Albertus Minimus

More stone throwing by 'Touchstone'

Not content with calling Prince Charles 'an insufferable and terminably inconsequential playboy' (and that was one of the nicer comments!), Mr Wilfred McClay returns to the attack in a post titled 'Charles al-Windsor'. Really, I'm sorry dear readers to return to the subject, but Mr McClay's postings are getting beyond a joke.

Let's review what Mr McClay has written. His first post – which begins by noting some comments by the Prince on climate change, goes on to say that these views are obviously invalid because of Charles's infidelity, switches to speculating as to why the heir to the throne might take an interest in Britain's future (and it's not because it might be natural for the future king to consider these matters), and ends with the assertion that the Prince has never repented of his sins – is outrageous.

Then Mr McClay, in the comments thread to that post, shifts his ground to stating that the Prince's conduct damaged the monarchy, which is simply commonplace.

Now, in his latest offering on the subject, Mr McClay informs us that Prince Charles is going to lecture America about Islam. As Jim Kalb points out in the comments thread, his basis for that is a newspaper report which 'offers no support for the claim he plans to plead the cause of Islam here. As it stands it's just an assertion. It might be true, but the writer gives no reason whatever, not even unnamed "sources," to think it's true.' (You can read the report here).

However, given Mr McClay's apparent sensitivity towards the Prince speaking about Islam to America, may I ask him why he sees fit to lecture us Britons about the nature of the monarchy, as he does in his comment on the first post. There is a word for this sort of behaviour: I will leave it to my readers to apply it.

'Touchstone' throws the first stone

'Touchstone' is an excellent magazine and Mere Comments, its weblog, is a daily stop on my daily digital whirl, so I was surprised to read one of the worst ad hominems I've ever come across on its pages. As a loyal subject of the Crown, I must respond.

Mr Wilfred McClay declares that, since the Prince of Wales was quoted by the BBC saying that he cares about climate change and wants to speak out lest his grandchildren ask him why he kept silent, this 'insufferable and terminably inconsequential playboy' is fair game.

Before I deal with Mr McClay's points, you might like to read the interview that produced such malice (the original BBC link is no longer working, but this one reproduces the same points).

Having mentioned the Prince's concerns, Mr McClay then goes on to suggest, rhetorically, I suspect, some other questions the Prince's grandchildren might ask him:

'Why, they may well ask, did he do so much to undermine the institutions of family and marriage in his society, and the fundamental decencies attached to those institutions, by humiliating those children's paternal grandmother before the world, and carrying on openly with another woman not his wife? Why, they may wonder, did he put the needs of his gonads before the needs of his wife, his children, his family, and the nation? We were just wondering, grandfather....And they may also wonder--just what gives him the right to lecture the world about anything at all?

Hm, well, where to start? (That's rhetorical, too, Mr McClay.)

To start with, the idea that the break up of the marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Diana contributed in any substantial way to the undermining of the institutions of marriage and the family in my society is so completely and utterly ludicrous that it's almost impossible to know where to begin. Perhaps we should note that Mr McClay is not British, and the fact shows. If one really wants to see the roots of familial breakdown in Britain one has to confront the gradual takeover of the Academy and the media by secularist intellectuals, the passing of a 'no-blame, no-shame' amendment to the divorce laws, the changes to social security policy (under Mrs Thatcher) which granted the same tax privileges to cohabiting couples as to spouses, and so on and so on. To say that anybody, anybody, in Britain decided that, well, because Prince Charles and Princess Diana got divorced then, right, it's all right for me is so ridiculous as to beggar belief.

It may also be worth noting that the national church of which Prince Charles may one day be the head came into existence precisely to allow the sovereign to divorce.

'Why, they may wonder, did he put the needs of his gonads before the needs of his wife, his children, his family, and the nation?'

Sure, he shouldn't have had an affair. I don't think anyone has ever suggested that that was right. But it was hardly unique in royal history, for reasons so obvious that I hope even Mr McClay might understand them. Heirs to the throne marry for reasons of state. If God is gracious they might learn to get along tolerably with their spouse, if God is particularly kind they might even like them, but love is rare indeed. One of the greatest kings in British history, Charles II (obviously, it's the name that does it, Mr McClay), who restored the monarchy after the long puritan nightmare of Cromwell's Protectorate, was as well-known for his amours as for his statesmanship. In Prince Charles's case, we all knew that royal protocol demanded he marry a virgin. Frankly, there aren't that many around these days, and Lady Diana Spencer was the best available.

