Thursday, October 21, 2004

PASTORS AS THE LYNCHPIN OF THE NEW RENAISSANCE

I just sent in my next column for The National Catholic Register. This is the third and concluding part of my three-part "Beauty in the Church" series. I'll let you know if/when it gets posted on the NCReg site. Till then, here's a snip:


We need to give our seminarians and priests more beauty, because more will be required of them. Particularly in their years of formation, they will need heightened liturgical life as a way of “storing up” intimate encounters with God. They will need to bank these moments for a cold, grey Tuesday morning in the future, when they will need to propel themselves out of bed, and into a dark church, to say a beautiful Mass for a handful of quarrelsome old ladies.

A commitment to beauty in priestly formation will start in figuring out the kinds of things that seminarians can learn in a classroom, and the kinds of things that must be learned elsewhere. When I was in college, I used to go around saying, “The truth can change people. If you just expose them to the truth, they will cleave to it.” This is a naïve view. The sense of “You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free” is the sense of knowing in which the Scriptures also speak of sexual intimacy, “Adam knew Eve.” So, it’s the cleaving to the Truth that makes you free, not having it blare out at you from the speakers in a classroom or in black words on a white page. The ‘making people cleave’ to things inwardly – things like compassion, mercy, nobility, self-donation, heroism – this is the province of the arts. You can discover reasons for conviction and certitude on the pages of a textbook, but if you want compassion that will motivate someone to sacrifice, you can find it much quicker in a movie like Shine. Ethics can tell me about the disordered attractions of my own soul, but Madame Bovary will sting me to the heart and have me understand on the deepest level St Paul’s cry, “Why do I do what I hate? Who can free me from this body of death?!”

Artistic narratives - that is, stories - whether in cinema, theater or novels, have a crucial contribution to make to priestly formation. I'm not sure where I read it, but I recall reading a comment of Pope John Paul II in which he notes that we owe deep consideration to even purely secular works of art, for “they can show us in a profound way what the world without God looks like.” I knew one seminarian, for example, who was deeply impacted by the film Requiem for a Dream. A very dark and disturbing story of loneliness that leads into the hell of drug addiction, this well-crafted film incited a wave of pastoral urgency in this future priest that has helped him bring the Gospel into many definitely scary places. With real passion in his voice, he said to me after seeing the movie several times, “No human being should ever feel completely alone.”

Exposing future priests to the artistic stories of “what the world without God looks like” can also balance out the elitist disconnect which is the potential dark side of having lots of beauty in formation years. Always, the goal in formation must be two-fold: to make present both the reality of God and the reality of poor humanity.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, I am a seminarian with a religious order and I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the importance of the arts in the formation of future priests. At least in my observation, there seems to be little to nothing of this sort of thing going on right now. I think many seminarians would be open, even eager, to have this kind of formation included in our seminary time. However, there is a problem in that many of the current faculty and administrators of seminaries (rector & staff) do not themselves have any significant training or expertise in the arts. I'm sure there are exceptions, but try to find someone currently on the faculty of American graduate theology seminaries who can truly bring a deep appreciation of artistic beauty (and the value of the artistic expression of human fallenness & suffering) within a Christian context to the classroom and I think you will be searching for a long time.

I'm optimistic in the long run; things I think are slowly improving in general in the overall quality of seminary formation. But good rectors right now have a hard time just trying to get orthodox theology professors who actually teach Christology and Sacred Scripture in a way that is faithful to the teaching of the Church. This, together with the fact that rectors, if they are academics, are very likely not trained in the arts, brings the unfortunate result that serious exposure to quality art just isn't on their radar screen. But I suppose that's why you wrote your columns!

So, I don't know what the solution is, but there is a large obstacle in that there is a dearth of people currently teaching in seminaries who would be capable of providing the kind of artistic appreciation that you describe. (e.g., A particular frustration of mine, is the almost total absence of quality education in seminaries about the Church's amazingly rich and beautiful musical patrimony--and about what the Church actually says about music (and all the arts). Yes, there is in places a bit of regular training in music--in the form of (very rudimentary) choir direction using chant and polyphony. But nothing more--no history, no context for the art--just minimal, bare bones training in singing a tiny sliver of the treasury of Christian choral music without anything accompanying this that is designed to actually increase the seminiarian's understanding and love for great music and inspire him to bring this love out into the wider Church in the future.)

Lawrence Klimecki, deacon said...

