Art For A Degraded Age

Warning: the post below deals with material inappropriate for small children, for adults with artistic taste, or for anyone with a sense of decency.

Is it art, or is it architectural smut?

   The other day I heard a commentator on Catholic radio say that the Church has always "considered church buildings to be arguments”, where not just the paintings and statues, but the architecture and use of space itself teach us what it is to be part of an ordered universe with God at its head.  This is a theme  I’ve broached a few times myself, here and here in terms of church architecture, and more broadly in regard to the arts in general here and, just last week, here. Catholicism has always  understood that art and the arts play an important role in shaping our understanding of our world and our place in it.

    Today I want to take a quick look at one recent example of a very different argument in the architecture, an instance of where, as a society, we’re going in the wrong direction. The ugly little building pictured to the left, designed by Atelier Van Lieshout for the Ruhrtriennale Festival in Bochum, Germany, is supposed to resemble two people engaged in the sexual act. According to Rookje Meijerjink, a publicist for Atelier Van Lieshout, many people are delighted by it.  The Daily Mirror (full article here) quotes her as saying:

The response by both professionals, press and the general public has been very positive, the installation has featured in a large number of renowned Dutch and German newspapers, magazines and television stations, and has gathered a lot of attention online.

With all due respect to the professionals, press, public, etc., I’m afraid I can’t agree: I contend that the building is ugly, degrading, and anti-human, and the very fact that an angry crowd hasn’t burned it to the ground is a sad commentary on the sorry state of a once Christian culture.

    It’s defenders, of course, roll out the usual quasi-intellectual artspeak gobbledygook in an attempt to make this eyesore seem like a respectable artistic creation.  The Daily Mirror tells us that it “is intended to show the power of humanity over the natural world, and our disrupted relationship with nature”; Ms. Meijerink assures us that  

The artwork pays tribute to the ingenuity, the sophistication and the capacities of humankind, to the power of organisation, and to the use of this power to dominate, domesticate the natural environment.

Indeed.  It looks more to me like something a perverted pre-adolescent might make out of lego blocks, which I suppose is in keeping with the infantilism of much that passes as “art” these days. Specifically, while it is obviously intended to resemble a sexual act, the participants don’t really look like human beings.  The crude, block-like design of the structure is suggestive of people, but could just as easily be robots, animals, or any combination of the above.

    Also, while I don’t believe that it’s really possible to express the true beauty of the marital embrace in a work of representative art (for a variety of reasons both moral and aesthetic), this creation doesn’t even try. Everything from the not-quite-human crudeness of the forms to the functional rather than intimate postures of the figures seems to be an intentional mockery of anything that could be called “love making” in favor of “mating”,  or perhaps other words too uncouth to reproduce in this space. In short, rather than showing "the power of humanity over the natural world", it is showing humanity subjugated by unthinking animal passions.

The open arms of St. Peter's Basilica

    Those aren’t the only reasons why this structure so perfectly captures the spirit of its age.  It isn’t hidden in a private gallery, or in some xxx domain on the internet where the prurient-minded must intentionally seek it out: it is huge, public, and in-your-face, where no man, woman , or child could possibly miss it. One can’t help but be impressed (granted, in a somewhat nauseated way) by how this one piece of . . . um . . . "art" . . . so perfectly incorporates within itself so many of the most toxic features of the current popular culture: the celebration of ugliness over beauty, a pornification of human sexuality that insists on infusing it into everything while at the same time turning it into something no more exalted than bestial rutting, and the aggressive insistence that everyone, willing or not, must wallow together in the filth.

What a contrast between this nasty little piece of work and the sweeping colonnades of St. Peter's Basilica, which are meant to represent loving arms open to embrace the whole world with the love of Christ.  Now, I know that it's tempting to dismiss the whole thing as a puerile, harmless prank.  I disagree.  Sure, this one piece of ugliness, which will probably soon come down anyway (the show of which it is a part is scheduled to close in a couple of weeks) is not the end of civilization as we have known it.  But it's not just one piece; it is one more piece, one more bit of degradation, pushing the boundaries of the acceptable just a little beyond the last thing that was "no big deal", one more step toward cultural oblivion. And there will be something else, just a little more "transgressive", after this, and another, and another.  The Devil is in the details, and he has nothing else to do with his time; he'll keep on pushing, forever if given the chance.  

    That's why the "culture wars" shouldn't be dismissed as a distraction, or a waste of time: they have become the front lines in the eternal combat between the armies of Christ and those of Satan.  We know our General will win in the end, but there are still plenty of battles, and souls, we can lose along the way if we refuse to fight.

Catholicism And The Power of Imagination

Catholicism and Cool Stuff

     One of the attractive things about Catholicism is that, traditionally anyway, it has always included a lot of Cool Stuff: gorgeous music and art (a sampling of which I try to showcase on my blog), beautiful churches in which to worship (which are themselves filled with inspiring images), ancient, uplifting prayers with which to praise our creator, and on and on.  There's a vast treasury of beauty, and you can see it, hear, touch it, even smell it.  It's all wonderful but . . . is it really necessary?

