July 20, 2003

The Canadian communications theorist, Marshall McLuhan, was a devout Catholic and a consultant to the Second Vatican Council. To him is attributed the aphorism “the medium is the message” but he actually wrote, “the medium is the massage.” Words shape thought. He started with confidence in modern communications, but later called electronic communications “the latest manifestation of the Anti-Christ.” The marvelous ability to send messages by television and computer is also an ability to massage minds. It is also interesting that he perceived how the use of microphones at the altar would deform the Mass, by turning prayer to God into speech addressed to the people.

The British historian A.J.P. Taylor said, “Power over words leads easily to longing for power over men.” As Nazi propaganda chief, Goebbels developed the “big lie” to manipulate people. As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, language can “brand unforgettably the Nazi way of thinking in each individual.” Professor Borst of St. Louis University has described how the Nazis called taxes “voluntary contributions” and the destruction of churches “urban renewal.”

This took a dramatic leap forward with the “deconstructionist” school of linguistics pioneered by the philosopher Michel Foucault, who was like Humpty Dumpty: “a word means whatever I want it to mean.” Shakespeare means whatever we want Shakespeare to mean, and public figures worm their way around the truth by begging the question of what “is” is.

We call this manipulation “political correctness.” If something is unpalatable, give it a sweet-sounding new name, and if something is criminal, give it an innocent-sounding name. Sometimes this is just silly, like calling short people “vertically challenged” or used cars “pre-owned” but it can become the sinister kind of topsy-turvy language seduction George Orwell called “Newspeak” in his 1948 novel 1984. So you have: promiscuity = sexual liberation, genocide = final solution, sodomy = gayness, murder = elimination, heresy=progressivism, perversion = alternate life-style, prostitutes = sex workers, pro-abortion = pro-choice, abortionists = health-care providers, shoplifters = nontraditional shoppers. The thought police (who even include some gender-inclusive translators of the Bible) will censure you if you do not go along with the new vocabulary.

Words are instruments of the art of life and thought. Our age is insensitive to the beauty and dignity of speech. Coarse language has become commonplace, and people who spend vast sums of money on their appearance care nothing about their diction. This is an aesthetic indication of a deep malfunction in the perception of speech. But there cannot be true communication unless there is truth to communicate. Our society is the most advanced in communication but it is the most backward about communion. Christ is the Living Word and all our words resonate like great music when they obey Him. “My word is truth.” Unless we speak the words of Christ, our words shriek.

Fr. George W. Rutler