Right on…to the person who suggests commissioning beautiful art!

However, is it possible to start with “little things” such as encouraging “beauty” wherever it can be created. For instance, there are efforts to created “urban gardens” small spaces of beauty in areas were little floral beauty is never found. Some gardens are now found on balconies and even on roof tops.  Can we provide financial support for such efforts.  Many churches have volunteers who create “beautiful floral spaces” around our churches. Do we appreciate, support or even join them?  Where there is space, could we create a “peace garden”  a place supplied with benches where people can sit surrounded by beuaty and relax and talk with God.

Can we take our children to places where the beautiful of nature is particularly evident, a mountain top, a state or national park etc…a place to teach appreciation for what God has created…., to places where
they appreciate the variety of animals that God has made. 

In a culture that seems to glorify violence, ugliness and sin, it is a real battle to uphold love and beauty in all its forms. Let’s get to it!

As a performing classical artist for over 25 years, I agree with so much of what you have written.  It is little wonder that our Catholic prominence in the arts has taken such a hit when we spend so little time focused on training young artists and giving them a strong foundation in the arts.  We have taken away the heritage and history of our Catholic contribution to the arts and diminished educating students with the importance of our history and that which is beautiful.  We have let the secular music world win the race.  As far as the music in the “contemporary Christian music realm”, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the secular and sacred spheres.

The finest music schools in the country seemingly have very little interest in expressing the Church’s great gift to music history and development.  In addition, even our Catholic universities give short shrift to the performing arts in comparison to so many other disciplines.  Our Catholic music departments do not rate in the top ranking music programs but yet so much of our cultural heritage comes from the Church.  This is a very disturbing factor in understanding the problem.  In addition, many of our parishes have a choir that is lead by a non-Catholic (not necessarily an issue) who may not have any understanding of the importance of the liturgy and the history that has helped make it so strong from a music standpoint.  With the schools doing so little to support, encourage, and develop strong and solid church musicians, this should come as no surprise. 

As a Catholic, performer, educator, and parent, I would love to see The Catholic Universities step up and support excellent Catholic music educations.  I would like to once again see them step forward in leading the arts world in showing that we have much to be proud of and demand excellence in the music that is sung on campus and in liturgies.  Of course, I would like to see the fine arts a priority again.  And I would like to see our Churches, Parish Schools, and High Schools once again emphasize and support that which is beautiful, that which moves, and that which helps us worship all the more.  I would have loved to have sent my son, who is very interested in music, to a fine Catholic college next year to study and to receive a strong arts education.  However, when the emphasis on the arts in the Catholic Colleges is, for the most part, so greatly diminished, we found this to be a discouraging agenda and plan of study. 

In addition, we now have generations of parishioners who have no familiarity with great Sacred music which is performed well under the auspices of excellent Catholic musicians.  You can’t blame these musicians as they are doing the best they can with how they’ve been trained, with the exposure they’ve been given, but possibly with not all the energy they have.  If we don’t reach those sitting in the pew and show them what’s possible, they will not embrace that which is there to help lead them to a richer and more beautiful life in the Church.  There is an incredible wealth of music that has been written for our Masses that so few get to know (and gee, it’s not all bad).  Week after week, we so often get the same sung Mass parts—we are worshipping far too often by rote. 

I think it is also important, for the Catholic artists who are out there, to step up and “give back”, with their gifts that they have been granted, to the Church whenever possible.  I was greatly blessed with talents (trained in non-Catholic institutions). As a performing artist, I work in a very secular world, to be sure.  But when the opportunities arise, there are few places I’d rather sing than in a Church for Mass or some other occasion.  It is a chance to exclaim how thankful I am for that which has been given to me and to my family.  The reactions by those who are in attendance at a particular liturgy that I help lead is incredible.  It is heartwarming to hear them step up and sing louder than normal.  It is wonderful to hear afterwards that they were lead to participate more fully.  And it is rewarding to hear them exclaim how moved they were—-and they aren’t moved towards me—but towards more energized worship.  Worship is not only a noun.  It is also an active verb—-not passive.  This truly should be only for the Glory of God—not the artist.  This doesn’t have to happen only when a professional is helping lead the singing.  But when energy, devotion, and a appreciation for the arts are combined with a trained leader, the outcome for the betterment of our liturgies is deeply felt. 

In colleges, arts education is often thought to be expensive.  The overhead can indeed be quite high.  We do indeed need sponsors and benefactors of the arts.  Otherwise, we will completely lose so much of that which has helped to build the Church and make her contributions to western culture so great.  It’s a history we can’t afford to lose.  The price may be high.  However, the cost to the richness of our being is greater.

Greg Wolfe, the editor of Image, has also written about the 3 Transcendentals. I actually think there is a great deal of emphasis on beauty in Catholicism.  Anyone who is interested in this subject may want to look at the Image Journal (WWW.imagejournal.org) web site. (see his essay on “The Wound of Beauty”). There’s still good Catholic fiction out there that is not narrow or doctrinaire.