In days past the couple would quickly have realised their incompatibility, produced the necessary heirs, and then gone quietly on their separate, but still married, ways, making sure no scandal was produced. Unfortunately, Princess Diana and our modern tabloid press conspired together to ensure that was impossible. Of course, the affair and the divorce was wrong, Mr McClay, but I envy you your impregnable moral rectitude. No doubt you would have made a much better fist of it. It is indeed a tragedy for the nation that you are not the heir to the throne.

'And they may also wonder--just what gives him the right to lecture the world about anything at all?'

From reading the article, Mr McClay, I venture that Prince Charles is not lecturing the world about anything. He's suggesting some things, many of which I agree with, others I do not. As to his qualfications for speaking to the British Broadcasting Corporation about this. Er, well, heir to the throne? Doesn't that count? Don't Presidents Elect utter the odd word to the media?

Finally, Mr McClay, I would like to ask you a question. When you say of the 'morally stigmatized', in whose company you apparently place the Prince, that instead of:

'repenting for their sins and living a more humble and chastened life, they seek to subsume their sins under the rubric of some infinitely vaster... cause.'

How do you know Prince Charles has not repented of his sins?

At least the EU's flag means something

My general opinion of the European Union is that it was a noble endeavour to ensure Europe would never again be bathed in blood, an enterprise begun by some of the finest post war statesmen the continent could boast. Unfortunately, it has since become a bureaucratic beast, devouring local traditions and freedoms in its apparently unstoppable urge to provide a reason for its own existence.

However, Laodicea and Galileo of the beautifully laid out and soon to be blogrolled Sundial Cloister blog, provide links to a story showing that there may be more going on than meets the eye. The flag of the EU is a circle of twelve stars against a blue background. Why twelve, since there are currently 25 members of the EU and there were less than twelve when it was first adopted?

Well, according to the designer of the flag, Arsene Heitz, it was because:

'he was reading the history of the Blessed Virgin's apparitions in Paris' Rue du Bac, known today as the Virgin of the Miraculous Medal. According to the artist, he thought of the 12 stars in a circle on a blue background, exactly the way it is represented in traditional iconography of this image of the Immaculate Conception.'

Not only that, but:

'(P)erhaps without realizing it, the delegates of the European Ministers officially adopted the design proposed by Heitz on the feast of Our Lady: December 8, 1955.'

So maybe there is some hope for the bureaucratic beast yet.

Catholic blogs around the world

The blogosphere tends to concentrate on North America, but the Church of course is both universal and particular. One of the things I'd like to do on this site is provide links to blogs and other sites that provide windows into the Church in other contexts apart from North America. To that end I've linked to British and German Catholic blogs, but I would like to expand the list and to do this I'd like your help.

For instance, are there any southern hemisphere Catholic blogs? I would have thought that Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would have produced some, and then there are countries like India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, where I think there ought to be an emerging number of English-language Catholic blogs. There is, I know, a large number of Spanish Catholic blogs, but if anyone knows of any bilingual Spanish/English blogs I would much appreciate the links.

So, if you know of any suitable blogs, particularly if they are in English, please let me know, and I will link to them here. Thus we can begin to take advantage of what the internet offers us in possibility: particular local windows into the universal Church.

It's all ET's fault

Mark Shea highlights this article about a European backlash against Hallowe'en. And all I can say is, it's about time. Here in Britain, Hallowe'en did not feature at all in our national calendar until the mid '80s. Then 'E.T.' came out, with that blasted little trolly alien being shunted around in a white sheet asking for 'tricks or treats' and since then we've been cursed with marauding bands of teenagers, haphazardly made up with plastic face masks askew, knocking on our doors and basically demanding money with menaces. It's the most ridiculous, unwelcome import to ever make it's way across the Atlantic, and the sooner a very large stake is driven through its venial heart the better.

It's not as if we needed an imported festival at this time of year in any case. In Britain, on 5 November, there's Guy Fawkes, whereas the rest of Europe has all sorts of festivals for All Saints and All Souls. But no, we get plastic Frankensteins and rubber Draculas. Thanks, Hollywood.

