Art
and Liturgy; the Splendor of Faith
by
The following article appeared in an
abridged form in the October, 1998 issue of CRISIS Magazine
(links
to more articles below)
Thirty years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, liturgical reform, or better said, reform of the reforms, remains one of the most contested topics of Catholic debate. The subject, most often discussed from either the dogmatic or historical perspective, leaves little time for the powerful role played by visual imagery in worship. Although it is universally conceded that the visual arts were a vital part of Catholic as well as Orthodox liturgies throughout history, many contemporary writers on liturgical reform, tainted by a strain of iconoclasm, view liturgical art as decoration at best, or an unwarranted distraction at worst. Yet, in truth, imagery, rightly analyzed, is inseparable from the fundamental theological expression embodied in a given liturgy. But before looking at modern visual art and some current liturgical innovations, an historical perspective must be probed.
The use of images with liturgical worship dates
to the earliest days of Christianity in
It
is undoubtedly true that, philosophically speaking, the end of art is beauty,
but images may be employed for pedagogical reasons as well. Moreover, our
present knowledge of psychology and brain function includes a further level of
understanding; the visual arts are a powerful means of human communication,
both conscious and unconscious; which can transmit the innermost fears,
desires, aspirations, and inspirations of both individuals and communities.
Some of this century's leading art historians have alluded
to this most fascinating, yet little understood aspect of art. Irwin Panofsky in the introduction to his Studies in Iconology
(Harper & Row) describes the three levels of understanding while viewing a
picture. The first or primary level is that of the natural subject matter. At
this level the viewer identifies pure forms, that is, certain configurations of
line and color, or certain peculiarly shaped lumps of bronze or stone, as
natural objects, -- human beings, animals, plants, and so on -- and notes their
mutual relations. At a secondary level the viewer is aware that the
conventional subject matter identifies iconographical motifs, i.e., a group of
figures seated around a dinner table in a certain way represents the Last
Supper. The third level brings the viewer closer to the true message of a
painting or sculpture, what Panofsky calls
"intrinsic meaning or content." This "is apprehended by
ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a
nation, a period, a class, a religious or
philosophical persuasion--unconsciously qualified by one personality and
condensed into one work."
It is at this level of intrinsic meaning that art and liturgy are fused into an organic statement about the lex orandi of a given time and place. Thus the painting of the Last Supper over the altar in the Capilla Greca is more than a decorative motif or tool of instruction; it is a genuine manifestation of the very core of Catholic devotion -- the Eucharist. In short, the artwork itself forms part of the latreia, the true praise, of the liturgical action, the other parts being the rubrics and music.
If art, then, is integral to the lex orandi of the Church, it
is also tied inexorably to her lex credendi since the two are inseparable. The age-old axiom
lex orandi, lex credend originated with
the solemn pronouncement of Pope Celestine I, legem
credendi statuit lex orandi, regarding the
definition of Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God
(Council of Ephesus 431).Then, as now , the liturgy of
the Universal Church praised Mary as the "Mother of God" and Pope
Celestine called the Nestorians heretical for challenging an article of faith
that was so deeply ingrained in the prayer life of the Christian community. His
words implied then, as now, that the liturgy of worship is a chief instrument
in the perpetuation of true doctrine. Many centuries later, Pope Pius XII in
his 1947 encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei pointed out that the
reverse is also true: Lex credendi
legem statuat supplicandi (the true faith must establish the mode of
prayer). In short, what the Church believes and how it prays are
intrinsically one -- and the arts form a part of this union. Once the doctrine
of the Divine Motherhood of Mary was proclaimed at
As
fast as the doctrine of the Church took form in the great conciliar
pronouncements from Nicea right up through Trent, so
Church art and architecture kept pace, faithfully mirroring these refinements
of theology. Interestingly, even prior to Christianity, shapes had been used to
reflect spiritual realities. In the West, the Greeks, following the Pythagorean
Table of Opposites (Odd-Even, Straight-Curved, Right-Left, Male-Female,
etc.), built their temples to male deities ( Zeus, Apollo, etc.) with straight
lines and angles, and temples to female deities of desire and fecundity
(Aphrodite, Demeter, etc.) in the form of a circular tholos.These
shapes were adopted by the early Roman Church which used the rectangular basilica
for Eucharistic celebration and the round tholos
for burial sites "The seed must die in the earth to rise again in
glory". A third form, the octanglular church,
was built over the birth site of a recognized saint, eight being the day after
the Sabbath, or Easter--the beginning of the new dispensation. (Baptismal fonts
were made in this shape for the same reason.)
