Fr. Barron on Anti-Catholic Prejudice Then and Now

See also Fr. Barron's article, "Why Anti-Catholic Prejudice Ought to Bother Everyone."

Sacred Art - by Cornelius Sullivan

SACRED ART 

Pieta, Michelangelo, 1499, Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome. 

January 20, 2014

Cornelius Sullivan

Naples, Florida

 The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. -Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -1. 

Pope Benedict the scholar has not cited the great intellectual tradition of the Church, he names two places where the faith is en-fleshed. These two treasures still inspire pilgrimages. Pilgrims go to Assisi because Saint Francis was there. "Back packing pilgrims for art" go to the Sistine Chapel for art and in Rome and throughout Europe retrace the steps of pilgrims for the faith from centuries past.

No Catholic university has a Department of Sacred Art. Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict have insisted that art should have a major role in the New Evangelization. 

With a few exceptions, works of art in Catholic churches today are ordered from the catalogs of furniture suppliers, the ones who provide the pews and the candle sticks. This is in spite of the clear urging of the Second Vatican Council almost a half a century ago for pastors to use local artists to create religious works. 

Hans Urs von Balthasar has said that beauty changes us and that,  

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love. 

From the poet author of “The Hound of Heaven”, Francis Thompson:

The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for her own. The palm and the laurel, Dominic and Dante, sanctity and song, grew together in her soul: she has retained the palm, but forgone the laurel. … But poetry sinned, poetry fell; and in place of lovingly reclaiming her, Catholicism cast her from the door to follow the feet of her pagan seducer. The separation has been ill for poetry; it has not been well for religion. 3.

Catholic colleges and universities have preserved intellectual disciplines from earlier centuries with core classes in Theology, Philosophy, History and the study of Literature, but they have shied away from any creativity in art. Instead they have embraced Reformation-like iconoclastic ideas. And art is partly to blame. As Thompson said, “poetry sinned”. Art sinned even more. Art became autonomous, no longer serving, but always proclaiming its own newness and freedom from restraint and even freedom from relevance to people’s lives. The self-referential stance of Modern Art inevitably had to lead to a complete break with any connection to the real, as most people view it, ending in Conceptual Art, art solely as an idea. So, art has become just an idea that man the creator generates. There is no acknowledgment that he is a creature and there is no realization of the truth of the Incarnation. The Church’s distance from music has not been so great because some consensus has been possible. Bad music hurts the ears. Bad art can be shrugged off and then it lingers somewhere in the back of the brain like a bad dream. The elitism of contemporary art is maintained. Typically American Catholics say, "I don't know anything about art" and under their breath mutter, "And I don't care." 

A particular feature of Catholic art is that it tells of universal truths through the particular. There is no such thing as sacred abstract art. There is no such thing as "Reformation Art". 

Sir Kenneth Clark, the great Protestant art historian, understands Catholic art in a profound way. In his classic book Civilization he includes what has been written out of history, the beheading of statues of the Virgin in Reformation England, and at the same time he is able to explain the greatness of Catholic art. He does maintain his biases, for example in saying that ideas flourish more easily in the North. But he shows his depth of understanding of great art in describing how art is linked with an understanding of the female in religions and with the idea of the particular signifying the transcendent.  

He says:

The great achievements of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing,         humanizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people. Take the cult of the Virgin. In the early 12th century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilization. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon the earth. In that Renaissance, while remaining the queen of Heaven she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognize qualities of warmth and love and approachability. Now imagine the feelings of a simple hearted man or woman -- a Spanish peasant, an Italian artisan -- on hearing that the Northern heretics were insulting the Virgin, desecrating her sanctuaries, pulling down or decapitating her images. He must have felt something deeper than shock and indignation: he must have felt that some part of his whole emotional life was threatened. And he would have been right. 4. 

It is not so difficult to imagine that only the "cult of the Virgin" could civilize the barbarism of our age.  

Clark goes on to explain why religions of the will have no art.   

The stabilizing comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being -- in Egypt, India or China -- gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle. 5. 

Pope Benedict XVI has said about the Pieta concept, “The languages into which the Gospel entered when it came to the pagan world did not have such modes of expression. But the image of the pieta, the Mother grieving for her son, became the vivid translation of this word. In her God’s maternal affliction is open to view. In her we can behold it and touch it. She is the compasio of God, displayed in a human being who has let herself be drawn wholly into God’s mystery.”  6.

 

Pieta 2006, detail, marble, life size, by the Author. 

John Saward in his book, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness

of Beauty, makes a connection between beauty and holiness: 

Without the holy images, we are in danger of forgetting the face and thus the flesh of the Son of God. The mysteries of the life of Jesus fade from our minds. In the eighth and ninth and sixteenth centuries, and again in our own time, Iconoclasm always tends towards Docetism. Robbed of the beauty of sacred art, the Christian can become blind to the beauty of Divine Revelation. And that is disastrous, for, when sundered from beauty, truth becomes correctness without splendour and goodness a value of no delight. 7.

