Regan Institute
2014
Encountering the Word of God
in Sacred Art
Presented by
James J. Bitting Jr. MA
Beauty/The Church and Art
The Catechetical Value of
Art/Criteria for Judgment
Practical use
Catechists must present the Beautiful!
• “From the greatness and beauty of created
things comes a corresponding perception of
their Creator” (Wis 13:5)
• “Few of us seem to be aware that the
beautiful packs a power not only to fascinate
but also to convince a mature and honest
mind of solidly grounded truth” (Dubay p. 11)
Definitions of Beauty
-Quoting Josef Pieper, Fr. Thomas Dubay
writes that beauty is, “the glow of the true
and good irradiating from every ordered state
of being, and not in the patent significance of
immediate sensual pleasure” (ibid p 35).
-“The encounter with beauty comes through
the senses but is not limited to what is on the
surface of things or to what is felt…beauty
engages reason…is a delight of
reason”(Margaret Laracy).
-Margaret Laracy refers to St.
Thomas Aquinas’ three essential
conditions of beauty:
 Clarity – illumination that draws
our attention e.g. the brilliant
colors of a flower
 Harmony (due proportion) – the
right ordering of parts e.g. the
size and placement of the petals
 Integrity – the above are
synthesized into a complete
configuration…there is a
wholeness that elicits
contemplation
JPII on Beauty
• “Beauty has its own pedagogical
force to introduce knowledge of
the truth effectively…in fact it
leads to Christ who is the Truth”
(JPII 8/20/2002 Message to
Communion and Liberation)
• “Truth is perceived in the
beautiful, which attracts to itself
through the unmistakable
fascination that springs from
great values” (ibid).
John Paul II in his letter to Artists 1999
-“With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the
human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom,
calling him to share in his creative power”(1)
-Quoting a Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, “beauty is to
enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up” (3).
-“In perceiving that all he created was good, God saw
that it was beautiful as well…in a certain sense, beauty
is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the
metaphysical condition of beauty”
John Paul II in his letter to Artists 1999
-The Greeks had a word for
this = kalokagathia =
beauty-goodness…Plato
writes, “The power of the
Good has taken refuge in
the beautiful” (Philebus, 65
A).
-“There is therefore an
ethic, even a spirituality of
artistic service, which
contributes in its way to
the life and renewal of a
people” (4)
The Incarnation
-“In the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God
becomes visible in person…God became man in Jesus
Christ, who thus becomes ‘the central point of reference
for an understanding of the enigma of human existence,
the created world and God himself’”(John Paul II in his
letter to Artists 1999 art. 5).
“In becoming man, the Son of God has introduced
into human history all the evangelical wealth of the
true and the good, and with this he has also
unveiled a new dimension of beauty, of which the
Gospel message is filled to the brim” (John Paul II in
his letter to Artists 1999 art. 5).
John Paul II in his letter to Artists 1999
Scripture
-“on countless occasions the biblical word has
become image, music, and poetry, evoking the
mystery of ‘The Word made flesh’ in the language of
art…Believers above all have gained from it in their
experience of prayer and Christian living…Indeed for
many of them, in time when few could read or write,
representations of the Bible were a concrete mode
of catechesis” (5)
John Paul II in his letter to Artists 1999
-St. Bonaventure on St. Francis, “In
things of beauty, he contemplated
the One who is supremely beautiful,
and, led by the footprints he found in
creatures, he followed the Beloved
everywhere”
-“Every genuine art form in its own
way is a path to the inmost reality of
man and the world…its is therefore a
wholly valid approach to the realm of
faith, which gives human experience
its ultimate meaning” (6).
Card. Ratzinger on Beauty - Aug 21th 2002 message
to meeting of Communion and Liberation
-“For faith to grow today, we ourselves must take the
men and women we encounter to enter into contact
with beauty”
-“Whoever believes in God, who manifested himself
in fact in the face of Christ crucified as ‘love to the
end’, knows that beauty is truth and truth is beauty”
Why art?
• Art (CCC 2500-2502)
– “Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to
prayer, and to love of God…” (CCC 2502)
– “conformity with the truth of the faith” or it should
not be used. (Cf. CCC 2503)
– The authors of the CCC insisted “that works of
Christian art appear in the Catechism, placed at the
beginning of each part…catechesis was for many
centuries conducted primarily through a variety of art
forms e.g. stained-glass windows” (Craft p. 76)
– Music
– Literature
The Divine Pedagogy of the Incarnation
• “By becoming Incarnate the
Eternal Word brought God
within human reach and
revealed the divine
perfections in a manner
perceptible to the senses”
(Bandas 73).