In
the East, especially in
This
basic shape with its iconographic content has not significantly changed, nor
has the fourth century liturgy of St. John Chrisostom.
The lex orandi, lex credendi of the
This was not the case in the West. The turbulent
dynamics of Western civilization and Roman Catholicism have lived in a
symbiotic relationship from the beginning. Whereas in the East, Church and
state were inexorably enmeshed with the emperor as Pontifex
Maximus, in the West, the Pope as supreme
spiritual authority oversaw, but had no control over, secular developments.
This
shape best reflected the theology of the Church as Mystical Body of Christ on
earth, formulated by
As in the Eastern Church, the sanctuary was set off from the rest of the church by a rood screen reminiscent of the iconostasis. Although diminished in size over the years, this separation, in the form of an altar rail, continued to differentiate the distinct realms of nature and Divine Grace. And, unlike in the East where they were proscribed, statues were used to fill the mind and imbue the imagination with, the virtues of the saints and the mystery of redemption. The use of statuary in the West can be traced back to the year 596. In that year Pope St. Gregory the Great issued his famous edict to the bishops of Gaul and Britain proclaiming that the temples of idolatrous pagans were not to be destroyed but reformed and that the images after being smashed should be replaced by figures of Christ, the Blessed Mother, the martyrs, and the saints. This continuity, he maintained, would not only ease the entry of these barbarous folk into the True Faith, but acquaint them through their eyes --through art--with the history of salvation.
By the High Middle Ages, the cruciform church, its exterior covered with scenes from both the Old and New Testaments, and the lives of prophets and saints, reached its zenith in the Gothic Cathedral. (Figure 7) These churches were a visual lesson in medieval theology. To quote again from art historian Irwin Panofsky, the task of the cathedral builder was... to make reason clearer by an appeal to the imagination; [he] sought to embody in stone and glass the whole Christian knowledge, theological, moral, natural, and historical, with everything in its place and with all that no longer found its place suppressed ... a Summa Theologiae to be visually apprehended"
Between the years 1140 and 1280, some eighty of
these magnificent structures were built and dedicated to the Most Holy Virgin,
as had been the great Basilica of Santa Maria Magiore
in
"When `out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God the loveliness of the many-colored stones has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to the higher world in an analogical manner
This
perception of Suger--that the soul ascends to
contemplation of supernatural Truth through contemplation of natural
beauty--became an accepted part of the Roman Catholic tradition and was echoed
in philosophic terms by the thirteenth century Scholastic, Duns Scotus: "It is impossible for our mind to rise to the
imitation and contemplation of the celestial hierarchies unless it relies upon
the material guidance that is commensurate to it."
Of all these great cathedrals, perhaps the most
perfect exemplar is the cathedral of
On
the floor of the cathedral, bathed in the light of the great Rose Window, a
forty-foot labyrinth is engraved in the pavement. (Figure 9) Contrary to some
modern speculation, in medieval times the labyrinth was a symbol of the dark
forces ascribed to Hell. This certainly holds true for the labyrinth at the
great Marian Cathedral of
With the advent of the Dominican and Franciscan
renewal in the thirteenth century, a subtle shift occurred in the lex credendi which affected
both the lex orandi
and the art of the Church. In contrast to the Byzantine and early Medieval
traditions, St. Francis and Dominic saw God's glory in all of His creation.
