CNA Columns: Sacred Arts

The Importance of Beauty to the Catholic Church

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Arthur C. Lohsen, AIA

�Beauty is indeed a good gift of God� � St. Augustine, City of God, Chapter 22

Beauty is an integral and essential part of the Catholic liturgy. It is indeed a gift from God, as St. Augustine points out. But is much more than a fleeting stimulus to the senses. Beauty is an enduring, tangible, and necessary indication of the Lord. When beauty has been allowed to wither, the liturgy and the faithful are moved away, however unintentionally, from the divine presence.

My argument hinges on one simple question: do absolutes exist? If they do (and one would assume that anyone acknowledging the existence of God would concede that God would be an absolute), then one way of understanding God is through the aspects of His nature which may be perceived within the earthly realm. If absolutes do not exist, the whole point is moot, everything is relative, and there seems little need for any notion of the divine. (Read more)

Novelty vs. Beauty

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Erik Bootsma

When I tell Catholics I meet that I�m an architect, invariably they ask me, �Why doesn�t the church I attend look like a church? Why don�t they build nice churches like the old ones we love?� Sometimes I come up with a complicated answer or theory, but most of the time I answer, �architects.�

In the United States, we have a fairly good tradition of building beautiful churches in which one can feel a true sense of reverence. One would be hard pressed to find a church built before World War II that wasn�t beautiful and beloved by its parishioners. It would be an even more difficult task to find such a church built after the World War that comes close to the beauty found in an average 1920s church and a Herculean task to find one built since the 1960s.

How is it that even within the Catholic Church, where we affirm and believe in the importance of tradition, that a deep and profound architectural heritage came to be abandoned? Again the answer is that architects, like so many other artists, have become obsessed with the idea of novelty. Most artists have been trained to believe by their mentors in 20th century art culture that only novel or �revolutionary� creations are worthy of being called art. (Read more)

In Life and in Liturgy: Does Musical Style Matter?

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By James Flood

In Life

In eras previous to our own, there was often concern about the effect of musical styles on our moral lives, from ancient Greece all the way to the mid-20th century. Christian philosopher Anicius Boethius, wrote in the 6th century: "Music can both establish and destroy morality. For no path is more open to the soul for the formation thereof than through the ears. Therefore when the rhythms and modes have penetrated even to the soul through these organs, it cannot be doubted that they affect the soul with their own character and conform it to themselves" (On Music Bk. 1, Ch. 1, quoted from. Rev. Basil Nortz, O.R.C. "The Moral Power of Music." The Homiletic & Pastoral Review (April 2002): 17-22). Today, however, such talk sounds embarrassingly outdated. Many people do understand the impact of the words of music, to the extent that rock and rap lyrics have at times become political controversies involving high court cases and the making of laws. This is certainly a valid concern, as no doubt the words of music do influence our thoughts and behaviors. But discussions on the power of the musical style itself, words aside, are easily dismissed. But the words generally flow from the style. It is the style itself that is often at the root of the problem.

In the 1950s, rock music sent shock waves through America. Parents, pastors, and concerned citizens spoke with abhorrence about this new style and made dire predictions about the negative moral impact it would have on the young and on society as a whole if it were not curbed. Modern people chuckle at these uptight and repressive "prophets of doom" who saw rock music as corrupting the young and disposing them to rebelliousness, sexual license, excess, and violence. But it seems that these so-called alarmists are vindicated by statistics. The �60s saw a sharp increase in sexual activity among the young, teen pregnancies, rebellious attitudes towards parents, drug-use, and violent crime. While there were certainly other contributing factors, the coincidence is simply too uncanny, especially when we consider that the powerful rock movement itself became synonymous precisely with drugs, free sex, and rebellion against parents and society. (Read more)

If we must do something new, let tradition and the Church take us there

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By David Clayton

Every time I paint I have to ask myself two questions: what will I paint? And how will I paint it? The answers to these questions govern the content and the style, respectively, of my finished painting and in turn their conformity to what is good, true and beautiful.

It was a surprise to me to learn that style is just as important as content in the Christian tradition. If an artist was to follow the modern secular outlook in art, then style is simply a matter of individual taste. Christian tradition however, I found out, takes the matter of style every bit as seriously as content. So how can I proceed when answering these fundamental questions?

Perhaps the most important factor that governs my ability to do this is an understanding of the nature of the human person and his relationship with God and the rest of creation. (Read more)

Picturing the Mystery: James Langley�s The Hidden Years Triptych

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Rachel Ross

In his 1999 Letter to Artists, Pope John Paul II writes, �Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath the reality�s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery� (6). For virtually all of Christian history, the Church has called on artists to make present the Christian mystery, specifically within a liturgical setting. How does a work of art draw us more deeply into the mystery of our faith? Let�s look briefly at one recent example of art that accomplishes this goal.

One recent work of Christian art is James Langley�s 2002 The Hidden Years Triptych. Commissioned for the chapel at the Opus Dei headquarters at Murray Hill Place in Manhattan, the triptych � a work of art divided into three panels � consists of three scenes from the hidden life of Christ: at the left, The Rest on the Flight to Egypt; in the center, Jesus in the Workshop of Saint Joseph; and to the right, The Death of Saint Joseph. Not only does this triptych show remarkable artistic skill, it also achieves its purpose as a work of sacred art by presenting quite successfully the central mystery of our Christian faith: the Incarnation. Without a doubt, The Hidden Years Triptych, in its chapel setting, portrays clearly and unequivocally that Christ is fully man and fully God.