The holiness of beauty is ordered to the beauty of holiness. Sacred art is intended to encourage saintly life. Both are transparent to Christ, radiate the splendor of His truth. Both, in their different ways, are gifts of God. 8. 

1. The Ratzinger Report Messori, 1988.

2. Hans Urs von Balthasar , The Glory of the Lord: A Theological

Aesthetics: Seeing the Form, #1, 1982.

3. Francis Thompson, frontispiece, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness

of Beauty, Art, Sanctity & The Truth of Catholicism ,John Saward, Ignatius, 1997.

4. Civilization, Kenneth Clark, Harper & Row, 1969, p. 175

5. Clark, p. 177

6. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Mary, The Church at the Source,1997.

7. Ibid, John Saward, p. 25

8. Ibid, John Saward, p. 84

Have a blessed Christmas!

and here are some thoughts on silence from Pope Francis:

Pope: silence guards one's relationship with God

courtesy of the Vatican Radio website.

Polygamy comes out of the closet

Michael Cook | 17 Dec 2013 

Kody Brown, center, poses with his wives, from left, Janelle, Christine, Meri, and Robyn

Is Utah’s ban on polygamy unconstitutional? Last week a Federal Court judge ruled that it is, after Kody Brown and his four wives, the stars of the reality TV series Sister Wives, challenged it.

Judge Clark Waddoups, of United States District Court in Utah, struck down provisions of Utah’s bigamy law, which make “religious co-habitation” illegal. Kody Brown, who belongs to the Apostolic United Brethren Church,  an offshoot of the Mormon church, and has four wives and 17 children, welcomed the decision:

“Like thousands of other plural families, we have waited many years for this day. While we know that many people do not approve of plural families, it is our family and based on our beliefs. Just as we respect the personal and religious choices of other families, we hope that in time all of our neighbors and fellow citizens will come to respect our own choices as part of this wonderful country of different faiths and beliefs.”

Judge Waddoup’s ruling will not allow a man to be legally married to several women. He specifically stated that the state still has a right to enforce a ban on multiple marriage licences. But it does allow polygamists to come out of the closet and live without fear of prosecution.
Although Brown v. Buhman is sure to be challenged and could be overturned, it is a milestone in the evolution of modern relationships from monogamous and permanent traditional marriage, to no-fault divorce and serial polygamy, widespread de facto marriage, same-sex marriage and now polygamy.

Most Americans are still deeply hostile towards polygamy so supporters of same-sex marriage constantly argue that the US is not on a slippery-slope to polygamy. Judge Waddoups’s decision, however, makes it very clear that being unpopular or disliked is not a legitimate reason to discriminate against a lifestyle. And, in fact, all the arguments deployed in favour of same-sex marriage work perfectly well for polygamy – and other even more colourful forms of plural marriage.

The judge’s 91-page decision relies on two fundamental ideas expressed in two famous decisions of the US Supreme Court.

The first is that a ban on polygamy is essentially religious discrimination and that heterosexual, monogamous marriage is merely a Christian institution. He grounds this idea on an 1878 case, Reynolds v United States. George Reynolds, the secretary of Mormon leader Brigham Young, had been charged with bigamy. His defence was that his religion obliged him to be married to several women and that his marital arrangements were protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The Supreme Court did not accept this. In a unanimous decision it said, “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people”. In a subsequent decision in 1890, the Court described polygamy as “a return to barbarism” and “contrary to the spirit of Christianity.”

To Judge Waddoups, such words are “unthinkable” in a racially and religiously pluralistic society. There can be no rational basis for a ban on “religious co-habitation”. Society is no longer predominantly Christian and its standards cannot legitimately define relationships.

The second case is Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled in 2003 that homosexual sodomy could not be criminalised because it was protected by a constitutional right to privacy. This has buttressed arguments for same-sex marriage. If the government cannot prohibit homosexual behaviour, how can it prohibit relationships based on that behavior?

Judge Waddoups has simply extended this line of reasoning to polygamous relationships. The attorney representing Kody Brown and his wives, Jonathan Turley, summed this up in the New York Times: “We should fight for privacy as an inclusive concept, benefiting everyone in the same way. Regardless of whether it is a gay or plural relationship, the struggle and the issue remains the same: the right to live your life according to your own values and faith.”

The common thread in Waddoups’s reasoning is that marriage is simply a legal framework which gives public recognition to the affections of adults. Children are just a footnote, an optional extra, in their relationships.

The reality of authentic marriage is quite different: it is centred on children. Marriage deserves to be recognised and protected by the government because the loving care of a father and a mother is the best environment in which to raise children.

A polygamous marriage is superior to a same-sex marriage because both a father and a mother are involved in raising a child. But even if there is no physical, sexual or emotional abuse of the wives or children, it fails to treat them with the dignity that they deserve. Men and women deserve unique and exclusive love as a fundamental aspect of their human dignity. Polygamy introduces division and competition into relationships.