The Church as renewer of our culture

In the previous post about Catholic art, I noted a couple of examples of Catholic artists who are producing beautiful work today. For example, there is Michael O'Brien's study of St Luke, the sculptures of H. Reed Armstrong, or the extraordinary paintings of Gloria Thomas, such as this one of St Michael the Archangel.

These are only three examples, and there are many other worthwhile artists out there (and if you know of any, could you please leave a comment telling me about him or her).

Of course, this sort of work finds no favour with the secular art establishment and here is surely where the Church can contribute most immediately to a cultural renewal: by commissioning work from these artists. After all, we have a legacy of extraordinarily ugly church buildings from the last forty years. It's too much (and probably financially impossible) to expect them all to be demolished and replaced with more fitting places of worship, but for relatively little cost they can be improved by simply putting some decent art in them. This will not only help to make those ugly concrete boxes into the sacred spaces they are, but give work to artists and also begin the reeducation of the taste of Catholic laypeople.

After all, what more salutary contrast to the culture of death outside the Church than to see objects and paintings of real beauty within the Church?

The new Narnia trailer

The new trailer for 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' is a mere click away. It's only available in streaming format and since it's a large file you'll need a fast connection, but if you have one, take a look. Personally, having seen it, I'm as excited as a six year old on Christmas Eve.

The death and rebirth of Catholic art

Right, so we’ve established that there’s been a dearth of Catholic intellectuals and artists over the last half century, and that the idea that they’ve all gone into hiding because of terror at the inquisitorial powers of the former Cardinal Ratzinger is, shall we say, not a satisfactory explanation. So what has happened to them?

In this post I’d like to take a look specifically at Catholic artists, since they, or their work, is in many ways the public face of the Church. Now, the first thing to note is that we’re not alone in the Church: recent decades have not exactly seen a flowering of art in the wider culture either. Again, one has to ask what happened? After all, the 20th century began with one of art’s most important and popular movements in full swing: impressionism. A mere hundred years later: crap (literally) as art. Quite clearly art, having cast itself lose from any sort of philosophical or religious moorings (‘art for art’s sake’ being nonsensical where it’s not tautological), has lost its way. But why hasn’t the fact that the Emperor is naked been remarked upon, and these ‘artists’ laughed out of the Academy?

Money. In today’s world we are faced with a situation unique in history: where before art was the arena in which rich people spent their money both for their own aggrandisement and the enrichment of the community, today it has become simply another avenue for investment. Scott Burgess points out how museums, galleries, collectors, critics and artists are all embarked upon a mad cap quest to keep the blinkers of novelty tied over the eyes of those members of the establishment with access to the public purse strings. And, of course, in a society where any idea of hierarchy is frowned upon in the name of multiculturalism, then who is to say that Tracey Emin’s bed is not of equal worth to Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection?

So it is clear why there has been a shortage of great, or even good, artists in the secular culture these past few decades. But why has this effected the Church? Surely this is one area where we should have held firm? After all, historically the Church has been the greatest sponsor of beauty in history: from the anonymous masons and artists of Chartres through the Renaissance masters to, in the twentieth century, artists like Eric Gill and, er...

Here, I believe, we have our first clue to the failure of Catholic art. Our present poverty should not blind us to the situation before. The truth is that the early 20th century saw little worthwhile Catholic art. The art that filled popular devotion was sentimental rubbish, full of blond haired, blue eyed Messiahs staring wistfully into the distance. It’s not for nothing that Catholics have acquired a reputation for kitsch. And the truth is: in the end kitsch kills. Its only refuge is irony, and the ironic is the death of faith.

But of course, poor though that art was, it was much much better than what followed. Presumably in some sort of reaction, everything was thrown out. Having prolonged the worst aspects of the 19th century right through the first half of the 20th, we then promptly missed out the intervening fifty years and went straight from sentimental rubbish into some sort of artistic limbo, where all that was allowed was abstraction and concrete, preferably in combinations of grey.

There are all sorts of reasons for this sudden madness of forgetting that infected the Church:
The most positive way of looking at the situation (always a valuable start) is to see it as an eruption of the iconoclastic furies of the 6th to 8th centuries. As St Thomas Aquinas said, ‘corruption optima pessima’ (the corruption of the best is worst), thus we have a clue as to the vigour with which the proponents of ugliness pursued their aims. After all, men act always for what they consider to be good reasons.