I don’t think the glut of mediocre,preachy, overtly pious “art” out there is because of a supply problem as you suggest, so much as a demand problem.  Many people positively prefer it to the real thing.  For one thing, many people think art is supposed to whack you over the head with a “message,” and for another, few receive the education of eye and heart that lets them see and appreciate real beauty.  So they prefer kitsch.  Remember all those Kincaid fans who got so mad at Simcha Fisher a while back?  Bad art is easier than good art.  I used to teach a poetry textbook to highschoolers that had a great chapter called “Good Poetry and Bad” that paired great poems with sentimental jingles on the same themes, then asked study questions to help the student see which was better and why.  The better students saw the difference, but there was always a large contingent of the class that solidly and immoveably preferred the cheesy sentimental jingles.  So I think we need better art education if we’re to have anyone capable of appreciating the new works you want commissioned.

Right on!  In times past art was a significant method of teaching and inspiring the Catholic faith.  Note Fr. Robert Barron’s series on ‘Catholicism’ where art plays such an important role.  Now check out today’s mostly uninspired church architecture, paintings, statuary and literature.  Much of the present situation resulted, I think, from a mis-application of Vatican II teachings where it was thought that by Protestantizing the Catholic Church more converts would result.  Unfortunately, the opposite occurred.

One hopeful development is the new translation of the Mass  
which begins soon which helps bring back the grandeur and poetry of the liturgy rescuing it from, in Anthony Esolen words, from “thin, pedestrian, and often misleading version Catholics have used these last forty years, one that depended, for whatever reasons, upon the distruction of words, and images, and allusions (particularly biblical allusions) and the truths they convey.”  Note: For full article see ‘Restoring the Mass’ by Anthony Esolen in the November, 2011 issue of ‘First Things’. 

Let us pray that the restoration of these good words in the Mass lead to more good works in art and in the lives of all Catholics.

Each Christian has a talent or talents given as a gift from the Heavenly Father and ought to be utilized for the sake of the community of believers.

Our parish church was built in the ‘60s, the heyday of ghastly church architecture. I think it is in the German Modern style, which sort of speaks for itself. Every effort to improve it has been futile, particularly in lighting, as the incandescent fixtures were replaced with indirect lighting which makes Walmart look cozy. Our music is horrible. The organ is gathering dust but someone can always pound out a piece on a piano. The only beautiful thing I can find there is Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Two quick comments: first, Fr. Barron’s “Catholicism” series is the most beautiful piece of Catholic art in recent decades—music, literature, architecture, paintings, and more. It pierces the heart, stirs the soul, and lifts the mind to heaven.

Second, another interesting trend is the number of non-Catholics who unconsciously exhibit Catholic beauty. One example is this video by Brandon Flowers. It’s the most evocative image of Purgatory I’ve discovered since Dante:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBENjCPS8LI

Wow, Jen.  I just recently had this same thought.  I am not (really) and artist but have some skill.  While meditating on the Rosary the other night I had a…ah….something.  A vision I guess, of Jesus during His Passion.  He was positioned in just such a way - and he was like a statue.  I immediately thought, “WOW!  I should carve THAT!”  I wish that I could.  But your article makes me think.  Hey - maybe I ought to!

But “the people” demand ugly art and music (at least the people who sell that stuff insist that they do).

If it’s any comfort, pretty much all art stinks at the moment; not just Catholic art. I think it would be great if we could have great Catholic poetry again, poets like Hopkins, Francis Thompson, Newman, Chesterton… just to name a few from the past couple hundred years. Unfortunately, no one reads poetry any more, which is understandable since in the past ninety years poetry has gone to the dogs. Everyone, even every literary Catholic, praises T. S. Eliot, despite C. S. Lewis’ solid belief that he contributed heavily to the destruction of poetry. I think I’m on Lewis’ side here.
Brief rant aside - all this talk makes me think about the ‘evangelizing through beauty’ idea; has the *primary* method of evangelization at any time in the Church’s history been through beautiful art, or through martyrdom and virtue? I love literature – love it, love it, love it – but I can’t help but wonder how much good great art will do to most people. The comparatively small circle of highly educated people who voluntarily enjoy great music, great literature, and great paintings might be evangelized through such a way, but the great mass of people never read poetry or listen to much classical music.
I’m not saying that all the people who write about evangelization through beauty are wrong, or that they think writing the next great American novel is more important than becoming a saint; what I’m trying to say is that it seems to have more emphasis placed on it than perhaps it should. Possibly, this may have something to do with the fact that most orthodox Catholics in the blogosphere belong to the ‘circle’ that I mentioned earlier. I don’t know… I’m just a high schooler who likes to read. But I think it’s worth thinking about.

This topic brings to mind Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series.
Her writing can’t be construed as “Catholic” in the conventional sense
Yet there
is a Catholic presence in her Outlander books that is pervasive
and consistent.  Catholicism is presented as something real, significant,
and beautiful instead of being used as “look at
the quaint practices of these primitive people”.
When I was
a lapsed Catholic, Gabaldon’s writing kept the faith constantly
working at the back of my mind.

Contrary to a beginning that makes the reader think that what follows
will be an anti-Catholic tract, I have similar reactions
to Bernard Cornwell’s “Agincourt”, though there is perhaps a greater “quaintness” quotient than Gabaldon.

The Church would do better to have more books like these in popular
culture.

