, which give skewed vision of what the Church—by which he meant the authoritative, clerical bit—is about.

"If we judged our identity on certain printed materials, Christians and Catholics would be known as the people who stand against everything and against everyone," he said. "If anything we should be known as the people who are for something."

There was a startled silence as his audience wondered what he meant by Christians AND Catholics.

Despite these issues with printing, Father Aveugle said mass publishing has its place. He said it has linked the Church between continents much more closely, but we also need to be wary of how mass literacy can erode and cheapen personal relationships.

"Writing letters makes some kinds of communication easier, because it is not tied to geography, or governed by social norms, therefore writers can communicate whatever and whenever they want," he said. "While many of us can get back in touch with our friends via letters, there is a danger that print interactions can hurt our real-life friendships."

Writing, Father Aveugle explained, can encourage a "new form of narcissism." He said people reveal in their letters—especially those Christmas ones that go out to the entire Chrismas list—the most intimate details about themselves to the world and "we can't take it back."

He said print is an important tool for evangelization, but it also reinforces a belief that every mundane detail of our lives is worth publicizing.

"People are not just living in the moment, but they are publicizing the moment. This may lead to the spread of novels, poetry and heaven knows what else."

Father Aveugle said these new forms of communication can hurt the "art and language of friendship."

Though these technologies are supposed to better connect us, he said, there is an increase in reports of loneliness and distance between people. Instead of talking and visiting all the time, they read and write in isolation.

Father Aveugle talked about a woman he had met after Mass who said she received 20 letters a day from her granddaughter in the fields. She invited her to see her, because they lived in the same town, but the granddaughter doesn’t make the time.

"With letters, you don't see people. You see letters," he said. “A, B, C….”

"Without friends, human beings, to connect with, what are we doing?" he asked. “Writing? Our faith is about the Good Shepherd, and the sheep should know to trust his shepherds and the doctrine and news we see fit to give them, like the fine quality information carefully selected by Superior Sheepskins.”

As much as Vox would like to credit for this wonderful satire, alas, I cannot. It was our old friend Anonymous whom I abundantly thank for permitting me the honour of its publication. Oh, in case you missed the motivation.