The Beautiful Culture Speaks of Freedom, Love, and of Christ

The Christian connection between culture, conservative values, the common good and the natural law

In my post one week ago (entitled What is Culture), I described how a beautiful culture emerges through the loving interaction between the people in a society and their love of God. Now, love is by nature freely given (the moment we are compelled to love, it is no longer love!). Therefore, freedom - the freedom to love God and neighbor - is a necessary condition for a beautiful culture. 

What is freedom? Many feel that freedom is simply the absence of constraint and compulsion. That is part of it, but the traditional approach has a deeper understanding. We can define freedom in the traditional understanding as the capacity to choose the practicable best. For us to be in full possession of freedom and be able to choose the course that is best, therefore, three components must be present.

The first component is the absence of constraint or compulsion; the second is a full knowledge of what is best for us; and the third is the power to act in accordance with what is best. The good that is best for each of us in the context of a society is known as the ‘common good’. When we act in accordance with the common good, then we also do what is best for ourselves. In the proper order of things, the personal good and the common good are never in conflict with each other. The most obvious guides to seeking the common good are the moral law and the principles of justice as prescribed by Christ’s Church. All authentic and beautiful Christian cultures emerge from the freely taken actions of the members of a society toward the common good.

The Capitol Building, Washington DC. This building has become emblematic of America and American values

It is in the interest of a Christian society therefore, to promote freedom by a system of laws that are just, and so give security to the individual to act in accordance with the freedom to be moral and good. Such a system of laws would be directed to restraining people from interfering with the freedom of others. The state also encourages the formation of people through an education that will help them to know the common good. The state fulfils its role by enabling good teachers, and most especially parents as teachers of the children, to teach well. If these conditions are satisfied then I believe a culture of beauty will emerge organically from the bottom up. 

Analogously, and in regard to supporting the arts themselves, I believe that it is better to strive to create the conditions that promote the freedom to pursue art as a career, than to try to impose the elitist vision of what art ought to look like onto people from the top down. The freedom given to an artist in this context is understood as consisting of a knowledge of what sort of art might benefit society, and the skill and means to create it. A top down imposition of artistic standards almost always tends to restrict freedom, and so undermines the chance of creating an authentically beautiful culture.

One might think that an exception to this rule would be those arts that are to be used directly by government, for example the design of civic buildings, for which government must, by necessity, be involved. However, even then the government ought to be mindful that it serves the people and does not direct them, and hence be aware both of tradition (the people of the past) and what most people want. Also, because architecture and public spaces have an impact on the whole community and not just those who occupy them, then the community that it will impact most immediately must have a say on the style of buildings. The authority that specifies such buildings must reflect the principle of subsidiarity as far as possible. A state Capitol building should reflect what the people of the state want and used to want, i.e. tradition, while the small city government would select the architecture for the town hall, reflecting what the neighborhood wants.

Boston public library

For example, the Hungarian government recently undertook a building program to replace the brutalist style of buildings built by communists in its capital Budapest with more elegant architecture. In the last 10 years, it has rebuilt or renovated in the style that is in accord with the traditional architecture of the city, and this has been a highly popular program. Furthermore, the level of tourism in the city has increased dramatically, with the new buildings being the attractions as much as the old.

Returning to our focus on the role of the state and its connection to culture: the pattern of positive law (those laws created by human government) of a society will inevitably be different from one nation to another, even for those nations that are seeking to create laws for all the right reasons. The truths of the natural law which inform positive law are eternal and universal principles; but this universality of the principles themselves does not mean that human society immediately and instantaneously comes to know and apply these principles universally, in all places, in exactly the same way. Human knowledge, like human society, must progress slowly, in stages, step-by-step, and organically, or else it is not a true “human society” at all. It does so through a process of trial and error, gradually seeing what works best. Therefore each society will take a different path towards this knowledge.

The good Christian society recognizes the difficulty of knowing fully, and applying well, the universal principles of the natural law, and thus the good Christian society seeks the aid of revelation, Tradition, and the experience of past laws to help guide reason. God revealed truths for two reasons, St Thomas Aquinas tells us, first because some truths are beyond the grasp of reason (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of the body); and second, God also revealed moral truths that, although part of the natural law and accessible to natural reason, would “only  be discovered by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of errors.” (ST Ia Q1,1 co.) Arising from this there are two important reasons why the pattern of the exercise of freedom will be different from one Christian nation to another. First, principles that are understood well can still be applied in different ways by different societies without contravening those principles; and second, the knowledge or understanding of a principle is very likely not perfect or full and will vary from nation to nation, each thinking that it knows best.