Pursuant to my reflections on Catholicism in popular fiction,
it occurred to me that the answer to the question “Where is the great
Christian art?” could be reduced to “Where are the Christians?”.

It seems to me that (for example) when a practicing Catholic
writes fiction, he stands a good chance of representing the faith
(or at least its world view)
and giving it a fair shake.  Diana Gabaldon and Dean Koontz
come to mind.

I think something similar plagues other areas too.  Take economics.  Many Catholic schools compartmentalize the Church’s social justice teachings and economics rather than integrating them together.  In high schools, it is common to take Economics for a class outside of Theology but also require Social Justice, which deals a lot with economic activity, as a Theology class.  The same is done with history and Church history as if the two are different.  What ends up happening is the kids are given a history book written in a secular perspective and a Church history book written hopefully by a good source.  Better would be a class in history as C. Dawson writes about it.

I think Dean Koontz’s novels should be considered Catholic because they usually reflect a Catholic worldview, if not always overt Catholicism.  And they’re best-sellers as well as entertaining and enlightening reads.

I think you just described the problem with the arts in general.  In our democratic and capitalistic society, what the mob wants, the mob gets.  If we want a society that appreciates good art, then we need to show our children what good art is.  Unfortunately, the arts have been cuts from public school budgets for decades.  And now we reap the rewards of that decision. There is some great christian music out there.  Matt Maher is a really great Catholic musician.  He has a great ability to share what the Lord has placed in his heart through music and lyrics.  Also, the David Crowder Band is GREAT.  They are putting out their final album- a Mass.  And they are Baptist.  Go figure.

You forget about the artists who started out in Christian music and then moved on to secular music (Sam Cooke is the first to come to my mind). Maybe there is a limit on how much of one genre a person wants to hear. How many people will want to hear a recording of a mass every day? Why should an artist be confined to producing Christian-themed art when there are so many secular subjects that are beautiful as well?

So I shared this on FB because between you and Simcha Fisher, God has me thinking a lot about beauty and what I offer. 

I think he’s calling me to more. It’s easy even for people with music degrees and jobs in music to get complacent.  I’ll get my husband to watch the little one while I run to church and practice organ tonight. :)

Christian- you just described the sentiments of NEEDTOBREATHE.  They are a band who shuns labels such as christian and secular. The music they have written about their faith is remarkably beautiful.

Why is there not a lot of great Catholic Art?  It’s pretty simple:

Because Catholics are not paying great artists to produce great art for them. 

Jen, you have made some good points here—you acknowledge the amount of time and training it takes to excel at one’s craft, and you point out the need for arts patrons.  But let’s be clear about what being a “patron” means. Patrons don’t just “help [artists] gain access to the training and knowledge they need.”  They don’t, as Barbara Nicolosi wrote, “feed people who can sing and write music,”—whether spiritually or with delicious spaghetti dinners.  Patrons do those things too, but mostly what they do is SPEND MONEY on the arts.  Barbara was closer to the point when she used words like “subsidize” and “commission.”  Michelangelo didn’t work for access to training or for wonderfully-cooked Italian pasta.  Neither did Palestrina.  They produced art for CASH.

How many Catholic churches in your area pay even a quartet of singers to provide choral music at Mass?  I live in a large Southern city, and I can think of only 3 or 4 in town.  The Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and even Presbyterians have us beat by a mile. 

There are many reasons for this, and one of them is that Catholics tend to come from a poorer demographic than Protestants, and may not have as much disposable income to spend on the arts. That’s fine.  It’s fine to say, “there is a great writer in our parish, and I wish the parish could commission him/her to write a play/book/screenplay, but we just don’t have the money.  We are too busy feeding the homeless.” 

But if you say you want great art, and then somehow think you should not have to pay a fair market price for it, then you are really demonstrating that you don’t fully understand the value of that art.

Another point to consider:  is it necessary for great “Catholic” art to be produced by an upstanding, practicing Catholic?  I would argue that it is not, as long as the artist has some understanding of Catholic theology and tradition.  J.S. Bach wrote some wonderful Catholic Masses, and he was a Lutheran. 

To summarize:  Nice things (including nice artistic things) cost money.  If you want nice things, you have to pay for them.  Otherwise, you have to settle for mediocre things. There’s no way to cheat the system.

This is always interesting, but it’s such a vast, complicated question!  In modern America the arts are all separated into different worlds.  The church honestly has nothing to do with movies and TV—that’s one world.  Liturgical art (churches, frescos, icons, statues, music) has always been brought into being under church patronage, but I don’t think it can thrive in a non-Catholic culture.  The only place in America with a thriving tradition of sacred art is New Mexico: Catholic culture still lives on there, and beautiful altar screens and santos are still being commissioned by the local church.  It’s a world apart from your suburban parish with money but no culture, where you can hardly help getting an ugly church with 70’s art.  Catholic writers can still hack it, although the writing life is hard no matter what your religion!  Don’t get confused about publishers, though:  Catholic publishers simply don’t feel like they have the clout to market large numbers of novels.  And they’re probably right.  A publisher like Ignatius or Sophia serves a niche market of self-identified orthodox Catholics, and they want books on spirituality, apologetics, theology.  Useful non-fiction.  Compare this to Evangelical publishers, whose market has the CRITICAL MASS to bring genres like “Christian romance” into being.  Really, if you are a talented Catholic writer, why not go for the best publisher in your area: literary fiction, fantasy, sci-fi?  And they do.  I help edit a Catholic arts quarterly called Dappled Things, and we interviewed Carlos Eire, who won the National Book Award for Waiting for Snow in Havana.  He mentioned this odd phenomenon: he had written a “Catholic novel,” but no one marketed it to Catholics, and so Catholics weren’t talking about it.  You know who the missing link is? NCR is!!!  Why don’t we have a Steven Greydanus for books?  For music?  I only hear this question, “Where has the great Catholic art gone?” in the more “conservative” Catholic publications.  America and Commonweal still review fiction and poetry - but book reviews are sporadic on NCR, Inside Catholic, etc.

