A commenter on my post on artificiality has observed that Catholicism has it's share of sentimentalism, and he is correct. For some reason he associates Catholic kitsch with sentimentalism. I'm not sure the connection is apt, or at least not big enough for we have far more sentimentalism in the Catholic Church than is represented by the souvenir stalls at Lourdes.
Baroque is sentimental. Flamboyant Gothic is sentimental. The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Divine Mercy and the Little Flower and the Seven Sorrows of Mary are sentimental. I could go on and on. Geesh, Catholicism is overflowing with sentimental.
I never said sentiment is bad or that kitsch is wrong. I can't bear aesthetes, and I have grown to love the devotional expressions of ordinary Catholics--even when they are in 'bad' taste. Good taste in religion is the preserve of Anglicans. I'm happy to belong to a religion with tacky souvenir shops selling plastic rosaries and holy water bottles shaped like the Blessed Virgin and her crown unscrews to splash the holy water about. I'm happy to belong to such a religion because it is the religion of the unwashed, the unschooled and the holy poor. I love the Kings College Choir, but if I have to choose give me a fat Italian woman muttering her plastic beads faithfully before an image of the Infant of Prague. There's real religion. The other (in my experience) is all form and no content.
Sentiment in religion is only wrong when it becomes sentimentality. In other words, when all there is, is sentiment. When all there is, is subjective emotionalism. Yes, we have sentimentality and high emotion in Catholicism, but underneath it all is the solid dogma, discipline and devotion of 2000 year of the Catholic faith. Within Protestantism, however, all that remains is subjective sentimentalism.
Whether it is the Protestant charismatic with his oozing emotions or the Evangelical Anglican who wants you to have an emotional experience called 'getting saved' or the urbane Anglican academic the underlying quicksand is, "I feel this is true for me therefore I feel it is the right way to be..." The sentimentalism of the Catholic pilgrim buying a post card of Jesus with googly eyes from a souvenir stand in Lourdes is, on the other hand, built on the rock solid objectivity of the Catholic faith.
Do we have dissenters from this faith in the Catholic Church? Of course we do. Big deal. Even the fact that they are dissenting proves the objective claims of the Catholic faith--otherwise they would have nothing to dissent from. They might be kicking against a rock, but at least the rock is there, and the fact that they are kicking against it validates it.
Brilliant! Halfway through this post I had to doublecheck to make sure this wasn't a Chesterton citation. "good taste is the preserve of Anglicans"... priceless!
ReplyDeleteGreat Post, Father. Thanks for putting things like this in perspective, and do it so eloquently.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought that only Catholics could be comfortable inside a Buca di Beppo restaurant ... especially at the "Popes table".
ReplyDeleteWell, the funny bit is "battle of the kitsch". Every ethnic group, every age group, every Catholic individual has their own tolerance for certain things, but maybe not so much for others.
ReplyDeleteI think my mom would probably say the Buca di Beppo style is "too much", and I know she thinks my Catholic book accumulation is a little too churchy (my dead great-aunts, the religious sisters, get mentioned a lot at this point in a disapproving way) -- but man, you better never say a word against her prayer card collection or her missals or the other stuff. :) Huge coffee table books full of Catholicness are also totally okay.
Each of my Catholic relatives and acquaintances seems to have their own collection of Catholic Stuff. It's all very different, too. I'm not worried unless I see something heretical.
What is awesome is seeing what saint pictures the Mexican restaurant has up behind the cash register. (And these days, in the Chinese restaurant.)
I see your point, 'Banshee. Though I'm not an art major, I've often rolled my eyes at the painted statues sold in Catholic gift stores, and I much prefer the artwork of someone like Daniel Mitsui — his rendering of St. Michael slaying the dragon in the Japanese idiom is excellent. But I'd take the most cloying, saccharine-ly Caucasian statue of the BVM over that monstrosity in Rome purporting to be Bl. John Paul II.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I have a few prayer cards myself ....
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this post, Father! Such wisdom - thank you and bless you!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Father! You made me smile,and on a day in which I thought smiling was impossible.
ReplyDeleteMagnificent, Father! "...and a left...and a right..." of which surely Bruce Willis himself would be proud!
ReplyDeleteFirst, though you (quite rightly, of course!) suggest that Anglicans have good taste, you manage to make it sound almost insulting! Breath-taking!
Then you manage to suggest that Roman Catholicism must be right because the fact of people disagreeing with it proves it! Phenomenal!