   Many non-Catholic Christians and, sadly, even a substantial number of self-identified Catholics, dismiss these tactile and aesthetic riches as pointless frippery.  Many others recognize their power, but misunderstand their purpose.  John Adams, for instance, one of my favorite figures from American history but a man whose formation was thoroughly protestant, once witnessed a Catholic Vespers service when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia decided to take turns attending each other's churches.  He was impressed by the impact of the vestments, incense, and chanting, but also highly suspicious of its purpose, remarking "How did Luther ever break the spell?"
     Now, it's no surprise that somebody like Adams, raised in a worldview grounded in Puritanism, should mistrust and misunderstand the aesthetic aspects of Catholic worship, but we should expect better from our fellow Catholics, particularly those who design churches, plan liturgies, and compose or arrange music.  In another recent post [here] we saw how beautiful, well-ordered churches help to teach the Faith.  Today I'd like to discuss in more depth how aesthetic experiences (both inside and out of the church building) can deepen our faith and even, in some cases, help bring the unbelieving to belief.  

It's a Matter of Trust

  Before I go any further, I'd like to stress that bringing about conversion is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit.  Our Lord still wants us to play a role, however: 

 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).

A significant part of that teaching should be directed toward opening minds and hearts so that people are prepared to trust Christ and his message.
          And "Trust" is the key word. In my post "Star Trek, Secularism, And Christian Faith" [here] we looked at another passage from Matthew, in which Jesus walks on the water and then invites Peter to do the same; we saw that when Peter sinks into the waves, it was not so much from a lack of belief as a lack of trust (Matthew 14:25-32). Trust of this sort doesn’t come easily: how quickly Peter, who was a close friend of Jesus, wavered in his faith.  How many of us ordinary believers, even those of us who have had powerful and convincing encounters with the power of God, have found ourselves beginning to doubt, and starting to drift away?  This is, I think, one of the ongoing effects of original sin: that we are prey to doubt, and our emotions can overwhelm our understanding. 

     If believing Christians can be drawn into doubt, what about people with even stronger emotional incentives to disbelieve?  There are those who hope to indulge their favored sins without guilt, for instance, or who work in a profession (such as academia) or live in an environment where Christian Faith marks them out for ridicule and abuse; there are an enormous number of people who know little about the history or teaching of the Catholic Church except the misrepresentations of an uninformed and often hostile popular press; there are those who really have been harmed, or are close to somebody who has been harmed, by someone they identify with Christianity or with the Catholic Church.

The Object of Opening the Mind . . . 

William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Song of the Angels"

     Sometimes it is possible to overcome emotional barriers with the power of imagination.  It's not  that God or the matter of our Faith is imaginary, quite the opposite. It is that evidence is not self-interpreting, it needs a mind to interpret, a mind open to sometimes unsettling truths.  Things that engage the imagination such as art, music, and stories (including films and television programs) don't simply work on the intellect, they create new emotional experiences that can sometimes shake and loosen habits of mind cemented in place by previous experiences. Jesus took full advantage of this truth about human nature when he taught in parables.  Freed from these old barriers, we are able to see reality in a new light.  The well- known Catholic blogger Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (a.k.a. Fr. Z), for instance, was a Lutheran who, after hearing a beautiful work of sacred polyphony on the radio, started to view Catholicism in a different way; this was the first step in his conversion, and eventual ordination as a Catholic priest.

     G. K. Chesterton once said: "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."  An important purpose of so  many of the tangible and beautiful things in Catholic worship, all the chanting, vestments, smells and bells, is to expand the imagination so that our minds are opened large enough to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

      There is, of course, a danger in reliance on the imagination: it can expand the mind in other, less wholesome, directions as well.  The well-meaning but misguided creators of Star Trek, for instance, are just the tip of the iceberg, and much, perhaps most, of what else is on offer in the popular culture is considerably worse. Like our conscience, then, imagination must be properly formed.  We should take seriously the power of works of imagination, both for good and for bad, always bearing in mind St. Paul's advice: "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Phillipians 4:8).  We might wish to remember the Apostle's words, and feel no guilt when we enjoy the beauty of Catholic music, art, or worship.

When A Church Is Not A Church

(This "throwback" originally appeared December 19th, 2014)

     These are strange days indeed, brothers and sisters.  In my most recent “Sunday Snippets” post from December 14th, 2014 [here], commenting upon St. Mary's in Lewiston, Maine, a former church that had been converted to secular use, I remarked that “I was struck with the realization that this secular hall still looked more like a Catholic Church than many recent church buildings still being used for that purpose.”  I had been intending to expand on the theme in a blog post this week; as it happens, two notable Catholic commentators, Prof. Anthony Esolen and the inimitable Fr. Z both beat me to it. 