The Fathers on the Incarnation
• “He became an object of their senses so that
those who were seeking God in perceptible
things might come to a knowledge of the
Father…” (St. Athanasius)
• God became man “so that through His body He
might come within the reach of bodily creatures”
(St. Gregory of Nazianzus)
• The invisible attributes of God are “made know to
us by those that are visible” (St. Ambrose)
The teaching of Christ
• “Our Lord spoke of the highest and most far-reaching
truths in terms of the vital daily experience of His
listeners…He constantly employed the commonplace
objects as a means of imparting the most profound
truths” (Bandas 75).
• Tree, lily, fruit, cloud, rain, floods, winds, candle, cup,
coin, wine skin, sheep, vine, soil…
• He moved from the “concrete to the abstract, from the
known to the unknown, from sense impressions to
intellectual knowledge” (Bandas 76).
We are made to learn this way
• “it is of the nature of man to attain the intellectual by
means of the sensible…nothing can reach the mind
unless it first passes through the portals of the
senses…External objects give rise to sense impressions
which in turn beget images; from images the intellect
then abstracts the idea” (Bandas 74).
Popes and Sacred Art
• “The popes throughout history
eloquently proclaimed the
catechetical value of images
whether found in stained-glass
windows, paintings or
sculpture” (Bandas 76)
• St. Gregory the Great –
“teaches the unlessoned what
writing teaches the
lessoned…images have been
set up in the church for
instructing the mind of the
uneducated”
Popes continued
• St. Gregory II – in the churches decorated with sacred
images “men and women, pointing thither with their
finger, instruct in this way the infants in their arms,
even unmarried men in the bloom of their youth, and
strangers, in this manner elevate their mind and heart
to God” (Letter to Emperor Leo Isaurien 726)
• Adrian I – “images are honored by the faithful in order
that through the visible image our souls might be
elevated in heavenly aspiration to the very throne of
the invisible divine majesty” (Letter to Emperor
Constantine 787)
Pius XII – compares art to a
child in nature
• – “Art is a child of nature…It bends over it,
contemplates it, listens to it in silence…with
the respectful love of a child, it [art]
penetrates the transparence of its [nature’s]
veil, it listens to the echo of its internal
music, and in this transparency, in this echo,
it discovers, wholly enchanted what
nature…conceals of the spirit, and divine
reflections”
• “…his invisible nature, namely, his eternal
power and deity, has been clearly perceived
in the things that have been made” (Rom
1:20)
The noble mission of the artist:
• “to aid the most insensible and
thoughtless to see and to taste
the natural beauty of the most
humble things and through
them the beauty of God…to lift
the face and eyes of men to
heaven, towards God, even
while they tread the earth with
their feet” (Pius XII Discourse to
Artists May 19th 1948).
Blessed John XXIII
• Christian art has a quasi-sacramental character,
not, of course, in the proper sense of the word,
but as a vehicle and instrument which the Lord
uses to dispose souls for the prodigies of grace…
In it spiritual values become, as it were, visible,
better adapted to the human mentality which
aims to see and touch” (Bandas 12)
• He labels this the “catechetical and instrumental
value of art”
• “Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the
Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do,
but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to
receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with
it” (CCC 1670).
“a sculpture is almost like a 24/7 preacher”
–Artist Timothy P. Schmalz
Marks of acceptable religious art
• From the Decree of the Holy Office 1952
– “It must engender and foster the faith and piety of
the faithful; it must not in any way disturb or
diminish their piety”
– “It must be dogmatically correct and must not be an
occasion of error to the unlearned”
What's wrong with this picture?
• “it is against the traditional
concept of the Church to
represent the Blessed
Virgin as fainting at the feet
of the Crucified – the
Gospel says stabat (she
was standing) displaying an
indomitable fortitude
(Bandas p. 23 footnote 29).
Where to find images & can I use them?
• Can I use images in my teaching? Yes! See Title 17 –
Copyrights, Chapter 1 – Subject Matter and Scope of
Copyright, art. 107 – Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair
use
– “the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other
means specified by that section, for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107
• Where to search:
http://catholicdioceseofwichita.org/hidden-links/artmusic-a-literature?task=blogcategory
• Show OFF Website links
• http://catholicdioceseofwichita.org/faith
Iconoclasm & Nicea II (787)
• In 730 A.D. Byzantine Emperor
Leo III issued a decree
prohibiting veneration of icons.
He ordered the destruction of
icons i.e. iconoclasm (Schreck p.
37)
• This is condemned as heretical
by the the 2nd Council of Nicea
in 787 A.D.
• St. John of Damascus wrote
against the iconoclasts