I think the Catholic Church should look at what Sherwood Baptist in Georgia has accomplished with the movies they have produced.  Family films with strong messages have been produced and been extremely lucrative on very small budgets.  These movies have done well on the secular market as well as in the Protestant Community.  They are putting their faith out there with no apologies and reaching many people via the arts.  There is no reason why the Catholic Church couldn’t do the same.

And I agree with Catherine about the money.  Especially when it comes to music.  Catholics are egregiously stingy about music.  But I think that the original sin lies with culture: Catholics are perfectly happy to listen to Mrs. Pillar-of-the-Parish croaking along gamely to a guitar.  They don’t want anything better.  And don’t tell me it’s all those darn yuppie liberal Catholics’ fault!  When I turn on Catholic radio, I hear the most god-awful dreck.  Breathy voices, stupid acoustic guitar, banal lyrics.  They always play this one lady who sings, “I can’t do it alone, / but I can doooo it with youuuu, Lord.”  That one makes me smirk every time.

So basically, my take is that Erin Manning should submit her sci-fi book to a sci-fi publisher.  Then NCR should review it.  More people will read it that way than if she published it with a little Catholic publisher.

I am sure you have heard this common phrase - life imitates art. Yes it does, but more often than not art imitates life, and I think the reason there are so few Christian or - more specifically Catholic art pieces, is that artistic subject matter, symbolism, and themes have fallen out of fashion as of late, due a fairly recent shift in cultural ideals that seems to accept and even embrace a very noticeable corrosion, and breakdown of moral code in society.

I am more than familliar with current cultural trends that lean toward the macabre - extreme violence in film and games marketed to children, zombies, deviant behavior, etc. These current trends in popular art are meant to shock and disturb, and except for the artist’s technical precision and skill, beauty is rarely a consideration.

I would hope that by introducing art that explores Christian and Catholic ideals, and by Catholics and other Christians encouraging art that mirrors a just and moral way of life by supporting the artists, designers, and writers who create such art, we will someday see another cultural shift in popular ideals - one that values a life of kindness and beauty, and the art that imitates it.