Accordingly, different Christian nations are free to observe the experience of other nations, imitate  what is best in them, and adopt what is beautiful and good from them. This way, in the proper order of things, each nation is part of a family of distinct and autonomous nations, each helping each other to find what is best.

As mentioned in my earlier post, a culture is a sign of the core values of the society that produces it and as such it is beautiful to the degree that it is Christian. This is true even in those societies or countries that would not think of themselves as Christian. An Islamic nation, for example, has a beautiful culture to the degree that its culture is consistent with an expression of the Christian truths, even when those truths are communicated to them by the Koran.

Further, it is the Christian characteristics of different cultures that connect them to each other; and it is the different national expressions of that Christian faith manifested in characteristic patterns of loving interaction and free behaviour that distinguish different Christian cultures from each other.

So for example, historically, the United States began as a nation that adopted and then adapted a system of law from the English constitutional tradition. The English constitutional tradition is a system of laws, rooted in Christian values, yet expressed in a characteristically English way that is quite different from, for example, that of its neighbor France. In time the American system of law developed its own national characteristics, while still owing much to its English beginnings, but now expressing it in a characteristically American way. If American culture is to be transformed into one of beauty it will be one that asserts the importance of America as a distinct nation with characteristic values that are simultaneously Christian and of a particular American-English expression. As such one would expect to see similarities to English culture in American culture. It is no accident for example, that in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century, American churches and universities were modeled on the English neo-gothic style. They even hired English architects to build them, but quickly an American character emerged from these, and so while we can see the similarities between Princeton and Oxford universities, one reflects America while the other reflects England. All this was before the decline of culture in both America and England, which took hold strongly after the Second World War, and by which both nations lost a sense of the importance of the Christian faith to the defining principles of their nations, and the principles of common law that underlay each.

Oxford

Yale

Princeton

The task of transforming the culture in our country, America, then, is clearly one of evangelization. We hope for and work towards a society in which the culture’s ordering principle is the transfigured Christ. And people must be aware again of what that looks like in America. This latter aspect requires more than an understanding of the principles of the American constitution. It requires an appreciation also of the cultural mileau from which it emerged and a love for it.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

What is Culture?

And why do people fight to control it?

Even if they can’t say what it is precisely, people care about culture. They will fight to protect it if they feel it is good and is threatened, and  they battle to change it if they don’t like it. It matters because people perceive, very often instinctively, that a culture is a sign of what society values. When that culture speaks to them of the values they already hold, they see it as beautiful and feel at home in their world. When the converse is true and it is a sign of values that don’t match their own, they are ill at ease. 

A Definition of Culture

A culture is the emergent pattern of activity associated with a society of people that manifests and in turn sustains and nurtures the core beliefs, values and priorities of that society.

This is the definition which seems to me to best fit most people’s idea of culture. We all recognize cultures that characterize a society or nation, subgroups within a society or even ideas, ideologies and faiths. Some are good and some are bad. We talk of American or British culture, perhaps, or of a café culture, a drug culture, a youth culture, Christian culture, Western culture, secular culture, Marxist culture and so on. When we do so we are recognizing a pattern of activity that speaks of their common values, and which connects each member of that society to each other, and distinguishes it from other societies. 

Youth culture: I'm not a sociologist, but this seems to say to me, a 60-year old man, you are not part of our world and we are not part of yours

Culture both Reflects and Influences a Worldview

Culture not only reflects attitudes, it tends to influence people at a deep level too. Put simply, the more we see it, the more we tend to like it, and our personal pattern of activity and attitudes tend to conform with it. So when the culture reflects my values, I like it not only because it affirms my own beliefs by telling me that others believe it too, it also reassures me that it the culture will very likely influence the next generation to also hold the values that are dear to me. 

When, on the other hand, a culture speaks to me of values that are contrary to my own, I not only feel uneasy because I have to resist its influence which tends to undermine my own faith. I also become anxious because I worry that it will influence others to believe and act in a way that is contrary to my own beliefs and actions. 

This is why culture is necessarily a battleground and why also it is worth battling for. We should be engaging with it and fighting to transform it with the weapons of righteousness, love, and faith. 

The statue of St Junipero Serra decapitated in 2020. It is a sign of a Christian culture and so was a target for those who hate Christianity.

