You have to correct your expectations. You thought sanctity and sublimity were the same thing, and while what is true is also beautiful, we sometimes have to re-assess our own opinions about beauty. There is a beauty that transcends matters of fine art and good taste.
Being a Catholic means having our pre-conceptions blown away. It's all much bigger than you thought. Being a Catholics is learning to see the beauty of holiness. Sanctity and sublimity are not always the same thing.
A good illustration of this is St Therese of Lisieux. Anyone with taste and learning who has first read her book will probably not find it to their taste. It is a schoolgirl's account of growing up in a very pious household in nineteenth century France. It is not only unremarkable, but it is sentimental, sweet and not only girly, but frenchy girly. Then you see the popular images of the simpering saint of Lisieux with her ruby lips pouting in a pious smile--the upturned gaze, the cross and the roses. "Give me break!" said my tasteful Anglican soul.
But there was something else there--something I missed. There was a beauty that lurked beneath and behind and below and in and through all the sentimentality and tackiness. It was the beauty of sanctity--and that sanctity was a mystery of divine light made incarnate by God's grace in a very ordinary little girl.
This is the beauty of the saints. Very few of them are sublime, and even the ones who seem sublime--when you really get to know them--are gritty and real. This is the deeper beauty: the beauty of the reality of the Catholic faith.
It's true we have tacky music and bad hymns. But we have Palestrina and Mozart and Byrd as well. We do have plastic glow in the dark rosaries and those night lights you plug in with the Blessed Mother. But we also have the Pieta and the Sistine Chapel and Michaelangelo and Carravagio. It's true we have brutal churches that look like a cross between a space ship and a parking garage, but we also have Chartres and St Mark's Venice and Chartres and Mont St Michel.
This is the authenticity of the Catholic faith. It is universal. It has room for the peasant and the aristocrat, hoi polloi and high falutin', the learned and the ignorant, the tasteful and the tacky, the sinner and the saint.
Catholicism transcends Taste.
ReplyDeleteMajority of the Saints had the Church without the New Mass( the tacky NO )
ReplyDeleteThe music, especially, has been hard for me to adjust to. I LOVE the Mass parts, actually. The Hosanna never fails to move me (although I'm not as sure about the new Mass parts my parish has chosen) but in general the music is quite sub par compared to what I'm used to.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I don't care. I don't care about the tacky prayer the cards, the weird statues and the sometimes odd art. All that matters is that I am home. :)
The old Mass was often celebrated sloppily, hurriedly and with dubious music
ReplyDeleteWow: "tacky."
ReplyDeleteI am a convert.
ReplyDeleteOur grandfatherly parish priest conducts parts of the mass in Plain Chant (I think that is what it is called and perhaps priests all do this) this always moves me.
The music is tacky and the congregation applauds at the end of mass in appreciation of the musicians. This always makes me wince.
My glow-in-the dark plastic rosary hangs at the ready on my gear shift, and I have a small collection of saint cards.
My husband and I are converts from Anglicanism. Between this and the fact that we are both professional musicians, the bad Catholic music sometimes really rubs us the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am getting involved with the music program at our church (donating my services) to help make the music more palatable.
What I have to remind myself is, unlike when we went to a high-Anglican service, we don't go to Mass for the music. Jesus is still present in the Eucharist even if we only sing bad hymns and the organist plays wrong notes and tempos
coWhen I read "The Story of a Soul", I didn't like it at all. But it haunted me...and it haunts me still. It has had a profound effect on me despite my not liking it. I will read it again, soon, I hope, and I suspect my attitude will be different the second time around.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Mass--yes, the old Mass was "often celebrated sloppily, hurriedly and with dubious music." That is not a criticism of the old Mass, but a criticism of the abuses of the old Mass. The new Mass is often celebrated badly, and with music just as dubious. I assist at an EF Mass which is beautifully said, with music to match. I am still searching for a NO Mass that is said according to the rubrics with music that follows Church teaching. When that happens, I can compare them in all fairness.
This post is timely.I had a new (non-religious) friend visit me yesterday, and he said he felt like an exorcism was about to take place when he walked through my house. Obviously, I decorate with plenty of Catholic kitsch. Much of it given to me by people who are not even Catholic. The interesting thing is that my friend went around and looked at each piece of my Catholic tack. He wanted to know what each one was about. So my tack became a handy five minute evangelization tool.
ReplyDeleteI also have a you tube channel where I post recordings of me singing tacky Catholic hymns. They sure aren't going to get me on America's Got Talent, but maybe someone will want to know more about Jesus and the Catholic Church. So cheers to awful hymms.
I think what you have stated is helpful again....RC is an amazing mix and it can be confusing to someone entering from Anglicanism.