The interior of St. Ann's Woonsocket, RI

     Esolen published an essay [here] in Crisis magazine, using the magnificent St. Ann’s Church in Woonsocket, RI, as his vehicle for discussing what he calls the libido delendi, “lust for destruction”.  This odious force has had its way with the Catholic Church over the past few decades, and not only in matters relating to church art and architecture, but in terms of language, liturgy, and much else.  Fr. Z approvingly takes up Esolen’s evocative Latin phrase in his post [here] commenting on the Crisis article, and ends with a rousing call to battle the libido delendi with a renewed push to revive the Extraordinary Form in as many places as possible.  As it turns out, the indefatigable Prof. Esolen also published a second essay on a the theme of tradition and destruction [here] at The Catholic Thing, this time focusing on the posture of prayer in the Mass (ably assisted by Homer and his Odyssey).

     All of the above is worth reading, but if I may try to summarize: Esolen’s overarching theme is the incarnational nature of Catholic worship, how the art, architecture, language and posture of prayer, and the direct tangible connection to the experiences of our predecessors in the Faith, are all part of our experience of God.  As he says in his Crisis article, referring to the former parishioners of the beautifully frescoed St. Ann’s:

Every time they entered their church, they walked into a great symphony of stories. Here is Abel, the smoke of his sacrifice ascending straight toward the heavens. Here is Cain, ducking, his arms held before his head, the smoke of his sacrifice blinding and choking. Here is God the Father, bringing light out of darkness. Here exactly opposite Him is the prophet Jonah, spat out by the whale de profundis onto the shore. You cannot understand the paintings and their placement in the same way in which you understand a bald message, such as, “The last person to leave the church must lock the doors.” You cannot come to an end of understanding them. They are mysteries, familiar and utterly unfamiliar at once. They cause you to be at home with wonders.

We worship the God Who Became Flesh with our entire being, and we can’t contain that experience within our limited minds and in narrow categories of our own devising.  In The Catholic Thing Esolen describes the church/liturgy/doctrine wreck-o-vators as people who simply don’t grasp this expansive understanding of Catholic practice (and, really, human existence):

Over-schooled people, long sheltered from the physical necessities of life, from plowing, sowing, digging, sawing, stitching, bleaching, ironing, mowing – they are most prone to lifeless abstractions, and most dismissive of the bodily gestures that people who work with hands and shoulders and backs understand.

And as he points out, again in Crisis:

Intellectuals are the original smashers of images. It was not quarry workers who demanded that their communion rails be knocked out with sledge hammers. It was not little children who pleaded with their pastors to cover paintings with whitewash. It was not housewives who demanded that the high altars with all their draperies and candelabra be replaced with tables so bare and spare that they would not do for an ordinary kitchen.

Our intellectual understandings need to be refined by the real corporeal experience of the Faith as handed on and as lived by generations of believers. Esolen suggests that when we separate ourselves from the tangible signs of that history, we get the de-mystifiying, the leveling, the whitewashing and, “as an ultimate but never to be realized aim, the destruction of Christ’s Church on earth.”

The reredos of the former St. Mary's, Lewiston, ME

     I found myself entertaining similar thoughts a couple weeks ago as I sat in the former St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston, Maine, now a private meeting hall. I was  listening to a lawyer who is also a Baptist preacher talking, ironically enough, about the deconstruction of the U.S. Constitution, as a statue of the Blessed Mother cradling the Baby Jesus looked down on it all. As I looked at that lovely old reredos (the structure that stands behind an old-fashioned high altar) I kept thinking of all the newer churches I’ve seen, where they don’t seem to know what to do with the space behind the new-style free-standing altar. One of the better choices I’ve seen is a large wall painting of Christ Pantocrator; a large Crucifix is also appropriate; less suitably, I’ve seen shelves or plants; the worst solution I can recall was a piano occupying the area behind the altar, as if it we were in a concert hall.
     One thing I’ve never seen on the back wall in any church built since 1965 is a high altar, with or without a reredos.  One of the most distinctive architectural features, perhaps the only essential architectural element, of every single Catholic church built from the time of Constantine seventeen centuries ago up until the mid sixties, and it doesn’t occur to anyone involved in designing Catholic churches as the solution to the problem of what to put behind the new altar - even if only for the sake of appearance.  It reminds me of the people I’ve seen doing the awkward dance of holding a squirming baby in one arm while trying to receive communion in the other hand without dropping either the Sacred Host or the child (and I have seen this many times).  Do they not realize that they if they simply held their youngster securely with both hands and put their tongue out to receive they could protect the safety of the child, the sanctity of the Sacrament, and their own dignity all at the same time?  In both cases, doing what has been the long-standing tradition of our predecessors is both more elegant and more practical. 
     The high altar, as an architectural element, also does something else as well: it serves as a natural focal point (especially when it is emphasized by the reredos or a baldacchino, a canopy-like structure over the altar). In a church of traditional design, all the elements naturally draw the eye toward the high altar, where the miracle of transubstantiation takes place as the Word becomes Flesh, and just above that the Tabernacle, containing the Body of Christ. Even on an unconscious level we understand that Christ is the center, and that our encounter with Him in the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life.  Compare the esthetic confusion of many contemporary altars and churches with the still profound impact of  a preserved former church like the former St. Mary’s in Lewiston . . . or St. Ann in Woonsocket.
     Did I mention St. Ann’s, like St. Mary’s, is no longer a church?  That’s a detail that Prof. Esolen seems to have left out of his otherwise excellent essay.  You can visit the web site of the St. Ann Arts and Cultural Center here.  Strange days, as I said above.  The Diocese was going to tear down one of the most beautiful, and one of the most theologically engaging, parish churches in the United States, but the building, along with its treasure of art and inspiring architecture was saved by a secular group.  Now its gorgeous frescoes look down on wedding receptions and the like, but the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is no longer offered, as far as I can tell: neither on the high altar nor on the free-standing post-Vatican II altar.  At any rate, while there is a link on the website labeled “Church Services”, the page it leads to is empty.

