The Latin Church followed the logic visual 
organization offered by papyrus and the Roman 
bureaucracy and road systems. The Byzantine 
Church remained much more in the pattern of oral 
culture with its decentralism and its much higher 
degree of inclusive involvement in perceptual and 
social organization. Now, under conditions of 
electric circuitry, the Latin Church finds itself 
“sailing to Byzantine,” as it were, at a very high 
speed.

Thomas P. McDonnell, “Marshall McLuhan—The Man 
Who Infuriates the Critics,” U.S. Catholic , March 
1966.