Excellent blog article Jennifer. Terrific topic!
@Meredith:  Did you EVER hit it out of the ballpark, way deep into center field! Wonderful summation! If there was one sad-sack “hymn,” (and I’m being extremely charitable by using the quotation hooks) it’s that funereal “composition” titled “God hears the cry of the poor.” Unfortunately,  I’ll bet the guy or gal who wrote that thing didn’t stay poor for very long if a lot of baby –boomer contemporaries and comrades of your “croaking … Mrs. Pillar-of-the-Parish” pushed it as often nationally as my former parish had during the late 80s. Oh, was that awful.
  I couldn’t stand it after a while and though my reasons for straying into the Protestant (first Episcopalian/then Evangelical) pastures were more seriously based than any excruciating mental agony endured from listening to those impoverished notes … it didn’t take long to see that the Evangelicals hadn’t come up with anything to ease the pain (besides sneaking down to “Fellowship Hall” for more coffee and donut holes.) When a close Vermont-native Yankee friend told me the Evangelicals were getting their “contemporary tunes” from the Catholics, I reminded him he got “my Irish up.”
  “What … No way, ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘God hears the cry of the poor’ were bad enough, but no way can we be blamed for the rest of the garbage,” I protested.
  When I returned to the Real Old Time Religion, (by 1,500 years) … was I in for a devastating disappointment. We had indeed allowed our Kumbaya-ites to wreck havoc on good Christian music and culture wherever Christians bowed their heads n’ darkened the doors of their respective “worship facilities.”
  If it was just superb music, a decorous liturgy and great preaching I needed to “get me by…spiritually-speaking,” I should’ve stuck with the Episcys. Salvation, the late Fr. Neuhaus, a convert from Lutheranism, or is it Woebegonism(?), comes from the Jews. True, but since a Divine Jew directly founded our Church, not another mere mortal wayward Christian, I knew where to return for more than just good music, decorum and great preaching. (One doesn’t need to hear a 30-45 minute “message” every week to be reminded how much God loves us, especially when there’s no crucifix hanging above or behind the messenger.
  There’s not a single power point “message” in the world that packs the power contained in the visual imagery of a man … not just any man, but that Divine Jewish man I referred to above … nailed to a crude pair of oak planks, both of which had a million sharp splinters sticking out to cause further pain to what Jesus was already enduring.  I knew my time at that Evangelical church were shortening when I heard a fellow congregant on the bus say she “had to leave the Catholic Church” because she could no longer stand to look up at the crucifix. “It was too traumatic.”
  Hmmm. Interesting enough. But not nearly as interesting as hearing the same church’s pastor during a Christmas Eve “message” say that our churches with their stained glass windows were making it harder for God to reach us. As a crafter of wooden Christian-themed artwork, hearing this was worth a half-gallon of coffee in a single swallow! Wow! There’s power in the wood and stained glass if it can keep the Almighty from reaching our hearts. I HAD to get my hands on whatever brands of building material he was referring to!
  All kidding aside, most of my life, I’ve been exposed to the highest levels of Christian artistic expression, (and yes, some of its more plebian variety.) As a military dependent who was blessed to be raised by two parents who grew up in the same parish (that IS rare in the Service, folks, very RARE!) and made sure their three sons would be readers and learn how to appreciate the arts, historical sites, and music they exposed us to – of course, regardless whether we cared to then or NOT, restless boys being restless boys—when I look back on all those years, experiences and lessons, I can’t help feeling somewhat brokenhearted for future generations.
  Okay, they couldn’t get me to break a bad habit of writing way too long run on sentences. On the other hand, they presented me with a lasting ever-youthful appreciation for the necessity of creating a life-long run-on sentence, so-to-speak, of never losing interest in the classical arts, especially classical ecclesiastical arts.
  I build Bavarian style (among other) nativity crèche display stalls for Christmas and historically-themed (i.e., Colonial, Federalist eras) decorative birdhouses. Why those topics? I was exposed to the German crèche making artists in Oberammergau in Germany whenever we visited that area, not to mention pay a visit to Him at nearby Ettal while lodging at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Being a New Englander,  and a history buff, I’ve long been fascinated by all the old historical buildings up here.
  It sickens me to watch the constant erosion of appreciation for our deep spiritual, cultural and historical heritage. Perhaps the biggest reason for this erosion is the idiot box. Yet it doesn’t have to be because of the many wonderful shows that have been created to highlight the wonders of both our spiritual and historical blessings.
  The scariest thing for us “aging baby boomers” (Geeesh, I hate that term, along with buzz-cliches like “accountable,” “transparency” and “at the end of the day”) is to hear such sad laments about what our children and grandchildren are exposed to enough or not encouraged enough to get involved in; but also what they ARE exposed to participate more often in while playing computer games. (Computer games can be wonderfully instructive without being “nerdy.” Today, it saddened me greatly to hear Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann radio show recall how last week he went shopping for some games for his grandkids to play, and all he could find were imported games promoting nothing but violence (for its own sake.) Sen. Sanders didn’t have to give any titles: Yet, instantly “Halo” came to mind. (Love that irony!) No games promoting history could a U.S. Senator find presumably in our nation’s capital of all places. The last time I checked, the U.S. had a terrific treasure chest of historical events to produce many interesting games from.
  What next? Italian kids being told to ignore the greats from the Renaissance for the blandishments of modern “art” produced by Picasso,  and Jackson Pollack, et al.? Remember the old “Kid Pix” teaching game for kids released 20 years ago? You could reproduce exactly the level of Pollack’s “artistry” in a matter of minutes. What does that say? 
  It’s not that I want to shamelessly plug my crafts or interests here. There are beaucoup areas would-be or experienced Christian crafters or performing artists and writers can serve Him and improve their lives and the lives they love and enjoy being with. 
  The key to making sure our kids and all future generations receive the same blessings of such a rich spiritual/cultural and historical heritage is constant parental exposure to what St. Paul described in Phillippians. It means having “news of the day” and “what did you learn in school that was interesting today” every time at the dinner table. Get your kids to read more and describe what they read. What did they make in school or Scouts, etc. and how and why did they make it.  And parents… MAKE IT CHALLENGING AND ENJOYABLE!
  Don’t rely on public schools to make sure your kids get the exposure they need and DESERVE. In this day and age when school budgets are cut back by stingy-minded politicians at all government levels, you can count on the liberal arts being the first among other “luxuries” to wind up on the budgetary chopping block. “We must be competitive with the (next town over) and the Chinese!” Translated from contemporary educational politico-speak… “Dump art, music, and foreign languages, except Mandarin, and of course—make sure they get their math and basic writing skills up to snuff to pass the state tests!”
  With apologies to Mark Twain, the Good Lord made an idiot for practice. Then he got down to business and created both school committees and professional educational standard testing experts.  Which of course begs an obvious follow up question: Where does appreciation for the finer things in life, especially those relating to the “Godly skills” in fine arts, music, architecture, literary skills? Why, today some diocesan-level education officials and parish school committees have trouble meeting this simple challenge.
  Tip O’Neill used to preach, “All politics is local.” This also holds true for making sure our young ones are truly enlightened from their respective HOME precincts.  Parents CAN and MUST make sure their kids get the most well-rounded liberal arts education and exposure to the finer things in life besides rote skills in reading, writing, counting and test taking:; and this “rounding off” BEGINS AT HOME. If my wife, (a stay-home-wife n’ mother for our first 12 years, and school cafeteria worker, “Lunch Lady” thereafter) and I could raise four adult children through public schools, and for a while in a very liberal secularist college-town public school system, anybody can do it. We’re a mixed religion family and two of our children went to excellent colleges and graduated within 7 years. And, fellow parents, you don’t need to have doctorates or a fat trust fund to pull this off, either.
I’ve heard and read conservative Catholics and Protestants say in so many words, “Real loving Christian parents”  would “never”  put their kids in public schools and leave them “exposed to the secular humanist agenda of the public schools and teachers’ unions.” They’d (OF COURSE!) make sure their kids are home schooled, put in Christian academies or Parochial schools, no matter what it cost. Really.
  Ah, but when parents can by spending more time with their kids to teach them how to make something in the basement shop or upstairs crafts room, share how to play an instrument or read music … how much more is that costing them as compared to working two or three jobs to put these kids in private school or afford for one parent to home school the kids, on top of paying their college loans and mortgage n’ auto payments, etc.?  (At least while your kids are learning craft skills at home, and times are tight with the family budget, they’ll already have one leg up “competitively-speaking” over their classmates when it comes time to deal with the lack of crayons, scissors, glue, etc. At home you learn how to make do real fast and inexpensively till pay-day. The “pros” tell their teachers to pay out of their pockets or ask their students to ask their parents to cough up more.  Parents, tell the “pros” to go figure.
  It’s time for some parental pushback on behalf of preserving and promoting what St. Paul exhorted us to pursue. When this happens on a regular basis in every state, city, town, village, ward, diocese, parish, school, and most importantly…HOME,  that’s when the Mrs. Pillars and their guitars will vamoose for Kumbayaville in a heartbeat! They’ll finally know their gig’s over!