Culture Works with Politics to Change Society

One way to understand the importance of culture is to think of the current struggle for the abolition of abortion. We see protests and petitions, prayer vigils and novenas all done to try to influence, in some way, politicians and legislators so that the laws can be changed. Since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade the political battles will shift from the national theatre to the states, but the war is still being waged politically.

There is way of influencing behaviour without law. The culture can be powerful in influencing opinion as well. It is a slower process, but more powerful and longer lasting in its effect. This was known by those who wanted to legalize abortion in the first place and they made efforts to influence the culture long before Roe vs. Wade. I believe that if we really wish to reverse things we must be prepared to take that long-term view as well and replace the culture of death with the culture of beauty, freedom and love. This primes people to seek what is good and true and so fewer people will wish to have abortions. This effort should happen alongside the battles in the judiciary and legislative bodies.

A beautiful Christian culture can influence thinking in all aspects of life for the good, not just the single issue of abortion. And it creates a dynamic of positive feedback in service of the good. The more people see it, the more they conform to it and in turn contribute to it. 

Culture is a pattern of activity that emerges as we see more and more of the society it characterizes, and which might not be apparent in the parts.

We see a pattern that characterizes the culture most clearly by looking society as a whole rather than by a close analysis of its parts. Consider, for example, the culture of France. I can’t look at one Frenchman and tell what French culture is. I don’t know if the things that I notice about him are unique to him or are characteristic of all French people. When I observe the members of a French family, because I have more French people to observe, I can start to see what each has in common, and how they interact. There is a discernible pattern not only of individual action, but also of personal interaction. Even then, while this is a better indicator than the observation of one Frenchman, I can’t be sure what aspects of the pattern for the family are unique to them or are common to all families in general rather than characterizing the French nation.

In fact, I can never be certain of what characterizes all French people until I have studied the whole pattern of all French people through time. This is an almost impossible standard, but the more time I spend in France observing people and the more I study its history and the art and artefacts the more I am going to get a sense of what that whole might be and start to have some confidence that I understand French culture. My sense of what French culture is emerges as I become steadily more acquainted with all things French. As I build up that picture of what it is to be French, then I will form an opinion on the beauty of French culture, and hence on the goodness of the French as a nation. 

Beauty and Culture

When we see that pattern of the culture around us and we like what we see, we feel at ease in our surroundings and we call it beautiful. In fact, I would go further and say that a culture of beauty is a culture that speaks to us of love, just as a culture of ugliness is one that speaks of a lack of love and of death. The more that love is the governing principle of the personal relationships and actions of the members of society, the more beautiful that culture will be. If it speaks of love, then it also speaks to us of freedom and faith, for there is no love without freedom, and freedom is greatest for those with faith.

It is said that French is the language of love. I would say that all nations can, potentially, speak the language of love through their cultures, and the degree to which they do so is the degree to which they reflect the Christian faith. Each in its own characteristic way can have a culture that is beautiful and which speaks to us of loving action and the most beautiful culture is one that communicates God’s love for mankind. As a detached observer, I can appreciate the beauty of French Christian culture when it speaks of the love that Frenchmen have for each other, but as an Englishman I will appreciate it even more when it speaks of the love the Frenchmen have for me. 

The source of all love is God. We can only love each other because God loves us first and we accept His love. This is true even for the person who hates God. God loves him and to the degree that he loves his fellows he is at some level and in some part accepting God’s loving guidance in his life. As all human love is a participation in God’s love there are aspects of our loving action that are common to us all, they are universal and these are apparent in the culture too. Our attitude to God, therefore is the foundational principle that shapes all cultures and to the degree that we love God, it will be beautiful.

 John Paul II put it as follows in his encyclical Centesimus annus:

"Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death. At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted. For this reason the struggle to defend work was spontaneously linked to the struggle for culture and for national rights."

As Christianity is the deepest participation in the love of God, to the degree that a culture is authentically Christian it will be the fullest cultural expression of what is good, true, beautiful and loving. As such Christian cultures are higher and more noble than other cultures, which are good to the degree that they participate in these universal ideas. Furthermore, as these principles are universal in their appeal, so is Christian culture, which should be offered to all peoples, just as the Faith should be.

There is no generic Christian culture, for the principles that govern every culture such as the common good are expressed in ways that are specific to time and place. So each culture speaks of different eras and geographical locations as well as what is eternal. Therefore, not all Christian cultures will be identical, but to the extent that they are Christian, they will share common aspects and they will be good for all.

