What in the cold hell is the purpose of that, may I ask?
The whole purpose of being a Catholic artist is that you may do Sacred Art (yes, I capitalized it, I consider it a part of Tradition, but that's another topic) for the edification of what? CHURCHES. Y'know, those ugly buildings most Roman Catholics enter to do a watered-down version of the Novus Ordo (PLEASE someone link me to a Novus Ordo with the full chant as it's supposed to be)? Yeah, surprise, those are supposed to be beautiful! But I guess it's hard to do that when people, even at a Catholic university, seem to forget that the whole point of art is to lift the mind and senses up to God! Allow me a rant for another paragraph, and I promise you something more akin to coherency.
It is my experience (all 23 years of it!) that the Church has lost something very very important: an appreciation of the physical world. You have people saying the sexual urge is holy and then condemning it in the next breath, idiots who pretend that Sacred Art pays for itself, and the ugliest shit produced by anyone and everyone in this day and age, and you wonder why we have such problems? I get a better sense of what's sacred from the Boondock Saints then walking into most churches, people! Why?
I am willing to bet money (without looking it up even!) that Mr. Duffy isn't Catholic, and yet with this opening scene I got a better sense of what a Catholic Church was about then 95% of Catholic Churches I walk into. This movie that most devout, conservative, Catholics will never watch because of its language and violence has a better witness to what they're about than most of them will ever be able to conceive of, because it actually shows beauty! Oh the wicked irony!
Sacred Art isn't cheap, Nathan, is what you'll tell me. Artists are expensive to keep around, and we can't afford it. To those wonderfully smart people I say, "No shit. Really? I've been doing Byzantine iconography for 7 years! I think I know how expensive sacred art can get!" But to the eternal shame of those who point this out I will point out that most of the beautiful churches we have in this world were built by hand. You heard me, by hand. The community put their money where there mouth was, and built their sacred space! They then hired an artist with their hard-earned cash, in economic situations that make ours look wondrously awesome, and put all their hopes and dreams into one building where they went pretty damn often. And what's the result, may I dare ask?
We will fail to convince people we are following the true Way until our art convinces them. We will fail so epically that most of us will wonder why we're so ineffective. And the answer will be so simple that it'll sting when we die and see why all these people that we want peace for so badly had so much difficulty: we forgot that humans respond to beauty, not arguments.
I should stop ranting now. Before I say something truly asinine.
If you're ever in Cincinnati, try Old St. Mary's at nine fifteen Sunday morning. Haven't been there in a while, but it fit the bill last I saw for what the Church is still supposed to be like, even in the New Order of Mass.
ReplyDeleteAs for ranting vs. rational discussion... I dunno, your rant hits on something that could easily get lost in intellectual analysis. I don't think it's wise to substitute feeling for thinking, but I think it's equally unwise to forget that we're not pure spirits, we're embodied spirits and the entire romantic notion of little external concrete things uplifting our reality and symbolizing greater things is, well, exactly what humans should be, what humans need to be. Separating and opposing feeling and thinking seems, to judge by the churches to which go the people I know of either the puritan intellectual or the wishy washy touchy feely schools, to lead to ugliness either way, and not to do much to help follow moral and Faithful living either. An epiphany I had a while back touched on this, there being a whole in which parts like bodiliness and intellectuality are only good if they're all working together for God in their rightful places and not overshadowing each other; maybe I'll post a rational explanation of some of the things I learned then, but the fact remains that it wasn't my intellect that hit me over the head with it, and your rant is spot on in highlighting that.
You need to stop being so smart. You're showing me up here!
ReplyDeleteIt took me a few tries to get a ramble that was succinct and remained on-topic; I can only keep this up so long, trust me. Soon you won't hear anything from me but jabber about C++ issues (and that hopefully not on the blog). [Yet another tangential ramble redacted. See, there I go again.]
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