Great discussion.

My grandfather, a painter, said it well, I think: “When there is a general return to great art we may rest assured that the Church will use it.”

“Where are the great patrons of Christian art?”

They’re all giving money to politicans, thinking they’re doing something worthwhile.

“I think the Catholic Church should look at what Sherwood Baptist in Georgia has accomplished with the movies they have produced.  Family films with strong messages have been produced and been extremely lucrative on very small budgets.”

No, no they should not.  They should look to make good films, not good message films.

Adolfo, some of those patrons happen to be mere purchasers of great Christian art who also happen to be extremely fortunate trust fund babies or folks who took advantage of other tax breaks to buy art that they alone will be able to enjoy, unless of course ... they donate them to a public museum or perhaps a church…maybe even ours which is the font of all the greatest Christian art. Talk about double-dipping. First they get the tax breaks to buy the artworks, then they get to write the art they’re donating for a tax break. And of course, there’s also the other “benny,” all the wonderful spin they’ll receive within academia, especially on NPR and PBS ... which all of us pay for.
  Not that I complain about taxpayer funding of NPR/PBS…not by a long shot especially when we consider what’s being tossed back to the public on other channels, especially the more commercialistic kind. BUT, it sure seems rather odd how the very well off keep managing to manipulate their circles in ways most of us 99 percenters could only dream of in order to get a break on our taxes just to avoid having to pay extra in April. I’ve only been soaked once, but I’ve listened to many others who’ve been far less fortunate and they don’t have the luxury of dabbling in the arts market to skin society’s finer cats ever more to their advantage.
  If I had my way, all great artworks would belong to the religious faith which inspired and commissioned their artists to create in the first place ... or in public museums for everybody to see, especially children. If that sounds “socialistic,” so be it. Anything that gives glory to God should be made available for all of the eyes God created to view this art. As for my definition of good religious art?  It comes with a chronological catch or tweaking. No modern art, none whatsoever produced after the dawn of that form of Cultural Philistinism.
  Heck,let’s really crank the clock back to 18th and early 19th centuries. LOL. As for the modernist, cubist and other brutalist stuff ... sell it for a dime on the dollar or find out what it can bring in at the local “recycling centers.”
  Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” and every year, people say “How can the Church feed its people by paying for expensive art?” A more discerning way to view this mild challenge is to simply point to Church art that helps feed one’s soul with The Truth. Will Kumbaya-esque stuff that “adorns” our present day modernist-looking parishes’ cold walls nourish anybody’s soul as opposed to replications of Baroque or Renaissance-style artwork?
  No brainer!

What jumped instantly to my mind on reading this was:

Catholics lost art when they started building ugly churches and featuring ugly music during the mass.

My feeling is that Catholic art used to be beautiful because it served worship.

My other feeling is, that, as I think someone said above, today most art is not beautiful. So any artist, Catholic or not, is surrounded by a culture that does not venerate beauty anymore. It’s hard to produce beauty as an artist if the exemplars that are held up for you to emulate when you are learning your craft are not themselves beautiful.

It is inevitable that when you drive through a new town and you see two or three church buildings, the ugliest, most modern one will be the Catholic church. I swear, if I’m ever a billionaire, I’m going to create a fund so churches can demolish their modern crap buildings and build beautiful traditional buildings. Nothing would bring Catholic culture back than to have real works of art as places of worship again. People would come just to look at the buildings, and see the art inside. And billionaires reading this, feel free to steal my idea. ;)

I think there’s a general sense that Catholic art should overtly show the beauty of the Christian message, which leads to a lot of preachiness. We want our novels, movies, and other storytelling to clearly delineate the spiritual journey of the main character and to end in profound conversion. So there’s a tension between showing reality as it is and as it would be in a world without our fallen natures. Flannery O’Connor said it better than I can attempt - “Sentimentality is…an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.”