Detail of a Fresco at St. Ann: Angel wings come through the architecture

     How odd, and sad. “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Secular groups are willing to save, on purely esthetic or sentimental grounds, sacred treasures that have been entrusted to us but which we are trying to throw away. The church buildings are only an example.  As Anthony Esolen argues, the whole project of eradication of the old and beautiful, including not just buildings but sacred art, sacred language, traditional devotions, and much more, the libido delendi aims at destroying the Church by destroying any sense of identity among its members.  Totalitarian states try to smother opposition by separating people from each other and from their history, so that they have no strong sense of self, of who they are.  St. John Paul understood this well, and by recalling the Polish people to their national and Christian identity led the way to the overthrow of communism.  So why are we trying so hard to destroy our own Catholic identity?
    

Christ or Anti-Christ? Art And The Power Of Imagination

Who do you see in the picture?

     The Incarnation remains among the most astounding of Catholic doctrines.  It's not easy to believe that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word,

 . . . though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phillipians 2:6-8)

The Infinite God, St. Paul tells us, willingly took on finite humanity in the Incarnation.  Because we believe this, Catholics have always understood that humble and material things can serve as channels for greater, immaterial things.  The chief examples, aside from the God-Man Jesus Christ Himself, are the Sacraments, which are created things that serve as vehicles of God’s Grace, but we also find the same principle at work, albeit on a less exalted level, in art, music, and other works of the imagination.

    In recent posts about Star Trek [here] and about biblical films such as Noah [here] I have discussed the power of images and other works that appeal to the imagination to mislead and confuse. Such things can also enlighten us, of course, if they are done properly, and deepen our understanding (which is why the Catholic faith has always had such a large audio-visual component).  I recently came across an interesting example of an imaginative work being used in a more positive manner.  Two imaginative works, actually, because it involves a renaissance fresco appearing in a modern work of fiction.

    The book is michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic novel Father Elijah.  I’m thinking in particular of a scene in which Fr. Elijah himself and a friend are looking at a wall painting in the Cathedral of Orvieto:

Elijah went over to another mural.

His eyes were drawn to the central figure of the image, a figure of Christ.  How strange, he thought, to see a representation of the Lord with the figure of Satan whispering in His ear,and his arm penetrating His robes.  Is that Christ’s hand or the devil’s that emerges from the folds of cloth?

It was not a literal representation of a scriptural scene, he concluded; although it might be the artist’s imaginative rendering of the temptation in the desert?  But there was something out of character in the way Christ leaned into Satan’s embrace and listened with such attention.

He stared at it for a long time.  Suddenly, the meaning of the mural became clear, like a scene viewed through lenses revolving into focus.  The blurred shapes of reality drew together into a sharp, piercing landscape of moral disaster.

The figure held in the devil’s embrace was not Christ but the Antichrist.

Elijah understood why Don Matteo had wanted him to see it.  Now he knew why the old friar would not tell him the reason for his request.  Matteo had wanted Elijah to discover the secret of the mural himself, and in the process, to observe the mechanics of perception.

     I immediately knew the painting by it's description, because I had used a picture of it to illustrate a blog post last winter (called, appropriately enough, "'Choice' And The Father Of Lies", here).  The painting creates a vivid picture of Satan's usual modus operandi: evil working in the guise of good.  The striking image gets the message across much more memorably than a simple explanation (hence the old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words").