And all without a hint of over-defensiveness. Wunderbar!
I take off my biretta to you!
“Good taste in religion is the preserve of Anglicans.”
ReplyDeleteQuite so. Not only do they have better taste in religion, but they have superb taste in their golf and country clubs. Those lavish country clubs might make one suspicious that Anglicans are more interested in the visible, successful, utopian world, but much less so in the invisible world.
Great post, Fr. Longenecker.
Well said, Father! Years ago in Ireland, any house you visited would be sure to have a picture of the Sacred Heart displayed in a prominent position. I suspect that today this would be a rare sight – especially among the younger generation - as it “wouldn’t fit the décor…” The faithful of an earlier age might not have been able to deliver a thomistic disquisition on the dogmas of the Faith but they were well-grounded in the basics of it and unapologetic in its defense.
ReplyDeleteIn the post-Vat II world the simple piety and pious practices of the people were looked down upon as ‘primitive’ and not in keeping with our modern, grownup world. But this was a false understanding of Papa Giovanni’s notion of aggiornamento as the purpose for the Council. The intent to make the Faith more relevant was not in the sense of conforming it to the world but of how to do a better job of bringing the world to it. As Pope Benedict has remarked, that is still a work in progress.
Our Lord marveled at the faith of simple people and was critical of the hypocrisy of the ‘learned’. A degree in theology is not a prerequisite for a solid faith – and sometimes it can be stumbling block. It’s not what you know that will get you into heaven, but how you lived. And there’s more than one way of living your faith.
If Anglicans didn't exist, you'd have to invent them.
ReplyDelete(wv "mormones")
I was debating whether or not to respond to this post, but eventually the "Tee hee! Look at the silly Anglicans with their skewed priorities!" posts become sufficiently provocative.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth pointing out, of course, that snobbery which self-consciously wraps itself in the flag of willful ignorance and lack of cultivation is still a kind of snobbery. It sounds something like this:
Lobsters and lollipops, whoever gained anything by reading that miserable literary aesthete, C.S. Lewis? I mean, really! And the hymns of Charles Wesley? Faugh! And do let us put the wretched organ away and take out that fine instrument, the guitar!
But the deeper point is, again, that forcing the choice between empty aesthetics and sincere, rustic devotion creates a false dichotomy. Me? I'd rather have well-informed congregants who know and love their Bible, their history, their dignified liturgy, their hymns, their traditions, and their devotions, even if I have to drag them kicking and screaming.
And usually, I've found, I don't have to.
Have your mud pies, but don't knock on people who prefer to go to the beach.
My wife and I, years before our conversion to the Catholic Church, tried worshipping at a famous Anglican Church in our city.
ReplyDeleteAt first it all seemed so "nice". Everything was in very "good taste". Just the right amount of ceremonial, not too much. Beautiful choir, academic sermons, etc etc.
Then we came to realise that under the surface of all this was .... nothing. That's right .. nothing. The people did not believe anything much at all. When one of the priests became a Buddist I guess that told us what we already knew because by that stage we had left that souless, spiritually empty church, never to return.
Thank goodness all the paint wore off the Parthenon before it could scandalize the modern aesthete:
ReplyDelete"If the ancient Greeks sold kitschy postcards to tourists 2,000 years ago, they would have depicted much different views of the popular sites that visitors flock to today."
http://www.livescience.com/649-parthenon-riot-color.html
@Anglican Defenders: Y'all are not paying attention. Fr. Longenecker is not complaining about how fine highly aesthetic worship is, but rather trying to make the point that appreciation for high aesthetics is no excuse for excluding sentimental devotional kitsch.
ReplyDeleteBut frankly, kitsch (as an art-criticism term) is not really an appropriate way to describe the sort of tacky, least-common-denominator stuff he's defending. Rather, it applies to emotionally false, overly sentimentalist work.
Very direct post! I like that! It's one of my favorite things about the Catholic Faith, having things said to you in a direct and non-glossed over manner :-)
ReplyDeleteAs you said Catholic faith is the rock and if people dissent it's because the rock is solid so they can't change it to suit their needs like protestants do with their belief system. I have recently written a Catholic Apologetics book and I was wondering if you would be ok with me sending you a free review copy of it? Would you be interested in doing a review about it on your site. Let me know if you are interested. You can take a look at my book on the following website: http://www.leoninepublishers.com/bookstore-thequest
Thanks and God Bless!
Olivia Cendejas