Of course, the beauty of faith can also be shown by depicting its opposite in such a way as to make clear our need for grace, which often makes for more compelling, realistic storytelling but is also a grayer area in deciding if a piece of art is truly Catholic or not.

I like to think that all good music is Catholic music on some level..whether it knows it or not. :) 
-
ARM: I was that annoying kid who was predictably on the same side as the teacher.  The words “didactic” and “saccharine” come to mind…
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...That said: I do keep a soft spot for some “low art” that evidently was supposed to be educated out of me at the conservatory; I think that must happen when you always try to look at the positive side of things you can’t change anyway.  Yes, I know it’s terrible that I don’t entirely despise Marty Haugen settings (y’all know who you are!).  Excoriating people’s taste in music doesn’t get more endearing with repetition.  Think it might be time for a different approach?

Others have said this, I’m sure, but it’s also important to remember that beauty is a moving target; nothing in the arts appeals to, speaks to, or moves EVERYONE. From the comment right before mine, it’s obvious people have been talking “contemporary” vs. “traditional” music in the liturgy. Beauty exists in all forms, ancient, modern, tonal, atonal, and trying to confine it to a narrower vision is, in my opinion, disrespectful to the Spirit who inspires it all.

However, I think the primary point Jennifer’s making is not about music, but about the total subject, especially literature. And it’s something I struggle with as a writer. What I would like to do is write secular literature—that will be read by many—but which will uphold a Catholic world view, without bashing people over the head with saints, rosaries, etc. Because the reality is that will turn people off, and I’d rather attract people to seek for something more. Easier said than done.

Check out the Art Renewal Center’s website. I could get lost on there for hours. They have quite a collection of great art, and of course lots of it is historical and religious in nature.

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/mission.php

“...To promote a return of training, standards and excellence in the visual arts… To disseminate the rich artistic heritage of 2500 years of accumulated knowledge in creating traditional, realistic images touching upon universal and timeless themes… To repudiate the idea that development in art requires destruction of boundaries and standards, pointless emphasis on ‘newness,’ or pursuit of the bizarre and ugly as ends in themselves, and to expose as artistic fraud those works conceived only to elicit outrage…”

What a breath of fresh air!

THE VIRGIN MARY IS GOOD LOOKING, BUT A BLEEDING MAN BEING TORTURED IS REALLY GROSS! IT CAN ONLY BE APPRECIATED BY SADOMASOCHISTS.

So, “Justin Case,” just how homosexual are you?  And did you graduate from grade school yet?

Have you ever read the author Flannery O’Connor’s letters? They speak often about the struggle for upholding a Catholic worldview to an increasingly secular audience, and the role of the Catholic artist. They gave me much peace about the whole subject. I think they complement her fiction perfectly, because they helped me understand what she wrote and why she wrote it. They are also very funny and readable. I think she is one of the greatest Catholic artists of the last century. She is writing in the 50’s and 60’s, but it applies perfectly to today. Her letters are included in her Library of America series collected works, which you can usually get from the library.

Jennifer, I am wondering how much you are suggesting that what we need are patrons to support better Catholic art, versus patrons to support putting Catholics in positions to affect the stories told through Regular Old Art. I’m thinking specifically of programs like Act One which focuses primarily on helping Christian artists to develop their craft regardless of how overtly Christian their efforts may be. We are having a <a >somewhat tangential discussion of Catholicism and the arts over at Korrektiv</a> and are generally in agreement that the better way to influence the greater culture is by involvement in “mainstream” storytelling rather than by setting up a parallel stream of movies, books, etc. But I think there’s certainly room for both art created to nourish our faith, boost our spirits, etc., and art that engages the greater culture and is therefore less explicitly Catholic.

The real problem isn’t that great art inspired by faith isn’t being created. It is. The real problem is that people don’t know it exists. We have all become so addicted to a narrative of decline that we’ve stopped looking and spend most of our time complaining. IMAGE journal has been profiling this work for 23 years (inspired by Catholic thinkers like Maritain and von Balthasar) but we’re still a best-kept secret: http://imagejournal.org. We’re not the only ones out there by any means but the 70 issues we’ve published and our large website are treasure troves worth exploring.

Thanks for touching on this important subject…my husband and I are expecting our first child and I’ve been thinking A LOT about art and culture - how it impacted me as a child, how it will impact our child.
We always had plenty of Catholic movies - my mom was always trying to get us to watch movies about saints, Fatima, Lourdes, etc… the only problem was, I wanted to watch movies about princesses falling in love, not children praying the Rosary. I didn’t see any connection between the two. I want my child to get the fact that they are not mutually exclusive events. And I think - part of the answer to that, is the type of movies Barbara Nicolosi is encouraging.

As a person who is married to a man who used to work at a mid-sized publishing house…try not to be too hard on them.  Have you noticed they’re closing left and right and desperate to make break even?  They’re not in a “chancy” mood, when their existence is on the line…which is unfortunate, but I appreciate their dilemma.  The best art/writing is (unfortunately) probably to come from indies…and that’s unfortunate simply because their great work may never get the recognition it deserves.