     But there's more to it than that.  Notice that the characters looking at the mural above don't at first realize what they're seeing; neither did I, only it took me a lot longer to figure it out than it does Fr. Elijah.  But that's part of what makes the painting so effective: we think we're seeing Jesus, only to realize that we're actually looking at his opposite.  We are not merely seeing a depiction of deception, we are in fact deceived by the artist's work: we experience deception itself, "in the flesh" as it were.  That's a powerful lesson.  That's why, in O'Brien's novel, Don Matteo wanted Fr. Elijah to experience it first-hand.

     Very often our faith is hindered by emotional barriers: those of us who are believers sometimes give in to doubt, even though we've experienced God's presence;  unbelievers often are incapable of accepting any evidence at all because of such barriers.  A well-crafted work of visual or imaginative art can often weaken those barriers by creating a new emotional experience, and so lead to a new or deeper understanding, while bad or disordered art can lead us further into darkness.  What we see, hear, or read can make all the difference.

     

Veni, Creator Spiritus & Weekly Round-Up for Pentecost Sunday 2015

Juan Batista Maino, Pentecostes

     Today is Pentecost Sunday, on which we commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem; we also take this as a special opportunity to ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in our own lives, often by praying or singing the ancient hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus" ("Come, Creator Spirit").  In the moving clip below we see the College of Cardinals calling upon the Holy Spirit in this way, not at Pentecost but at another time when the aid of the Third Person of the Trinity was required: the last Papal election.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.

Weekly Round-Up, Pentecost Sunday 2015

The academic year is drawing to a close, and bloggery needs to take a back seat to more immediate responsibilities.  Nonetheless, I did manage to post a thing or two:

Wednesday - “FeedYour Mind And Soul: The Office of Readings (LOH 5)”  How you can enrich your prayer life and also expand your Biblical literacy through the Office of Readings (the fifth installment of my series on the Liturgy of the Hours for lay men and women). 

and “Hidden Law,Society, and Catholic Teaching”  The informal “laws” created by family, relationships, and religion often govern our lives much more effectively than laws imposed by the state. 

Thursday - “Quick!What’s The Summit And Source of the Christian Life?” We lose more than we might realize when we lose reverence for the Eucharist 

Friday - “AbortionMyth # 14” If ‘a woman and her doctor’ told you to jump off the roof, would you do it? 

Attende, Domine, et Miserere

Pope Benedict XVI blessing ashes on Ash Wednesday, February 17th, 2010, and the simple but lovely chant Attende Domini.  I have always admired how well the music fits the meaning in this hymn.  It is also a good way to start the penitential season that begins next week: "Heed me Lord, and have mercy, for we have sinned against you."


Attende Domine, et miserere, quia peccavimus tibi.

Miserere mei, Have Mercy on Me - Psalm 51

Detail from Michelangelo's Last Judgment

Psalm 51 (Miserere mei) is the great penitiential psalm attributed to King David, and is closely associated with the Season of Lent, which begins next week.  I particularly like this video because it combines images from Michelangelo's amazing frescoes in the Sistine Chapel (for which Allegri's music was specifically composed) with the text of the Psalm, in both Latin and English.  This is a great way to begin preparing the heart to encounter the Pascal Mystery over the next course of the Liturgical Year.

Miserere mei Deus secundum misericordiam tuam iuxta
multitudinem miserationem tuarum dele iniquitates meas.

Alessandro Scarlatti - Exsultate Deo

     It’s only natural that the children of a loving Father should try to please and honor him. And so for the past two thousand years, Christians have put untold effort, ingenuity and love into creating a magnificent store of inspiring art of all sorts to glorify God, including a treasury of sacred music unmatched for its depth, breadth, and sheer beauty.

     Sometimes it seems we’re throwing it all away.  All too often, it seems, we keep the best china and good silver locked away and receive the Lord of Creation with the equivalent of paper plates and plastic forks at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

     It doesn’t need to be that way.  We all can and should advocate for liturgical music worthy of Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  And if it’s any comfort, long after nobody remembers that there was any such thing as “Anthem” or “Lord of the Dance”, Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Exsultate Domine” will still be there, and still sound like music fit for The King.

When A Church Is Not A Church

     These are strange days indeed, brothers and sisters.  In my most recent “Sunday Snippets” post [here], commenting upon a former church that had been converted to secular use, I remarked that “I was struck with the realization that this secular hall still looked more like a Catholic Church than many recent church buildings still being used for that purpose.”  I had been intending to expand on the theme in a blog post this week; as it happens, two notable Catholic commentators, Prof. Anthony Esolen and the inimitable Fr. Z both beat me to it. 

