S i g n i s I n d i a

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual's own reaction." In other words, the more powerful these media are, the more adept we must be at discerning their messages or effects, ill or good." Pope Pius in February 1950.

Recently the Vatican booted up its analysis of ethics in communications, and some images that came on screen belonged to a celebrated Catholic intellectual who was scarcely known as a Catholic during his decade of fame.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan's name didn't surface in the document released in June by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. But the late media guru's presence could be detected in the 40-page pamphlet: in its call for media literacy, its tribute to the unifying pull of global communications, and its recognition that the process (the medium) is as morally weighted as the content (the message).

An unswerving Catholic convert, the tweedy literature professor from Canada became an instant pop-culture luminary of the 1960s. So ubiquitous that Goldie Hawn could score a laugh on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In by giggling, "What-cha doin', Marshall McLuhan?" His latest biographer, W. Terrence Gordon, notes the double irony of a God-is-dead counter-culture giving "a man of faith the status of an icon."

Few who glimpsed the bumper-stickers with the words laughed out by Hawn had any inkling of his papist leanings. What they probably heard were his playful (and often inscrutable) aphorisms like "the medium is the message" and his most lasting locution, the "global village." (Contrary to a near universal impression, McLuhan was hardly infatuated with the media-made world.)