The Importance of the Liturgy to the Evangelization of American Culture.
This is the third and final article in my series on the Catholic understanding of culture. In the first, I defined culture as the organically emerging pattern of personal interactions that reveal and nurture a society’s core values, and I argued that Christians must fight to infuse it with beauty and love. In the second, I explored how freedom, when rooted in knowledge of the common good and just laws, enables authentic Christian cultures to emerge bottom-up in distinct national expressions, fostering a family of nations that imitate and adapt the best from one another. Here, I turn to the liturgy as the wellspring of faith and culture, describing how right worship, especially through beautiful sacred art, might drive the evangelisation of American society toward a transfigured Christ. As an example of how the liturgy drove cultural change in the past, I use the example of the baroque style that began as sacred art in Italy in the late 16th century with painters such as Caravaggio and Barroci, and then spread across Europe as the dominant style in subjects both sacred and profane, and eventually came to the US, where arguably the last great artist in this glorious Christian style, John Singer Sargent who died in 1925, lived and worked.
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| Rorate Mass at FSSP Baltimore, photo by Amy Proctor, taken from FSSP.com |
As a Christian, I hope for and work towards a society in which the ordering principle of the country in which I live, America, is the transfigured Christ, albeit expressed in a characteristically American way. Even beginning such work requires more than knowledge of the principles of the American Constitution and a love for America, although both would be helpful. It also requires a deep appreciation of the cultural milieu from which the Constitution and the principles of the American republic emerged.
How do we form people capable of contributing to this change? Education is important; I have devoted much of my work to it for this reason. But once again, the greatest contribution that each of us can make is to play our own part in being a model citizen, that is, relating to others as good Americans and good Christians (or as one who imitates the way of good Christians, if you are not a Christian).
How can we do this?
It is the Church’s worship, the Sacred Liturgy, that is the most powerful influence on the transmission and retention of the Christian faith among its members. It is through right worship, therefore, that we will become the people who can transform society. For Catholics in particular, this means a liturgically centered spirituality with the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours at its heart. The Church Fathers articulate this principle of the preeminence of worship in retaining and transmitting faith with the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, which means ‘rule of prayer, rule of faith’. This phrase conveys the principle that our prayers, especially those in the liturgy (the highest form of prayer), most strongly shape our beliefs.
People today, who likely have never heard of the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, nevertheless instinctively know how important worship is to the Christian faith. This is why fights over the content and style of the liturgy are so emotional and, at times, embittered. This is not a sideshow; it does matter. It is the primary battleground in the fight for Christian faith and Christian culture. Many of those who hate the Church know this, too, and will do all they can to undermine the freedom to worship God and to introduce ugliness and distortion into the culture of worship.
In summary, if we accept that the liturgy has the most significant influence on our faith, and that our faith has the most significant impact on culture, then we can see that it is the liturgy (rather than, for example, socio-economic factors) that has the most significant positive influence on the broader culture. Other factors can influence it too, but authentic worship, as the most powerful influence, is considered the wellspring of Christian culture, and its primary influencer is Christ Himself.
Visual art plays a vital role in our worship.
The fine arts - high culture - are not matters to be considered only by aesthetes; they play a vital role in the well-being of the Church and, therefore, of society as a whole. The Church understands this and teaches that good sacred art, where my personal interest lies, along with liturgical music and church architecture, is an essential part of our worship. Thus, beautiful and dignified liturgy, along with art forms in harmony with it, is a constant need for the well-being of the Church and all Christian nations.
The Purpose of Art
Once we accept the centrality of the liturgy in governing our lives, this informs our understanding of the purpose of art. The purpose of art is to inspire and inform our worship of God, liturgical art, first, and then the whole of our Christian lives, mundane or profane art.
It has been said that all the great art movements began on the altar. This saying suggests that when we get the liturgical arts right, their form and beauty will inform all other art. When we get it right, this will happen naturally and organically in the proper order of things. This is why the liturgy is the wellspring of all Catholic culture.
We can see examples of this. For example, Baroque art originated in Italy as a style of sacred art in the late 16th century, exemplified by painters such as Caravaggio and Federico Barocci.
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| Federico Barocci, The Circumcision of Christ, 1590 |
Once established, the baroque style of sacred art quickly became the template for non-religious art. In addition to liturgical and devotional art, Baroque artists also painted portraits, landscapes, and still-lifes. Such was the beauty of these works that artists across Europe started to imitate it. Catholics, such as the Flemish painter Rubens, the Frenchman De La Tour, and the Spaniard Velázquez, adopted it; Protestants also sought to paint in this style. Rembrandt and the Dutch masters were inspired by the new Italian style of Catholic sacred art, which influenced their approach to painting.
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| Rembrandt, Portrait of a Woman, 17th century |
The great beauty of baroque art, not forceful arguments made by elites in universities, persuaded patrons to commission works in this style. The same effect was observed in music and architecture, and through this organic spread, the culture of 17th-century Europe became universally baroque, and its style always spoke in some way of Christ, even when the subject depicted was something more mundane.
In England at this time, King Charles 1 recruited Rubens’s most outstanding student, Anthony (later Sir Anthony) Van Dyck, to be the court painter. The long-standing English school of portraiture, with great figures of the 18th century such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough, was descended from Van Dyck’s portraiture.
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| Portrait by Anthony Van Dyck, made in 1616, when the artist was only 17 years old. |
This, in turn, influenced American painters such as Gilbert Stuart, who adopted the English style, and is now known especially for his portraits of George Washington.
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| The Skater, also known as the Portrait of William Grant, by Gilbert Stuart, 1782 |
The influence persisted until the 20th century. In my opinion, the last great painter in the Baroque style was an American who died in 1925, John Singer Sargent.
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| A portrait of the French composer Gabriel Fauré, by John Singer Sargent |
The culture that created this great art form was Catholic, but both Catholic and Protestant Christian cultures sustained it. By the time Sargent died, contemporary culture was moving in a different direction, away from Christianity, and the style of modern art followed suit.
To transform American culture, therefore, we American Christians, and particularly Catholic Christians, must worship well, draw others to our faith by our conduct and our love for those with whom we interact personally, and strive for art forms that connect with good worship. The most beautiful art forms that emerge from this will eventually dominate because their beauty will persuade all Christians to adopt them. It will be a supply-side process! This will then become the driving force for a new, contemporary culture that is informed by and speaks to the faith and values of Christianity in a uniquely American way.
In the Office of Readings, one of the Hours of the Divine Office, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the second reading is from a sermon by Pope St Leo the Great. The passage closes with the following words:
‘Dear friends, you must have the same zeal to help one another; then, in the kingdom of God, to which faith and good works are the way, you will shine as children of the light: through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.’
Our lives and our whole life’s work—and art is part of this—must participate in this Light. If we can move even partially towards this ideal, the effect will be irresistible. In America, as in every nation, it is our Christian worship that drives us forward to the Light and transforms us into people of the Light.