The interior of St. Ann's Woonsocket, RI

     Esolen (to whose work I find myself linking rather often) published an essay [here] in Crisis magazine, using the magnificent St. Ann’s Church in Woonsocket, RI, as his vehicle for discussing what he calls the libido delendi, “lust for destruction”.  This odious force has had its way with the Catholic Church over the past few decades, and not only in matters relating to church art and architecture, but in terms of language, liturgy, and much else.  Fr. Z approvingly takes up Esolen’s evocative Latin phrase in his post [here] commenting on the Crisis article, and ends with a rousing call to battle the libido delendi with a renewed push to revive the Extraordinary Form in as many places as possible.  As it turns out, the indefatigable Prof. Esolen also published a second essay on a the theme of tradition and destruction [here] at The Catholic Thing, this time focusing on the posture of prayer in the Mass (ably assisted by Homer and his Odyssey).

     All of the above is worth reading, but if I may try to summarize: Esolen’s overarching theme is the incarnational nature of Catholic worship, how the art, architecture, language and posture of prayer, and the direct tangible connection to the experiences of our predecessors in the Faith, are all part of our experience of God.  As he says in his Crisis article, referring to the former parishioners of the beautifully frescoed St. Ann’s:

Every time they entered their church, they walked into a great symphony of stories. Here is Abel, the smoke of his sacrifice ascending straight toward the heavens. Here is Cain, ducking, his arms held before his head, the smoke of his sacrifice blinding and choking. Here is God the Father, bringing light out of darkness. Here exactly opposite Him is the prophet Jonah, spat out by the whale de profundis onto the shore. You cannot understand the paintings and their placement in the same way in which you understand a bald message, such as, “The last person to leave the church must lock the doors.” You cannot come to an end of understanding them. They are mysteries, familiar and utterly unfamiliar at once. They cause you to be at home with wonders.

We worship the God Who Became Flesh with our entire being, and we can’t contain that experience within our limited minds and in narrow categories of our own devising.  In The Catholic Thing Esolen describes the church/liturgy/doctrine wreck-o-vators as people who simply don’t grasp this expansive understanding of Catholic practice (and, really, human exeistence):

Over-schooled people, long sheltered from the physical necessities of life, from plowing, sowing, digging, sawing, stitching, bleaching, ironing, mowing – they are most prone to lifeless abstractions, and most dismissive of the bodily gestures that people who work with hands and shoulders and backs understand.

And as he points out, again in Crisis:

Intellectuals are the original smashers of images. It was not quarry workers who demanded that their communion rails be knocked out with sledge hammers. It was not little children who pleaded with their pastors to cover paintings with whitewash. It was not housewives who demanded that the high altars with all their draperies and candelabra be replaced with tables so bare and spare that they would not do for an ordinary kitchen.

Our intellectual understandings need to be refined by the real corporeal experience of the Faith as handed on and as lived by generations of believers. Esolen suggests that when we separate ourselves from the tangible signs of that history, we get the de-mystifiying, the leveling, the whitewashing and, “as an ultimate but never to be realized aim, the destruction of Christ’s Church on earth.”

The reredos of the former St. Mary's, Lewiston, ME

     I found myself entertaining similar thoughts a couple weeks ago as I sat in the former St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston, Maine, now a private meeting hall. I was  listening to a lawyer who is also a Baptist preacher talking, ironically enough, about the deconstruction of the U.S. Constitution, as a statue of the Blessed Mother cradling the Baby Jesus looked down on it all. As I looked at that lovely old reredos (the structure that stands behind an old-fashioned high altar) I kept thinking of all the newer churches I’ve seen, where they don’t seem to know what to do with the space behind the new-style free-standing altar. One of the better choices I’ve seen is a large wall painting of Christ Pantocrator; a large Crucifix is also appropriate; less suitably, I’ve seen shelves or plants; the worst solution I can recall was a piano occupying the area behind the altar, as if it we were in a concert hall.
     One thing I’ve never seen on the back wall in any church built since 1965 is a high altar, with or without a reredos.  One of the most distinctive architectural features, perhaps the only essential architectural element, of every single Catholic church built from the time of Constantine seventeen centuries ago up until the mid sixties, and it doesn’t occur to anyone involved in designing Catholic churches as the solution to the problem of what to put behind the new altar - even if only for the sake of appearance.  It reminds me of the people I’ve seen doing the awkward dance of holding a squirming baby in one arm while trying to receive communion in the other hand without dropping either the Sacred Host or the child (and I have seen this many times).  Do they not realize that they if they simply held their youngster securely with both hands and put their tongue out to receive they could protect the safety of the child, the sanctity of the Sacrament, and their own dignity all at the same time?  In both cases, doing what has been the long-standing tradition of our predecessors is both more elegant and more practical. 
     The high altar, as an architectural element, also does something else as well: it serves as a natural focal point (especially when it is emphasized by the reredos or a baldacchino, a canopy-like structure over the altar). In a church of traditional design, all the elements naturally draw the eye toward the high altar, where the miracle of transubstantiation takes place as the Word becomes Flesh, and just above that the Tabernacle, containing the Body of Christ. Even on an unconscious level we understand that Christ is the center, and that our encounter with Him in the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life.  Compare the esthetic confusion of many contemporary altars and churches with the still profound impact of  a preserved former church like the former St. Mary’s in Lewiston . . . or St. Ann in Woonsocket.
     Did I mention St. Ann’s, like St. Mary’s, is no longer a church?  That’s a detail that Prof. Esolen seems to have left out of his otherwise excellent essay.  You can visit the web site of the St. Ann Arts and Cultural Center here.  Strange days, as I said above.  The Diocese was going to tear down one of the most beautiful, and one of the most theologically engaging, parish churches in the United States, but the building, along with its treasure of art and inspiring architecture was saved by a secular group.  Now its gorgeous frescoes look down on wedding receptions and the like, but the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is no longer offered, as far as I can tell: neither on the high altar nor on the free-standing post-Vatican II altar.  At any rate, while there is a link on the website labeled “Church Services”, the page it leads to is empty.