Contrary to what Judge Waddoups contends, the repudiation of polygamy is not a uniquely Christian idea. It is based on historical experience and even on the finding of social science. Although polygamy a fact of life in many societies, the ideal relationship has always been between one man and one woman. Christianity merely ratifies this and places it within its own theological framework.

Is this bracket creep from same-sex marriage? No, it’s bracket creep from the idea that every kind of sexual expression deserves government protection so long as no one is physically harmed. As Justice Kennedy wrote in another famous case about sexuality: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

But as support for same-sex marriage grows, the twin notions that Christian morality has no rational basis and that any non-abusive sexual relationship is legitimate will take deeper root. Polygamy is obviously the first cab off the rank, because there are thousands of polygamous families belonging to offshoots of the Mormon Church. As the number of Muslims grows, some are certain to demand the right to polygamous marriage.

One person who must feel more than a little satisfaction at Brown v. Buhman is US Supreme Court Justice Scalia. In his dissent to Lawrence v. Texas, he declared that the majority opinion “effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation” because if “the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above- mentioned laws [against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity] can survive rational basis review”.

Justice Scalia has often been ridiculed for his forthright comment. But Judge Waddoups has proved him right.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. 

This article is published and was originally posted here by Michael Cook and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact them for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

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Belgian Senate approves child euthanasia

Belgian Senate approves child euthanasia

by Michael Cook | 14 Dec 2013 

The outcome was expected, but overseas observers were astonished at the margin of victory. By a vote of 50 to 17, the Belgian Senate has approved euthanasia for children. When the bill finally passes – which now seems quite certain – there will be no age limit for choosing to die at the hands of Belgian doctor. The next step is a vote in the lower house, which will probably take place in May.

The conditions for euthanasia are vague. Children who are under 18 but who are of sound mind can request death if their situation is “medically hopeless” and if they are experiencing “unbearable physical suffering that within the foreseeable future will result in death."

Supporters of the bill have argued that there will only be about 10 or 15 cases each year. They contend that terminally-ill children are already being euthanased and it is better for the practice to be regulated. How will the doctor know if the child is of sound mind? He or she must be examined by a psychiatrist or psychologist. The parents or the legal guardian must also consent.
The debate raises the issue of something that is often taken for granted: is there really an ethical difference between a child and an adult?

In November 16 paediatricians urged lawmakers to approve the legislation in an open letter in the press. "Why deprive minors of this last possibility? Experience shows us that in cases of serious illness and imminent death, minors develop very quickly a great maturity, to the point where they are often better able to reflect and express themselves on life than healthy people."
This seems to be a consistent theme in the Belgian debate. One senator, Louis Ide, a Catholic and a conservative, explained why he voted for the bill in his blog,Gezondheidszorg. He argues that assessing mental competence by calendar age is an archaic standard. “Children” can drive, or can give testimony in divorce cases. The only relevant standard is a capacity to make sound decisions.

However, British barrister and medical ethicist Charles Foster has been especially critical about the issue of informed consent.

“Death, so far as we know, is terribly final. And if you’re opting for death, you need to be sure that you’ve got it right. This demands an understanding of many complex facts (such as prognosis – how your disease or condition is going to pan out – and your therapeutic and palliative options), and an evaluation of their significance. It’s hard for anyone; it’s likely to be impossible for children.

“There’s lots of evidence to show that when we find ourselves in the situations we have most feared (for instance severe disability), we find that those situations are nothing like as unbearable as we anticipated. When we are stripped of much, we value all the more what is left. Try explaining that to a child.”

This article was published originally by Michael Cook and BioEdge.org under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact them for permission and fees. Some articles on the site are published under different terms.

Sing Sing Sing - 1938 Carnegie Hall

I just heard a local high school jazz band close their performance at  the Festival of Lights in Ave Maria with their rendition of Sing Sing Sing.  They did a good job, but I had to come home and find the great Benny Goodman version, from the extraordinary 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.  Truly one of the greatest jazz performances ever.  If I were doing a time capsule about American culture of the past 100 years, I would have to include this as one of its great moments.

More on the Economics of Pope Francis: Two Videos

Two videos on Evangelii Gaudium, with very different perspectives.  Fr. Barron emphasizes the urgency and the central point of the pope's Apostolic Exhortation, not to be too caught up with internecine quarrels when we should be on fire with the joy of the Gospel, as the early Christians were.  Fr. Barron says nothing at all about the most controversial parts of the letter, those about economics.



Samuel Gregg, research director of the Acton Institute, on the other hand, focuses his attention on precisely what Fr. Barron ignores in his commentary, namely Francis's comments about the market.  It is here that the pope seems most naive and uncomprehending.  Not that a pope needs to be an economist, but if he chooses to comment on the nature of markets, the sources of wealth, and how poverty can be overcome, it is good that he know what he is talking about.

If the point is to set aside bickering and join in the urgent task of communicating the joy and the good news of the Gospel, why permit yourself to be diverted into attacks on the one institution that has done vastly more than any other to lift billions of people out of poverty?