"Follow along" - How projector screens and liturgical texts may actually be more a hindrance than a help in the liturgy
http://pearlofgp.blogspot.com/2013/03/follow-along-how-projector-screens-and.html"Typography, by its nature, separates and compartmentalizes information, making it impossible for a complete and rich experience. Applying this observation to reading off a screen while participating in liturgical worship, it comes as no surprise why many complain that liturgical prayers often lack a 'prayerful feel.' And how could such liturgies be prayerful when they are reduced to a 'read-along'?
Delving into this dilemma further, it may be worthwhile examining just how text and typography actually influences our cognition and what affects it may have on our engagement with the world. Canadian communications theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, wrote extensively on the effects of typography and text on individuals and society. According to McLuhan, unlike in times past or in cultures where typography is not considered the primary mode of communication, we in our modern Western culture have significantly lowered our ability to synthesize the world around us. It may be worth mentioning that McLuhan also believed that the invention of print technology and its ontologically disjunctive nature contributed to the rise of individualism, capitalism, and nationalism - all of which could be argued are anti-liturgical ideologies."
Comments
"Putting a screen in front of the ikons not only hides the ikons from the congregation, but it symbolically hides the congregation from the view of the saints depicted in the ikons. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, except for those we have chosen to exclude in favour of our own more ephemeral and self-centred concerns, our “worship experience”.
Orthodox Churches in Muslim countries are sometimes vandalised, because Muslims are iconoclasts. But they don’t usually vandalise the whole ikon, they just chisel out the eyes. And by putting a screen in front of the ikons we would in effect be doing the same thing.
If you can understand this, you may able to know something of the difference between the Orthodox Christian view of worship, and that of most Western Christians, certainly most Protestants."
http://khanya.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/liturgy-worship-and-digital-doodads/
The Reformation sort of started the ball rolling on this privatised textual encounter in Worship. The participation is reduced to a sort of Liturgical Karaoke :p
As moderns we have become less aurally aware and textual dependence may have contributed to this. I've no idea what the implications are but I think the two articles bring up interesting assessments on how this textual primacy might influence a Church's theology and also her liturgical praxis.
It is so interesting that Orthodox liturgies are sung and chanted, and the Word is proclaimed out loud.
If the tropars for the Church contain more than a literal summary of the feast day, you're also bound to hear Theological reflection spoken out loud too.
Furthermore we notify to you that it has come to our ears that your Fraternity, seeing certain adorers of images, broke and threw down these same images in Churches. And we commend you indeed for your zeal against anything made with hands being an object of adoration; but we signify to you that you ought not to have broken these images. For pictorial representation is made use of in Churches for this reason; that such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books. Your Fraternity therefore should have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration of them, to the end that both those who are ignorant of letters might have wherewith to gather a knowledge of the history, and that the people might by no means sin by adoration of a pictorial representation.
Register of the Epistles of St Gregory the Great, Book 9 (Originally quoted in translation in The Early Church Fathers and Other Works by Eerdmans)
"In this letter, St Gregory is forbidding the destruction of sacred images, as well as their abuse. There is no blanket condemnation of images, and St Gregory encourages their presence in church buildings.
Real iconoclasm is destruction. But notice what else Pope Gregory I says in the underlined and bolded section of the quote. Dissatisfaction with iconic obstruents is nothing more than excessive adoration of a pictorial representation. It is this understanding of iconography that is sinful, not the actual physical obstruent.
I don't think that someone who chooses to use a book and turn a page is less lazy than someone who looks at a screen. I think it is our duty to make the service as accommodating as possible in terms of allowing the congregation to participate in the responses and hymns. After all, the Liturgy is the work of the people and this is the most convenient way for them to contribute--ask them yourself! The apostle Paul went to great lengths to convert the Gentiles! A lot of the time, guests from outside the faith come and they have no clue what's going on Or what is being said in the church. Some of us even insist that they learn coptic in order to benefit from the responses! Even the apostles believed it was not necessary for outsiders to follow old Jewish laws such as circumcision so long as they were living a godly life. Saint Paul insists in his letters that we ought to worship in the native land's tongue!
I will just list a few benefits to having screens...
Not enough books
Bad microphones/unclear voices
Bad reading (seeing the text helps you see the intent)
Better for outsiders and newcomers
Awareness of rites(not everyone has a deacon service book)
People won't make noises dropping books or flipping pages
That's just a few...
The following is not a perfect comparison but say one says "guns are bad." One may counter by claiming that guns can serve some positive purpose. However I'm not sure if we should suggest that because one says "guns are bad" we should then assume that means that one is also arguing against using metal or mechanical devices.