Also, great lit writers don’t use unfortunate three times in two sentences.  I never claimed I was.  Just like reading it.

Amen! This is fantastic. Thank you for these thoughts—I believe you are right on. Here is a bit of my take on the matter of Christian patronage of the arts: http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2792/

“Where are the great patrons of Christian art?”
*
## All gone. The patrons were those with the money to afford the art: rulers, churchmen of high rank such as cardinals and bishops, civic bodies, religious orders, monarchs and their dependents. The monarchs have either gone, lack the money, or the religion; religious orders have more urgent concerns and lack the money, civic bodies are not interested or lack the cash, and religious art is unlikely to be commissioned by patrons whose interests are secular; religion is of vanishingly small importance to a lot of people - it is no longer needed by society as a means of self-understanding and self-expression; it’s become a hobby, like stamp-collecting. For a lot of people, Jesus Christ is as mythical as the Tooth Fairy. And besides, societies in the West are concerned to avoid offending non-Christians. Add to that the fact that most ecclesiastics appear to be blessed with the gift of preternaturally bad taste - as modern Church “orc-itecture” proves - and you have the answer.
BTW, beauty is not created deliberately; it comes about indirectly. Any poet who ssets out to be a great poet, is sure to fail; what he seeks, can’t be had by being sought directly. Beauty is more like a God-given grace than something produced by human intentions.

I don’t know much about art history and the history of patronage, in general, but I wonder how much the patrons of yesteryear dictated what the artists were to create, i.e. “put some clothes on those figures, this is going on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel.” I think there are opportunities today for individuals to act as patrons of the arts but I suspect there would also be more direction given to the artists as a result, which doesn’t necessarily sound like a recipe for great art.

Dorian Speed:
During the time of the Great Maters art commissions were quite specific: size, subject matter, amount of gold and ultramarine used.  (Ultramarine, powdered lapis lazuli, was more expensive than gold because it was “ultramarine”—from over the sea in Iraq.)
Loincloths WERE painted on Michaelangelo’s nudes in the Sistine chapel; then again, art that was inferior was painted over instead of preserved.

While sitting through nearly six days of existence sans electricity following the big Halloween Weekend Snow Whomp on western New England’s energy “infrastructure” (which resulted in a massive case of snap, crackle n’ pop-goes-the-electricity, lights, heat, and of course, no idiot box or this contraption I’m using (yes, it’s the old fashioned pre-Jobs “land based kind”)... I had the chance to do a little old fashioned serious activity under today’s equivalent to actual candles: reading. Granted readers of pre-electricity days didn’t have d-cells to rely on or for that matter need to fear what happens when the weather goes south.
  They put up with it and MANAGED. (No mental trauma venting sessions worthy of Oprah-like feel-good sessions; just grunt, grin, bear it and put up with it.)
  One thing the folks of olden days, especially Catholic folks, didn’t have to endure or “put up with” was a poorly translated English portion of their old St. Joseph’s Missals. But no thanks to the ever so open-minded liturgical geniuses who gave us forty years of enforced mediocrity and banality, a whole generation and more have grown so used to “putting up with” the most innacurately and simply RUINED “liturgy” the “New Order” ... that when the Vatican announced there’d be a newer translation that was going to be more like the pre-Vatican II’s English version, it was as if a legion of legions cried, howled n’ shrieked at the mere unveiling of something truly artistic, beautiful and meaningful and oh, bless their lil’ long over-Oprahfied souls ... they simply couldn’t handle it. They still can’t and when the New Liturgy if fully put into our Daily and Sunday Masses ... it’ll be more intersting to watch their reactions than any of the faces of those we see regularly in our local parishes who simply know how to be more mature about these things.
  Good translations of liturgy are artful and convey meaning and imagination. Just as regular art we observe on our church walls and museum walls, etc. When was the last time anybody howled for more mediocrity unless they worked for some eggheady outfit hell bent on squeezing the taxpayer out of money that really could’ve been put into a nutrition program such as Meals on Wheels for the elderly. At least if the money won’t be used for artistic purposes, the eggheads could see to it that it really be spent on making sure the Lord’s lambs are fed as opposed to his goats and their ego-driven tastes as they create yet more scandals packaged as “artistic exhibitions” where Jesus and especially Mary are lampooned by such low-life and over-hyped parasitical “artists.”
  See, if the Liturgy can be monkeyed with and dumbed down, visual art goes next, followed by music so no wonder the pews start looking emptier every year. Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep. For the social justice uber alles volk, that means more food pantries and imitations of Dorothy Day. Fine, but they’d better remember that Miss Day worked both the food kitchens and loved the Church so much that she couldn’t get enough of what the Church WAS REALLY FEEDING ITS SHEEP especially during the vast majority of her life when the Mass was THE MASS and its English translation more truly resembled “God’s menu” so to speak.
  For great reading, get a hold of Anthony Esolen’s article “Restoring The Mass” in “First Things” November, 2011 edition. Sigh, no small wonder whenever great Italian opera librettos are translated into English, not just the leading players “buy the farm” in the end, hell, the whole shebang flops!

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