The triptych�s panels trace the hidden life of Christ from his infancy, through his adolescence, and into his adulthood. We see before us the reality of a truly human life. Christ shares with us the conditions, human traits, and circumstances common to all people: birth, family, work, death. These three scenes, personal and intimate, draw our hearts closer to the reality of Christ�s earthly life, and enable us to believe more deeply in the mystery that the Word was made flesh and that God became man � like us. This is the central, ineffable mystery of God�s action in our world and in the life of each and every one of us. (Read more)

The Church Needs Art; Art Needs the Church: Lessons from the Land of Lolek

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Mark Nowakowski

Living and working for a time in Krakow -- the city that John Paul the Second loved -- I have been struck with numerous lessons regarding music, the arts, aesthetics, and the American Catholic Church. Poland gave the Church one of her greatest Popes, a man fiercely attuned to the merits, failings, and needs of the world and its Church. It comes as no surprise to me that aesthetics figured centrally in his thoughts. "Does the Church need art?" he asked. Indeed "does art need the Church?"

It was a particularly vivid recent service at the Franciscan Basilica in Krakow that led me to begin writing this article. I stood near the back of an ancient chapel bearing a faithful reproduction of the Turin Shroud. This chapel -- along with the great Cathedral that lay beyond it -- was filled with people of all ages, gathered together to celebrate an ancient Lenten rite. For a time, images of a Church in crisis were driven far from my mind by the sight of throngs of faithful Catholics, all rapt in their participation with grand tradition. This Church, across the street from the window at which John Paul II would great the faithful on his trips home, still resonated powerfully with his aesthetic lessons.

We were participating in the "gorzke zale" -- the ancient practice of singing sorrowful songs and seeking repentance during the time of Lent. After an initial hymn, the "Brotherhood of Our Lady of Sorrows" processed into the Chapel in black robes and hoods that also covered their faces. Each bore a staff bearing a symbol relating to the individual Stations of the Cross. The procession first went before the Eucharist, where the monks dropped loudly to the stone floor, prostrating themselves before Christ while the first sorrowful songs were sung. In the front of the procession was an ancient square box, bearing dark yet vibrant paintings on all sides, each image commemorating a scene from Christ's Passion. There were Gospel readings, hymns from the congregation, and a stark and harsh chant repeated by the monks. As the readings and prayers changed their subject, the box was rotated to show the faithful a corresponding image from the Passion. I was not only witnessing an ancient ceremony, but also likely one of the first multimedia presentations in the history of the Western world. (Read more)

What is the future of Catholic Art?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Hamilton Reed Armstrong

If there is to be a genuine Renaissance of Catholic art in our times, rather than ape the convolutions and idiocies of the secular art world, we must turn to our own past and build on the foundations of the Faith, �once and for all handed down to the saints.� (Epistle of St. Jude)

When one enters a church of the ancient Byzantine tradition, either Eastern Orthodox or Catholic, one is struck by the multiplicity and variety of icons or images. These icons, often hauntingly beautiful, have deep theological meaning. They are windows through which the imagination can be brought into the presence of those whom they represent in the heavenly court. Their placement in the church building is not arbitrary. The plan follows and reflects the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Christ, Pantocrator, lord of all, looks down from the gilded cupola and blesses the faithful. The Blessed Mother stands in the apse offering her prayers along with ours to her Son, and the saints stand guard in adoration on the altar screen, Iconostasis, placed before the sanctuary or Holy of Holies.

This imaginative tradition was nurtured in the West. Between the years 1140 and 1280 some 80 cathedrals were built, most within a hundred-mile radius of Paris, the then center of Catholic learning. These cathedrals were not built as architectural masterpieces to delight the eyes, nor were they built as graphic Bibles for the illiterate peasants. They were, as Irwin Panofsky points out in his seminal work Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, the visual compendium of a complete medieval Catholic worldview. They were a sort of "Summa Theologiae" in glass and stone, filling the imagination just as the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas filled the reasoning faculties of the mind. (Read more)

Where education is concerned, we are truly a Church that can serve all people at all times

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

By Mark Nowakowski

It is a fascinating realization that our ancient Catholic Mass, when applied within the totality of our faith, just happens to correspond to what science has taught us about human learning patterns.

All of our modern research on education informs us that people all learn in different ways. There are visual learners. There are those that learn from doing and repetition. There are those that learn by hearing, while others learn by repeating. Others require a combination of methods to learn most effectively. It just happens that our Mass is capable of addressing all of these methods simultaneously.

A fundamentalist Church with blank white walls, uninspired architecture, and scarce visual portrayals is guilty of denying a crucial aspect of formation to the person who learns visually. A Church with badly-performed music -- or no music at all -- is denying the faithful who just happen to have an aural sweet-tooth. The Church fearful of repetitive prayers denies full formation to those who just happen to learn well through repetition. (Read more)