St Catherine's Monastery, Mt Sinai, Egypt, 6th century

Le Barroux, Benedictine Monastery, French, 20th century

“Such a Beautiful Voice Comes from the Heart”

Last week, I posted two videos of people from India reacting to Western music that they had never heard before, which is apparently a rather popular subgenre of reality television in that country. One of the pieces they heard was the Dies Irae in Gregorian chant, and the other was a Greek chant, and I found it very beautiful to see how these fellows immediately appreciated the value of praying with such music. Better late than never, YouTube’s suggestion algorithm (which normally has so many bizarrely counter-intuitive ideas) finally got around to recommending this, in which the same three gentlemen react to Allegri’s Miserere, and much as one would expect, are profoundly moved by it.

Note particularly that Babu, the older gentleman on the right, says that he would like to thank God for the chance to hear such an old piece of music before it is even played, while Raeen, the fellow on the left, asks “what can be more respectful” than preserving a 450-year old piece of music? What indeed...?

“If An Atheist Listens to This Prayer, the Webs of His Mind Will Be Cleared.”

In the Divine Office this past Sunday, we learned from St Augustine that God “judged it better to make good out of evil things, rather than to not permit evil things to be.” Yesterday, I discovered by happy accident that this even applies to something as awful as reality television. In India, there is a subgenre of reality programming in which people from rural areas who have had little or no experience of Western culture are exposed to it and asked for their reactions. (Judging from the number of examples on YouTube, this genre appears to be quite popular.) The introduction is just as cheesy as such things are wont to be in the West, but don’t be put off: it is truly fascinating to see how quickly these gentlemen, on hearing the Dies Irae in Gregorian chant, come to express deeply Christian sentiments about the meaning of a prayer which they do not understand. (The elderly man on the left is even moved at one point to make the Sign of the Cross.) Perhaps there is a lesson for the Church to be learned from this, that Her divinely-given mission “to make disciples of all nations” has profited nothing by abandoning “that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant”, and good music in general.

No less beautiful are their reactions to Greek Orthodox chant. One of them immediately knows without being told, “... this thing is centuries old, and has been going on since time immemorial”, and another says, “it’s pulling my heart from inside. It’s a good prayer, I want it to not end, and (I) keep listening to it forever. This thing is reaching the heart.”

The Evangelizing Power of Solemn Liturgy: A Witness from Montreal in the 1920s

A postcard from 1907

Here at the New Liturgical Movement we frequently feature photographs of beautiful liturgies celebrated all around the world in a variety of rites. We have also published from time to time testimonies from converts who were drawn to the Faith (or reverts drawn back to it) by the beauty of liturgies they happened to attend — often enough, out of curiosity, or at the behest of a friend, or even somewhat by chance.

The other day I was desultorily scanning the shelves of a parish library and noticed a book whose title caught my attention: All or Nothing by Murray Ballantyne, published by Sheed & Ward in New York in 1956. I took it off the shelf and began to read it, finding in its pages a delightful and well-narrated story of the author’s conversion in 1933 from a generically Protestant background to Roman Catholicism. His vivid description of the superficial gaiety and literary sophistication of his circle of friends in the 1920s is valuable for those who are interested in a firsthand account of the interwar period.

Of particular interest to me, however, was Ballantyne’s description of a Christmas Midnight Mass he attended at Notre-Dame in Montreal in the late 1920s (he does not specify a year, but it has to be in 1927 or later). The whole passage is worth sharing, because it so strongly confirms the intuition at the heart of NLM’s work that authentic Catholic liturgy in its grandeur — and its strangeness — has a peculiar power to make an impression on the soul and to sow doubts about the self-assured security of a modern secularist worldview. Ballantyne’s thoughts on kneeling are especially relevant to our times.

The basilica at night

“TWO EVENTS pierced the glossy shell of this self-sufficient life and once again brought the thought of Catholicism to my mind. They were accidental and unrelated. The first was when I went to Midnight Mass with two undergraduate companions. The other was when I saw, in the New York Times Book Review section, a large advertisement for the latest essays of G.K. Chesterton, from which it appeared that he was not only an ardent Catholic but a convert as well. Seemingly unimportant as these happenings may appear, they nevertheless played a decisive part in what was to become my own conversion.

