Teaching Beauty – The Catholic Thing

There are many reasons people come into the Catholic Church, but a common one is their experience of its beauty: the beauty of the art, the architecture, the music, and the liturgy. Too often, those whose goal is “evangelizing” ignore the beauty expressed and embodied in the Church’s artistic tradition. Why?

There are few more effective tools for encouraging people to take the Church seriously than hearing the angelic sound of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin or Josquin des Prez’s Missa Pange Lingua; appreciating the superb paintings of Fra Angelico and Caravaggio; or contemplating the transcendent beauty of the Cathedral of Chartres and the Duomo in Florence. Experiencing any of these would be a good first step, but there is so much more that this step would be like dipping your toe in a vast ocean stretching out beyond the horizon.

I teach theology. I believe in the importance of helping young people gain an “understanding of the faith.” But I can’t do what great art and architecture can do to inspire the awe appropriate to the transcendent mysteries of our faith.

A STEM colleague of mine couldn’t understand why the university required so many literature courses. He was a devoted Catholic and a daily communicant at Mass, who understood why we had theology courses, but not why we had so many required literature courses.

I told him that I preferred that our students take more courses on Dante, Chaucer, and the poetry of John Donne than simply taking yet another course to satisfy a theology requirement. “No, no, no,” he said. “All they need is a course on composition and writing.” He saw no need for any formation of the Catholic imagination to help move the passions and fill the hearts of our students with the glories of the Christian artistic tradition.

Even many “conservative” Catholic institutions spend precious little time introducing their students to the artistic treasures of their tradition. “Let’s read a few more books,” seems to be the guiding principle. Reading is great. But people in universities, professors and students both, can get “lost in their heads.” We need to be “brought back to earth” — not in the sense of becoming less idealistic and more “pragmatic.” This rarely brings people “back to earth” in the right way.

A better way arises from a deeper appreciation of the Incarnation. And there are few better ways to help students understand the mystery of the Incarnation – of what it means for the Word to become flesh with its mysterious marriage of the eternal and the material – than to introduce them to the beauty embodied in the best Christian art and architecture.

We wonder why young people leave the Church. Could it be because we haven’t connected them emotionally and spiritually to her beauty? Young couples come back to beautiful churches when they want to get married. They travel to places around the world and visit the great art and beautiful churches.

When universities want to recruit new students and build a sense of devotion to the school, they make sure to take them to the beautiful traditional buildings on the campus. Those are the ones the students will proudly keep coming back to visit. They will bring their friends and say things like, “I had several classes in that building,” knowing that their friends will consider them fortunate to have enjoyed that beauty.

What a privilege it must have been to get an education on such a beautiful campus with such beautiful buildings! This sort of beauty inspires love.

We teach our Catholic young people so little about the history of their Church. We do so little to introduce them to her great artistic treasures. We rarely let them sit and contemplate the beauty of a great Catholic painting, sculpture, or cathedral. When they can take pride in their Church, they will find it much harder to leave it behind. We need to show them things they can be proud of and beauty they can rejoice in.

It’s time to stop building church buildings that embody a modernist aesthetic ideal. They are “ideological” buildings, not buildings built to be beautiful. Beauty draws people in. Ugliness drives them away.

Once people come in through the doors of the church, they need to hear the word of God preached solemnly and beautifully. They need to take part in a Mass that is solemn and beautiful, something that makes clear the people involved take it very seriously, as though their very lives depended on it. They need to hear good, orthodox theology, not childish ramblings.

But let’s also be practical for a moment (since that seems to be something people say they want): You won’t get people in the doors unless the place is beautiful. I am one of those stuck-in-my-head academic theologians, and even I understand that. Shouldn’t people who consider themselves so much more “practical” and “pastoral” understand it too?

You can rarely do anything better for the poor, the depressed, and the disaffected than to offer them beauty. As Bishop Daniel Flores affirmed recently: “The poor deserve beautiful things, and those who are on the periphery of life deserve a place to celebrate the beauty of life.” The rest of their world may be falling apart, but being enveloped in real beauty is like fresh, clear water in a dry, dusty desert.

Most people won’t know how to respond effectively to criticisms of the Church’s moral teaching. But when people say things like, “the Catholic Church is just stupid,” they will know that she can’t be as “stupid” as people claim if they have taken pride in the Church and its beauty. Then they can honestly say: “You go to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris; you look at the pietà of Michelangelo at St. Peter’s; or you listen to Mozart’s Requiem, and you tell me that the Church that inspired all that is stupid! Really? Show me anything secular modernity has produced more thoughtful or more impressive.”