ReplyDeleteI am one of THOSE former RCs, going Anglican for 20 years and now back where I started, the Catholic Church and still have mixed feelings about that, but Anglicanism is falling apart, the centre cannot hold, and modern American Evangelicalism is unappealing and neither spiritually or intellectually satisfying for me, so what other choices do I have? Having grown up Catholic for 20 years I got used to a lot of the "kitsch", both Polish Catholic which I am and Portuguese Catholic, LOTS of kitsch in both.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Church Architecture goes Gothic is great, Romanesque is ok and Baroque is tacky, gaudy and waay overdone, some modern is ok but most of it is aesthetically atrocious. Modern Catholic hymnody is awful compared to the Anglican/Episcopalian Hymnal of 1940 which my ACNA Church was using as an American Anglicans.
Fortunately my Catholic Parish Church, built in the early 1900s, both the exterior and interior is built in the style of an English gothic country Church, very beautiful and in good taste.
John, I am so glad that you are still on this blog and are working hard to fit back into Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard work, but I would be suspicious of any religion that wasn't.
May I offer a more mixed assessment?
ReplyDeleteOversweet piety and toy-like rosaries are imperfect, perhaps, but are so because they're naive and simple: there's nothing distorted behind them. For these it is easy to say: "Here comes everybody" and smile at the rustic Cross or the Virgin Mary holy water bottle with the screw-threaded crown.
Some works of art, architecture, and music fall short for a different reason: they seem to have imported errors in thinking: they back away from the Incarnation or from a sound doctrine of man. These works could only be perfected by being purified from errors, not just refined in their sensibilities. As they stand, they are farther from being a witness to Christ, the Church and the Faith.
Fr. Longenecker, so glad I found you & your blog a few years ago. You put words to a lot of my inarticulate musings. I'm now on my 11th year from evangelicalism into the RCC, and love it all - the glory, smells, smells, bells, literature, history,saints, adoration, and even kitsch.
ReplyDeleteFr. L,
ReplyDeleteDid you notice the dichotomy you have in your contrasts? Most of the tasteful things you mentioned were old; most of the kitschy things are new and contemporary.
The root word in contemporary is, of course temporary. Kitsch fades with trends in fashion. True beauty endures. Roman Catholics will still love the Sistine Chapel a thousand years from now, and Virgin Mary night lights will still be tacky. Catholic traditionalists are right to fight against the tacky and the faddish, just as St. Augustine rightly pointed out the erroneous graveside practices of his mother, St. Monnica. We don't exactly have a lot of "historical" kitsch because it falls out of fashion.
The closest analog I have to the translation of the Novus Ordo recently replaced is the 1536 edition of the Breviary, put forth by Cardinal Quignonez. It was fashionable for a while, but in 1568 Pius V got rid of it because it was too brief and too modern, and he went back to something based more closely on the older breviary.
I write this, of course, as an Anglican, but one who thinks the RCC should be the Platonic ideal of what it is -- both externally and internally. You're getting back to that point, brick by brick as they say, and I'm quite happy for you!
"The old Mass was often celebrated sloppily, hurriedly and with dubious music." Having served easily a thousand Latin masses in my youth I heartily agree with Fr. Longenecker's comment. I remember Fr. Kelly's 19-21.5 minute low Mass including communion during weekdays. You can imagine how fast the altar boys has to respond in Latin! Poor Fr. Kelly -in retrospect he was still in shock from the war as an Army chaplain in the Pacific.
ReplyDeleteJesus came to the poor, and was born in a manger. Can you imagine the music played in the small villages at the time? Can you imagine how dirty they got walking in sandals along dusty roads and working in the fields?
ReplyDeleteSophistication is probably closer in spirit to sophistry than philosophy. Let's all pray we can become less sophisticated!
Fr. Barron's DVD series on Catholicism does a wonderful job in reminding us of the grand beauty that is part of our religion. It's well worth watching more than once.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I converted in 1992 from the Episcopal Church. We found the music in the RC tacky, but worse were the homilies and general lack of reverence and the indifference at Mass. Then we found Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, and this our parish now. The music is appropriate and the homilies are about the readings and are well thought out., thank you Fr. Christopher Phillips, Dn. James Orr, Dn. Michael Agnostino, and our new priest Fr. Jeffery Moore and also Mr. Edmund Murray our musical director and organist. We have to drive 90 miles round trip but it is worth it.
ReplyDeleteThanks be to God.
I am a converted Baptist. Kitsch is something I'm used to.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we don't have to read everything written by every Saint, or even every Doctor of the Church. There are plenty of grouchy old men of sanctity for those of us who cannot make it through the writings of the Little Flower!
I think I'd rather sit with the people who have plastic Mary statues and glow in the dark roasaries than some snob mincing around with a nose in the air.
ReplyDeleteI felt my Highbrow Episcopal parish was lacking something until I was called to teach Sunday School to small children. The experience brought me full circle back to the faith of my childhood in a way that the best Anglican music in the USA couldnt do. Then I took a teaching job at a Catholic school and found that the same focus on Jesus and His love for His family was a way of life there. Sure there was tackiness but that was part of being REAL and CATHOLIC. So now I'm real Catholic too!
ReplyDelete