Other reasons for this frenzy of ugliness include:
A lack of a proper theology and appreciation of beauty.
The conscious wish on the part of some to make a complete scission with the pre-Vatican II Church.
Confusion on the part of others as a result of the conciliar changes.
The unfortunate belief that engaging with modern culture meant accepting it wholesale, particularly at a time when that culture was spinning downwards out of control.
A holdover of clericalism that meant a single priest or bishop could tear down beauty that it had taken generations to create.
Money. The sixties and seventies saw much church building in Britain, and it was simply cheaper to put up concrete boxes. Besides, since the heart matters so much more than the externals, what did it matter what the churches looked like?

One could go on. But I think this indicates that while Vatican II provided the break that allowed these forces free reign within the Church, many of the seeds had been laid earlier.

That this should happen in the Church is a particular tragedy, given that Christianity is a religion based on the Incarnation in human form of God Himself. Thus the creator of all has hallowed by his presence our very humanity, yet we too often worship in churches that would not be fit for battery farming chickens, let alone worshipping God.

However, there are some promising signs in the prevailing gloom. Most notable amongst them is the growing popularity of icons. Now not only are icons the closest that one can come to making the divine realms manifest in the physical present, but their rediscovery in the west bodes well for the reunification of Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Secondly, a theology of beauty has been articulated by von Balthasar and others that gives a firm foundation for why the Church needs beauty in her worship and in her physical forms. This was further emphasised by Pope John Paul II’s ‘Letter to Artists’.

Thirdly, more and more artists are answering that call. Some had laboured long in obscurity beforehand, others heard it and are now answering it, but the fact is that there is a growing body of Catholic artists producing work of real beauty. The contrast to the increasingly diabolic productions of the commercial art world will only get clearer as time goes on.

So while we have lived through the ugliest of times in the Church’s history, I believe and hope that period may be drawing to a close.

Feline scholarship

My apologies, but the exigencies of family life (and a very bad cold) mean that I won't be able to write any more about our missing Catholic intellectuals and artists today, although I hope to continue with the subject tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have a question that maybe someone out there knows the answer to.

Why, when you leave a newspaper or magazine on the floor, do cats always go and sit on it? I sometimes wonder if they read through their bottoms? Or are they expressing contempt for book learning over the craft of fur and claw? Does anyone know?

Maybe Catholic intellectuals have been here all along, but hiding?

The previous post on missing Catholic intellectuals and artists seems to have struck home, and there have been some very interesting responses, here and here. It's probably a matter that will require more than one post, but now seems like as good a time as any to make a start.

Now to answer the question on what's happened to Catholic intellectuals and artists we first have establish that there really has been a dearth of them over the last fifty years or so. The only article I've come across arguing anything different is Mr Alain Woodrow's one in 'The Tablet', where he claims that intellectual 'luminaries' such as Küng, Boff, Congar, Schillebeeckx were silenced by Cardinal Ratzinger's inquisitorial office, so scaring a generation of intellectuals that they disappeared into silence, or hid in the anonymity of collegiality.

Because this seems like such complete and utter nonsense, I had better give it some consideration.

First off, the men mentioned are not really what I mean by Catholic intellectuals, since they are (or were) all ordained and their work was primarily to do with the Church, rather than with the intersection of Church and culture in the way that men like Dawson, Chesterton and Belloc managed. I take Catholic intellectuals and artists to mean mainly lay people whose work in secular culture is inspired or informed by the Faith in such a way as to make things and ideas possible for them which would not be the case for ordinary secular thinkers.

Second, the ideas championed by Woodrow's preferred intellectuals seem to have been dead ends, producing neither fruit for the Church nor successors working to expand the insights of Küng and Co.

Third, in his own article Woodrow notes the dearth of intellectuals in the wider culture in recent times. Presumably, not being Catholic, they have not been scared into silence by fear of the Holy Office (unless fears of assassin albino Opus Dei monks striking down the enemies of the Church are more widespread in the Academy than I realised). Thus we have an a priori case that the same factors that have lead to a lack of first-class minds in the wider world may have also affected the Church. For some reason Mr Woodrow fails to note this.

Thus, I think we have established that there really has been a dearth of Catholic intellectuals in the sense we mean over the last few decades. In the next posts I'll see if we can understand what might have happened, and if there is anything we can do to water the Church's intellectual roots.