Francis pointed out that through the Incarnation nature itself might be
transformed and elevated to a new level. Artists of the period, starting in
High
Renaissance art, albeit with some heretical aberrations based on extrinsic
influences such as Cabala and pseudo Egyptian lore, reflected the Catholic
Tradition with its own unique perspective. While the scales tipped in favor of
the contemplation of beauty rather than dogmatic representation as a means of
ascent to the divine, even an aesthetic masterpiece such as Michelangelo's
frescos in the Sistine Chapel (Figure 11) painted between
1508 - 1512 have a powerful theological message reflecting the hopes of
the Roman Papacy of that time. Building on Dante Alighieri's
De Monarchia and following the speculations of
Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo--that the tenth age of the world and the ultimate
triumph of the Church was at hand--the Sistine Chapel was decorated to prelude
this event. Michelangelo thus went about painting the history of the world from
the creation up to the golden age of Christianity centered in
The Council of Trent was convened in 1545 in
response both to the deteriorating situation provoked by Renaissance unorthodox
speculation, and to the Protestant revolt, and it continued off and on until
1562. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was reestablished as authoritative,
the nature of the sacraments was defined, and the authority of the hierarchy
and magisterium was affirmed.
In order to implement the decrees of the Council,
theChurch in general and the Jesuits in particular
launched the Counter Reformation. As St. Ignatius insistence on compositio loci- placing oneself visually in
the presence of the Divine events of Salvation right up to the Beatific
Vision-- gave rise to a new style in art now known as the Baroque. The
term, originally meaning irregular, contorted, or grotesque, was coined as an
epithet by nineteenth century Anglo-Saxon Protestant art historians. It was
used to denounce the rich ornamentation of the style in contrast to the
supposed purity oh High Renaissance and later Neoclassical art. The Baroque
style is, in fact, 
the
spirit of the Council of Trent displayed in art and architecture. It is an
affirmation of the goodness of nature arranged in a hierarchical ordered
ascent. The ceiling frescoes in the
These two distinct visions sparked two very
different world views, especially in the arts. The Protestants, mainly in
Northern Europe,
creation, as had Francis and Dominic, bathed in the light of God's providence, i.e. Baroque
culture. While Protestant churches became more and more to resemble no nonsense meeting halls, Baroque churches were filled to overflowing with organic forms and spiral columns, covered in vines and swathed in gold to show the transforming power of grace upon nature. Images of Mary held a special place of honor for she, fully open to grace, was the highest exponent of the natural order. (Figure 14) The Blessed Sacrament, however, reigned supreme --the very reality of the Word made flesh, the presence of God and His grace in the world-- represented in the Cathedral of Seville by a forty foot silver monstrance. (Figure 15)
While the Protestants in their Hebraic zeal,
smashed all the graven images they could find, starting with the decapitation
and mutilation of the statue of the Blessed Mother in
Pushed
to the limits of decorative embellishment the Baoque
reached its final form in the eighteenth century as what is known as Rococo.
The Wieskirche of
faith, there has been no movement in art since the Baroque
that can be said to have an overall Catholic impetus. Indeed, since the time of
the French Revolution and the secularization of culture, all Catholic Churches
were built in one of the afore-mentioned styles until the middle of this
century.
The new ecclesiastical art and architecture of the mid to late twentieth century shows much to clearly that there has been a dramatic break with all past Catholic artistic and architectural traditions. This change is usually discussed in purely aesthetic or sociological terms. In order to speak to twentieth century man, we are told, the Church must use the visual idiom of the times. But this argument fails to address one of the most crucial factors in the drastically different way churches are built and decorated since the 1950s.
Prior to World War II there began to emerge something which would become generically known as nouvelle theologie, a new theology, in the thinking of some of the brightest Catholic thinkers on the European continent. The matter hinged, as in the Protestant Reformation, on the nature of supernatural grace. The Protestants denied the ability of grace to operate in and through nature due to original sin, and now some of the new thinkers questioned the nature of original sin and posited the idea that, through Christ, grace can, not only operate in the natural order, but is in some way intrinsic to it. Christ thus became not the Redeemer of fallen man, but the ideal model of man's perfection and self transcendence. Christianity as such came to be seen not as the sacramental incorporation into the Body of Christ through baptism and eucharist but as an explicit reflection of what man really is. Although these ideas ran counter to the received Tradition and were formally denounced by Pope Pius XII in his seminal encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ: "on the other hand there is a false mysticism creeping in [to the Church], which, in its attempt to eliminate the immovable frontier that separates creatures from their Creator, falsifies Scripture. .. a distorted idea, a false teaching, impious and sacrilegious." ( Mystici Corporis 9., 86.)
Some
of these theologians nevertheless went on to become leading figures in the
post- conciliar Church. The "new theology"
became in many instances the unofficially taught doctrine known as "the
spirit of Vatican II." Jesuit professor John Mahoney in England wrote
that, "continuity and the interpretation of history of God's work as both
Creator and Savior have the effect of if not blurring, at least rendering
academic the conceptual distinction between nature and supernature."
And professor Richard McBrien
stated much the same here in the
The effects of this new "lex credendi" have been seen for some time in art and architecture, these, dumped on the ever-docile faithful, distort the traditional "lex orandi" of the Church. First off, if man already lives an "engraced" existence, and the sacramental union with Christ is ontologically superfluous, a mere symbol of entrance into a "faith community" then the altar rail (iconostasis, the rood screen) which separates the natural world of the faithful and the supernatural world of the Divine mysteries must go. The Priest is no longer the unique mediator, in persona Cristi , of the Holy Sacrifice but the "presider." The altar, just as in Protestant usage but for diametrically opposed reasons, becomes the "holy table" for the shared meal. Then too, since Christ is already present in the community, the sacramental presence of Our Lord in the tabernacle is now superfluous and can therefore be removed from the sanctuary precinct. Confessionals, for their part, are either ignored or changed into community reconciliation rooms because, the new theology informs us, sin is not a punishable offense against God but a human imperfection. With the traditional concept of the Mystical Body obscured, the images of saints and holy mysteries, a tradition going back to the catacombs, ought also to be removed. This leaves the single figure of the "Risen Lord," or perhaps a crucifix from which the regal title has been stripped, for He is no more than the archetype of divinized humanity. Finally--and, indeed needless to say, if man contains within his own nature the seed of his own salvation--the hierarchy, the priesthood and the sacraments hold only a changeable symbolic nature to be worked out by individual "faith communities" according to their needs. This appears to be what the 1978 U.S. Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship proposed: "Because liturgical celebration is the worship action of the entire Church, it is desirable that persons representing the diversity of ages, sexes, ethnic and cultural groups in the congregation should be involved in planing and ministering in liturgies of the community" (Art, 30)
The
sincerity of the original authors of such theological sentiments aside, the
results do not appear to lead to a heightened collective piety. Quite the
contrary, according to the the reflections of
Cardinal Ratzinger regarding an Italian document
titled Nuevo dizionario di
Liturgia. (See Communio,
Winter 1986) This document Cardinal Ratzinger writes,
maintains that Vatican II express "two souls" which may be defined as
"the letter" and "the spirit." "The letter"is maintained by the Roman hierarchy and its
priests who strive for self-preservation and the conservation of their power.
"The spirit" on the other hand, strives to break this bondage in the
name of freshness and freedom. It is not, therefore, obedience to the magisterium that gives validity to the liturgy, but, the spontaneity
and creativity of the community to celebrate its own identity. Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to deplore the lack of rationality in
many of these "spirit-guided liturgies" which, lowering the barriers
of individual consciousness, lead to Dionysian ecstasy, liberation of the ego
from personal responsibility, and a sense of spiritual unification with the
universe akin to Eastern theosophy.
Given this emphasis on freedom and creativity in the new liturgies, it is no wonder that the proponents of the "new theology" embraced the simultaneously evolving theories of "modern art". The rebellion against tradition and glorification of the "inner spirit" of creativity were the central tenets of both movements. Like the new liturgists, the promoters of "modern" art and architecture are iconoclastic and disdainful of` all traditions. But contrary to popular belief, virtually every movement in modern art, from Bauhaus to Surrealism is steeped, not in materialism, but in gnostic spirituality--the unlocking of the divine in the human. Wasilly Kandinsky, a founding father of modern art, wrote in his seminal 1911 work, Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art): "[The vast majority of the lowest level of the spiritual pyramid] call themselves Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc. But they are really atheists...[By contrast] the Theosophical Society approaches the problem of the spirit by way of the. inner knowledge...That which belongs to the spirit of the future can only be realized in feeling, and to this feeling the talent of the artist is the only road" (emphasis in the original). He had written earlier in Whither the New Art?: "Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of purely material world view; for many people it is a time of terrible, inescapable vacuum, a time of questions; but for a few it is a time of presentiment or precognition of the path to truth...movement toward the spiritual, and in the forms of occultism, spiritualism, monism, the "New" Christianity, theosophy, and religion in the broadest sense.
Picasso, the best-known of all the artists of the period, whose very name has become synonymous with "modern art" believed that art had nothing to do with aesthetics but was in his words, "a sacred and mysterious process," a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires." Walter Gropius, director and leading light of the Bauhaus, the influential school of architecture established in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, is generally remembered for his dictates on form and function in the modern machine age. Underlying these premises, was a belief in a utopian future based on the assumption that after the misery of the times, "spiritual and religious ideas" (based on oriental theosophy) would find their "crystalline expression" in a "great cathedral shining its light into the smallest things of everyday life." This "cathedral of the future" would be built by artists of all classes and backgrounds as a "secret lodge" dedicated to the "new, great, world idea."
Examples
from those halcyon times help us to understand more fully this fusion of modern
art and liturgy. The chasuble designed by Matisse for the Dominican chapel at Vence (Figure 18), save for a small cross, has no symbolic
point of reference to the sacramental action of the mass. The priest is seen as
a mannequin who plays a minor role in the display of creative "holy
art" by a consecrated secular genius. Likewise Le Corbusier's
ground-breaking design for the Chapel of Notre Dame du
Haut in Ronchamp (Figure 19) is totally unrelated the
developing but unbroken tradition of Western church architecture: it is simply
a project built to his own satisfaction in celebration of his own creative
genius. The Italian modernist thinker BenedettoCroce
summed it up thus: "And the Christian God is still ours and our refined
philosophies call him the spirit which takes us over but which is always us,
ourselves. "(emphasis added)
The list could go on and on.
But surely, the reductio
ad absurdam of this inward journey in ecclesiastical
art is the
Without the salvic hope in Christ=s redemption, of which the sacred liturgy is the efficacious model, the culture of death is inevitable. Eros and Thanatos, desire and self destruction form the final cause and consummation of the "inner" god. In the words of G.K. Chesterton from Orthodoxy: "Of all the horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within...That Jones shall worship the god within turns out ultimately to mean that Jones worships Jones...Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards but outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine Captain"
Fortunately, the faithful, having not altogether
succumbed to these strange and alien ideologies imposed arbitrarily by an
intelligentsia from above, are looking outward once again. Just as in the past
in the defense of the Divine Motherhood of Mary at
The results of this renewal are not ours to foretell, however, if the dream vision of St. John Bosco referring to our times is to be believed, there are the two pillars on which the embattled ship of the Church, after great turmoil and strife, will be moored in safe haven. As explained by Don Bosco himself (Figure 20), atop the larger pillar is seen the Eucharist as the ultimate self-abasement of God giving himself to us under the appearance of a wafer of bread; and atop the smaller pillar an image of Mary, archetype of the Church, raised up in exaltation.
As the true faith returns with vigor the liturgy will be
revitalized-- and with it fresh visions from the artists. Artistic
talent has not disappeared, it only needs to be focussed. With this in mind as we enter the third
millennium with the trust and hope so dear to the Holy Father, let us echo the
words of Paul Claudel written earlier this century
when the upheavals began: "Even today, in this age of iron or, let us say,
white metal, the Temple of Solomon and the Cathedral of Chartres
have not exhausted all the possibilities of getting back to God. There is still
something to be garnered from those people with plaster in their hair and
fingers full of paint."
H.R.A. 1997
For other
commentary by
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Sursum Corda Magazine,
Summer 2000 |
Communio: International Catholic Review, Summer
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