Hello Barbara, I've enjoyed your first two installments in the Register and am looking forward to the full text of the third. It's always encouraging to find more than one voice crying out in the wilderness. I agree with your stance wholeheartedly. Vatican II called for arts councils in every diocese "wherever possible." It is hard to believe that it is not possible in some of our largest diocese that do not have them. I think it is important for the laity to educate themselves on the proper place of art and beauty and to contribute whenever and wherever they can. The diocese of Austin has an arts council that for now focuses on promoting the artists and architects in the area and attempts to bring them together with local parishes through an annual arts festival, its a start. There is very little written on the subject but there is some and it is worth seeking out. All of us creative types must do our homework and know what we are talking about when we approach our local priest or bishop. Because of the lack of artistic training in the seminaries our local presbyters may dismiss it as unimportant and this leads to the obstacles you mentioned in presenting your pastor with a complete prepaid music program. It is up to us to be persistent, informed and at all times respectful. Do whatever we can as a start and then see what more we can do.
Thanks for stepping up as a standard bearer
lawrence Klimecki
http://www.gryphonrampant.com

Anonymous said...

Hey Barbara,

As usual, you have provided something that is thought provoking. Having been a seminarian for seven years, I am very aware of some of the problems that seem to confront seminarians and priests. I was fortunate enough to have been in a religious community that fostered beauty in its many forms. However, there was an elitism that developed along with that precisely due to the reason that give. There was no exposure to art that showed what the world is like without God. We had intellectual formation coupled with beautiful liturgy and music, but there was a certain coldness and aloofness that developed as well. I don't think it was anything intentional, and I do think all the men there meant well. I just think it is a natural reaction to a lack of balance in formation.

Now that I have left the seminary and am working as an artist, this problem still confronts me. As an actor/singer, I have been offered opportunities to be in shows that reflect the world without God, and I often wonder what are the moral implications for me if I choose to take part in one of those. I often think that we, who are artists, are often told by the Church that we must only present and participate in works of art that reflect good things, and if we don't do that, then we are committing grave sins. Maybe this is my own problem, but it raises issues for me morally speaking because I know that artists have a large responsibility in the large scheme of things.

I don't know if any of that made sense, but I wanted to share that with you. I think you provide a very sane approach to the whole thing. I'd be interested in hearing what you or anyone else has to say on the issue.

Thanks for reading and God bless,
Scott
scott_herr@ekit.com

Anonymous said...

Barb,
Thank you for saying this and saying it so clearly. I have suspected as much, but not found many saying "Yes, there is *crucial* link between beauty and being authentically human!" That beauty can motivate us to live obediently, can convey truth to us, etc. is for some reason not a truth I (we?) run into much. But your post here makes so much sense. Thanks! ~Margo Brown

Gregory Peter Carl said...

Barbara,
I was made aware of you and your work by an interview you gave to Godspy.com and have to say I was elated to hear the full, aka the Catholic, understanding of the human expierience and endevour for beauty through art articulated so well, it's absolutely refreshing. And as (God willing) a future seminarian all the more so! My love of music, film, and all forms of creative endevour have played an integral role in my re-conversion and now, coming to a deeper understanding of *why* the Holy Spirit was able to move in me through those interests has been awe inspiring and exciting (God is so clever).

Appreciating what the world looks like without God, and all the consequences that follow has been eye opening. I come from a family where my parent's tried nievely to avoid problems by ignoring them. By blocking out the world and avoiding tough issues (emotional problems, sex, drugs, rocknroll?), and I'm just recovering from that over the past year. To come from a world of black and white (be good for as long as possible, you'll go to Heaven, sin once and you go to Hell, etc.) and be thrust into a world where everything looks grey, is scary (because you're thinking in terms of juctice) until you realize that greyness, being a sinner, is a reality of all humanity and that by mercy we are still loved, and not merely loved, but infinitly and perfectly. "to make present both the reality of God and the reality of poor humanity", exactly, that's what happened. My understanding of sin, reconciliation, redemption, human suffering, compassion, The Passion, have all been deepened and made... human by this balance of understanding of humanity which was first and most eloquently presented to me through art!

So, having basically had a conversion expierience catalyzed by my artistic intrests and endevours, and being moved to explore the possibility of a vocation as a result of abandoning myself to God's will for the first time. I, for one, would be ecstatic about sharing and helping to spred that expierience, just gimme about 8 years...

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