Detail of a Fresco at St. Ann: Angel wings come through the architecture

     How odd, and sad. “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Secular groups are willing to save, on purely esthetic or sentimental grounds, sacred treasures that have been entrusted to us but which we are trying to throw away. The church buildings are only an example.  As Anthony Esolen argues, the whole projects of eradication of the old and beautiful, including not just buildings but sacred art, sacred language, traditional devotions, and much more, the libido delendi aims at destroying the Church by destroying any sense of identity among its members.  Totalitarian states try to smother opposition by separating people from each other and from their history, so that they have no strong sense of self, of who they are.  St. John Paul understood this well, and by recalling the Polish people to their national and Christian identity led the way to the overthrow of communism.  So why are we trying so hard to destroy our own Catholic identity?
    

'Kyrie': Missa Papae Marcelli - Palestrina / Tallis Scholars 1980

It occurs to me that I have only once posted any music by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, one of the great masters of sacred polyphony.  Tonight I'm making a start toward rectifying that omission with the "Kyrie" from his Missa Papae Marcelli.
     Music has developed and grown in the more than four centuries since Palestrina's time in wonderful ways, and there have been composers of outstanding genius, but nothing, if I may offer my personal opinion, has surpassed the sheer beauty of the best sacred polyphony. The video of this rendition by the Tallis Scholars complements Palestrina's beautiful music with beautiful views of religious sites in Southern France.  Enjoy.

Mary In The Annunciation Is A Model For Us All

I first posted this piece on March 24th, the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation.  In a few weeks we begin the Season of Advent, in which we wait ever more expectantly for the culmination of the pregnancy that started back in March, and the birth of the Savior.  This is not a bad time to remind ourselves how it all begins. Christ is indeed at the Center of History, and his Incarnation is the greatest event in the history of the cosmos, but at the same time it all starts with one particular young women, and one little human baby . . . and that baby is the King of Kings.

     I’ve often admired the stained glass window depicting the Annunciation that looks down on the sanctuary in my local cathedral.  We see the young woman Mary, kneeling on the floor and surrounded by angels, while God the father looks down on her from above, sending forth a beam on which rests the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove.  God the Son is there, too, although we don’t see him, a human embryo in Mary’s womb, the Omnipotent Divine wrapped in mortal human flesh.  That’s how we encounter Jesus in the Gospels: the Eternal Word in human disguise; that’s how we receive him in the Holy Eucharist: the Second Person of the Trinity in the form of simple bread.  It’s a marvelous image to contemplate as we approach the Altar of the Lord to receive Holy Communion.

       Tomorrow, of course, is the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrated nine months before the Nativity of The Lord at Christmas.  I’ve often thought that, the current vogue for atheists and atheism notwithstanding, it’s not really that hard to believe in God.  What is difficult, very difficult in fact, is to believe that the Uncreated Creator of all Time and Space is the least bit interested in beings as small, short-lived, and insignificant as we appear to be in the vast sweep of the Universe.  That he should become a little human baby just so that he could suffer with us and die for us, well, this saying is hard; who could accept it (see John 6:60)?  And that’s not all: the Omnipotent God sought the consent of one little maiden in a small town in an insignificant corner of the world in order to do it.  Not the least of the reasons why we honor Mary is her willingness to put her very self in God’s hands: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; Let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

     Mary’s willingness to give up herself to be a part, perhaps the greatest (solely) human actor in God’s Great Drama of Salvation is the big picture; as is often the way, there’s a little picture, too, a way in which the Annunciation is reflected in our own lives.  God has a plan for all of us.  He imposes nothing, to paraphrase John Paul the Great, but always proposes (Redemptoris Missio).  He is constantly asking us to allow him in, to consent to serve him in ways big and small.  “Today if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts” is one of the Lent antiphons in the Liturgy of the Hours.  We all hear the voice of the Lord at some point, if we’re listening; let us all not harden our hearts, but rather let it be done to us according to his word.

