MAGISTERIUM

 

It dawned on me today that our world is terribly different and shaken, and that the means of social communication are massively contributing toward capsizing or crushing the once steady ship of true common culture and vibrant tradition. Our world is as much off course as it ever was during barbarian onslaughts, when the Roman empire fell apart. 

What do I mean by that? Perhaps too simply and superficially, I would insist that what Elizabeth Lev lauded in her 2018 book as the contribution of Counter-Reformation art to the Catholic Church's comeback in the minds and hearts of Catholic people straight across the board either did not really happen as she recounts it or could no longer happen today at a popular level. 

"Fundamentally, the beauty in these pages is the fruit of conflict, where the natural collides with the supernatural, the universal call to sainthood encounters humanity’s fallen nature, the personal relationship with God confronts the mission of the universal Church, and man’s desire for stability is threatened by the modern options that ever-expanding knowledge brings. The Church proposed that the most fruitful place for this debate, which ignites creativity like flint and tinder, was on canvas, not in the streets." (from the introduction of "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith: The Triumph of Beauty and Truth in Counter-Reformation Art" by Elizabeth Lev)

Am I saying that beauty and truth can no longer conquer through pictorial expression? No! I am saying that the temple or corner of the public square, represented for example by that quiet side chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome decorated with canvases by Caravaggio, is no longer accessible to enchant or "entrap" the common man who walks in off the street. The man of today has nowhere to be confronted by discourses about God, life, sanctity, vocation, and conversion. 

It is not so much that painting, sculpture, architecture, and sacred music are no longer captivating, but that they are not as accessible in contemporary society as Lev claims them to have been once upon a time.

We must reject as a way forward the folly of dialogue and accompaniment (anti-Gospel pretensions denying the primacy of repentance and conversion), as that proposal stands before us in tatters. If I were going to write this book, I guess I would start with the wisdom of Saint Benedict, who time and again goes to the most evident and elementary in his Rule. I am always struck, for instance, when he directs his young monks to the seemingly obvious, like when he directs them to take their knives (needed for work) out of their belts, before going to bed at night, so as not to injure themselves in their sleep.

On this Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, might I suggest that the way forward could be as obvious as reminding ourselves of how St. Mark opens his Gospel (Mark 1:14-15)?

And after that John was delivered up, Jesus came in Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying: The time is accomplished, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel: [Catholic Way Publishing. The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version (pp. 2708-2709). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.] 

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI