I have in mind a particular, public building, built in an elegant classicising style; with steps up to the entrance under a columned portico. If you were to accompany me, I would lead you inside to where (apparently) there are innumerable altars, mostly of the size and shape for a Missa privata. Above and behind each altar, from various periods of 'art-history', is a masterpiece of religious art.
Please, now join me in peopling that space; peopling it, please, with sounds. Sounds such as the low voices of the priests offering the August Sacrifice; from time to time the tinkle of a little bell; the quiet sound of priests and servers passing by on their way to their altars or returning from them; imagine priests quietly slipping into benches and saying their Thanksgivings.
But no; here there are no such sounds. I have brought you into the National Gallery in London; what look like altars are indeed there in great profusion, but no signs of Sacrifice. The 'altars' have no relics set into them. Priests are as firmly prohibited from using these 'altars' as any Bergoglio or his Roche could wish. Here, no priest ever offers up the Immaculate Lamb of God ... or holds in his hands the Incarnate Word under the visible tokens which he has ordained ... or drains the chalice of the Great Victim. No voice murmurs in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae pro nostra et totius mundi salute cum odore suavitatis ascendat. The vox clamantis Ecclesiae is gagged.
Instead, all is quiet, safe, sterility. Any sacred activity is excluded. Here the Eternal God is never evoked to become present in His flesh and blood, before Whom angels bow and devils tremble. There is no risk that the Action for which all this 'Art History' was created by Catholic generation after Catholic generation, might ever happen. Uniformed custodians ensure that well-behaved gawping is the only licit activity.
When we hear that ... for example ... after the Atheistic Russian Revolution, many works of art were removed from their churches and gathered into antiseptic galleries where, liberated from their contexts and their meanings, they are 'conserved' as "Art Works", perhaps we may resent the actions of that atheist state in thus brutally neutering the artifacts of a true but forbidden religion. Certainly, I do.
But do matters stand in any way differently when it is a matter of Aesthetic Capitalism by economic means gathering together the Christian heritage of two millennia and ripping away from every item its cultural context ... let alone its religious meaning ... and, above all, depriving each and every one of them of its salvific function?
8 comments:
It is unfortunately possible that these works of art are safer in secular hands than in the hands of the clergy.
Shades of Marcel Proust's 'Death of Cathedrals' from the French context of 1904, and as apposite now as it was then - probably even more so.
Is the afore-described National Gallery the art gallery nearby Trafalgar Square? I have been there a couple times (not on every floor, mind you) but did not notice that it had once been a church. But then i do see poorly.
Yes, I get the same feeling when listening to recordings of sacred music over the airwaves. Here, though absent, one had a certain communio with the worshipping community; at the sound of feet 'facing east' for the Creed at Evensong, or the 'gentle clink' of the thurible chains at Benediction. Heady indeed!
Still, for those of good will, there's a bit more than 'gawping' going on when in the presence of great works of art - whether of secular or sacred subject. Since the 1980s (reception of von Balthasar) 'beauty' has been hitting above its historic weight in theology departments - when often staffed by Anglo Catholics, as it happens. Likewise in philosophy departments (egged on by Scruton), beauty is no longer an embarrassment.
People have been converted when they find high art 'in situ', but in the meantime the way is being laid, nudges felt, intimations intimated, etc... Frustrating for us with the gnosis, it may be, but still optimism and a cheery outlook, and all that.
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), there are a number of parts of exquisite medieval altars from the collection of William Randolph Hearst. There are also pieces of an immense baroque altar, saved from iconoclasts in Spain or Mexico, and brought to California by Archbishop Cantwell of Los Angeles. His intention to build a new cathedral in suitable Spanish style. His successors thought differently. His altar sits in the museum, too tall to be displayed fully. Meanwhile Los Angeles is graced by a modernist Protestant barn masquerading as a cathedral thanks to Cardinal Mahoney.
Unfortunately David J Critchley is 100% right that they are much safer in secular hands than in the hands of our clergy. The ironies of God's management of history I suppose.
That said what you say about 'atheistic capitalism' is 100% on the mark. Too many Catholics got caught up in the Cold War mentality that since capitalism was the force working against Soviet Communism in the world that this meant that it was a good and laudible thing that deserved the Church's endorsement. But they forgot what capitalism was, where it came from, and that it was in fact the far more vicious mother of the Soviet Communism they fear(ed) so much.
On September 13, 1994, 19 lorries filled with 272 pallets of stones arrived in Vina, California. These Sacred Stones were once the building blocks of the Cistercian Monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila located in Trillo, Spain, which is 90 miles northeast of Madrid.The original stones were made in 1181. These stones were used to reconstruct the church at the Trappist Abbey of New Clairvaux.Symbols cut by the original craftsmen more than 900 years ago can be found throughout the mediaeval church. Many of these have been placed on the southern interior of the church, behind the pews where the monks now sing the liturgy.
After an introduction on Cistercian Architecture, scroll down to "Construction of the Church", which has the history and some useful photos.
https://www.newclairvaux.org/architecture/
Forgive me Father for confusing 'Aesthetic' with 'Atheistic'. I don't know if that was your intention but I stand by the comment.
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