Claudio Monteverdi's Nisi Dominus

Monteverdi was probably the most important composer in the transition from Renaissance Polyphony to Baroque.  This beautiful piece from his his Vespro della Beata Vergine is a musical setting for Psalm 127, one of my favorites, which celebrates our reliance on God's Providence (you can read my post on Psalm 127 here).

Claudio Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi

Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival (21 September 2014)

     Happy Sunday, and welcome to Sunday Snippets, a papist post exchange wherein various bloggers of a Romish disposition swap links to their postings for the week past.  You can find the main convocation here at This That and the Other Thing, home of Chief Snippeteer RAnn.
     

September beach-wear in Maine

It was one of those weeks here at Principium et Finis wherein bloggery took a back seat to other concerns, although there were a few posts (more on that below).  But first, I wanted to talk about a little jaunt we made last weekend, a late-summer (nearly fall) visit to the beach.  The high temperatures for the day didn’t get above the mid 60’s, so we wore jackets and kept our shoes on, and just walked and enjoyed the views (no selfies of my feet in the surf this time).  Most other beach-goers were dressed for the weather as we were, but a few defiant souls were there in swimsuits, either stretched out on the beach or even, in the case of the most intrepid souls, wading a little into the water.  One of my sons remarked that there were two factions at the beach that day: those who were in denial and those who were not.

     Among the deniers there was one young girl dressed in a swimsuit, maybe twelve years old, who was venturing into the surf . . . holding a smart phone in her hand.  It was a most incongruous image.  Twenty minutes later I saw her again, a little further down the beach, still clutching her little electronic gadget.  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised: I’ve seen the videos of people walking into walls, fountains, etc., in public places with their eyes glued to little screens, I’ve seen with my own eyes my fellow motorists going down the highway at 70 miles per hour with their eyes down and their thumbs bouncing off their devices, and I’ve heard about the often fatal accidents caused by such people. 
     I couldn't help but think of that poor techno-crazed girl when I read this article [here] in Catholic World Report about "Casualities of the Device Age".  The author, Thomas Doran, explains that, while the little gadgets have many useful aspects, the widespread addiction to them contributes "to a decline in the ability to reason, contemplation, and self-discipline."  Having taught high school students for twenty-eight years, I can testify to the truth of Doran's observations.  I would also add that enslavement to these little electronic tyrants, because they try to fill the void in our heart that only God can fill (as do all addictions), draws us away from the Lord.  A few months ago I posted a meditation [here] in which I discussed the vastness of the sea as an image of God's infinite love. How very sad that the girl at the beach  couldn't leave behind the instrument of her spiritual servitude even for the infinite embrace of the ocean; what a sobering image of our modern predicament.

     Hmmm, perhaps you are saying, did he do anything last week but visit the seashore?  Well, a few things.  For instance:


Monday - The curious relationship between joy and suffering: "Our Lady of Sorrows & the Mystery of Suffering" [here]

Tuesday - Another mystery, the Mystery of Beauty, as experienced through "Palestrina's 'Stabat Mater' and Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta" [here]

Thursday - In a Throwback from March I muse upon the pitfalls and dangers one finds in trying to apply an ancient Christian maxim, as seen in the Curious Case of Michael Coren: "Easier Said Than Done: Hating The Sin, LovingThe Sinner" [here]

    

Palestrina's "Stabat Mater" and Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta

     “At one time it was understood that liturgical music should lift us up from this world and direct our hearts and minds toward The Lord.  Is that asking too much?”  I made the following comment last week in reference to a beautiful and, yes, uplifting “Sanctus” by the English composer William Byrd.  Beautiful music and beautiful art has a power to move us emotionally, and beauty has a way of moving us toward God that the unbeautiful, alas, cannot match.  I am fortunate to attend a church that has a good chorus, led over the fifteen years I’ve been here by a series of talented and faithful music directors.  Several times a year, at least, I have the opportunity to hear Sacred Polyphony as part of the Mass: what a blessed experience!  Most of the other music is very good, and appropriate for the Liturgy as well (with a few clunkers thrown in, but why dwell on the negative?).

      It was with all this in mind that I recently found myself, as I was listening to one of these beautiful pieces, thinking to myself “How did they ever abandon this for all that Happy Time nonsense?”  Well, it seems to go with the mundane language of  “dynamic equivalence” translations (see here), ugly, chaotic church buildings (see here for more on that), and the rejection of traditional devotions for innovations that tend to direct our attention to the here and now (and US), rather to the above, beyond and HIM.

     This is all a lead-in to the clip below, an overflow from yesterday’s feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.  The video’s creator beautifully combined the incomparable Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina’s setting for the Marian Hymn “Stabat Mater” with visuals of Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta (also known as the Deposition).  This sculpture has a interesting history (see here), which along with its atypical (for Michelangelo) style and composition make it a fruitful object for a meditation on the suffering of Mary, and suffering in general. So here we have beautiful visual art working with beautiful sacred music to lift up our prayer. What could be better?