“The French-speaking Canadians have always celebrated Christmas enthusiastically. It is the custom among them for the whole family to go to Midnight Mass, and then to celebrate with a gay supper of traditional dishes. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve has at all times had its own magic. In the larger churches of Montreal the innate appeal of this beautiful and grace-laden service is heightened by superb music and decorations. When I was young, curious Protestants frequently went to these services as to a show. They were drawn not only by the glamour of age-old ceremonial, but also by the thrill that always attends ventures into strange lands.

“With enthusiasm, then, I accepted an invitation to go to Notre Dame one Christmas Eve…. All was still and hushed as we walked through the silent business district, but by the church on Place d’Armes all was life and movement. Although it was more than an hour before midnight, crowds were already streaming towards the portico under the two high towers… As we stood waiting in the snow, Notre Dame’s great bass bell, the thirteen-ton Gros Bourdon, began to toll, seeming almost to shake the tower with its clangorous vibrations.

“My emotions were intense as I stood there in the crowd, watching the snow falling soft and white, listening to the great bell sounding, and sensing the warmth and colour that awaited us within. It was Christmas Eve, and Christ was born, and there was joy to the world. In this stimulated and receptive condition, I was aware of a certain fitness. A long train of historical legitimacy joined me to the distant past, and carried me back beyond even the Reformers to an almost immemorial era. There has been a church on the spot where I stood for more than two hundred and fifty years, and the Faith that had built Montreal’s Notre Dame was the same that had built Europe’s cathedrals long before that. The Catholic Church had seen the founding of all our sects and all our institutions. This was the real, the genuine article. We might think her wrong, but no one could deny her continuity. It was living history that I was about to witness. I was about to see much that Charlemagne had seen on the fateful Christmas of the year 800, and even then the Church had been twice as old as the Protestant churches are now. The Catholic Church might be a relic, but at least she was venerable.

“We were swept in from the cool silence of the snow night to the warm, vivid, and ornate interior of ‘La Vieille Paroisse.’ As we stood in the throng, I noticed near me a bearded, roughly dressed Habitant [native resident of French descent]. Being unable to move farther into the church, he fell on his knees and began to pray. I was thunderstruck. In my Presbyterian experience we had not even knelt in our pews for fear of emotionalism and of papist superstition. My first reaction was one of embarrassment that the man should have made such a spectacle of what should have been his private devotions. Talking to God was something to be accomplished in a mumble, not something to be performed openly. Why make the melodramatic gesture of kneeling? Why indeed make any gesture at all?

“Immediately I had another reaction. This man clearly was neither theatrical nor making a gesture. He had come in all simplicity to adore his God. To him, if he had given us a thought, we were merely others who had come for the same purpose. He had simplicity, and we had not. And then I saw that if a man believed in God it was right and fitting that he should worship Him and that the should kneel in His temple. This, and not the restrained self-consciousness of the Puritans, was the proper behaviour. The concept of God was immense and overwhelming. If God existed — staggering thought — then this was the normal and the right reaction. If one came consciously to worship Him, if one entered His very presence, then one should kneel, yes, even prostrate oneself as did the ancient Jews. If one believed in God, it would be absurd to be held back from worshipping Him by the presence of other mortals. If people really believed, this was the way I would expect them to behave.

“By a stroke of luck, we found balcony seats in that vast throng, and my first Mass began. I was fascinated by the seemingly weird and incomprehensible ceremonial that unfolded before me. Nothing in all my life had prepared me for the gilt-encrusted vestments, the incense, the strange chanting, or the inexplicable comings and goings. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was all about. Here was something totally unlike the ‘meeting-house’ service of my childhood. I felt as a child might at his first circus. And yet with it all there was not only the glorious music, but also the feeling that somehow a valid religious experience was taking place. There was a rapt silence, a profound devotion, a spirit of worship that was an unmistakable as it was inexplicable. Worship, adoration, thanksgiving, joy were in the very air. Something was happening. And so I came away from my first Mass puzzled, intrigued, and enchanted by the strange beauty of a rare event.” (pp. 52–56)

Murray Ballantyne (photo source)

Ballantyne then talks about how the thought of Chesterton’s conversion bothered him, because he had assumed that only a poorly educated and somewhat superstitious person could be a Catholic, but here was a highly intelligent and spirited man boldly defending the Faith against all comers. He bought the book of essays by GKC, and this began to provide an intellectual counterpart to the spiritual and aesthetic intuitions he had had at Midnight Mass. Later in the book, Ballantyne offers a fine defense of “incarnational” Catholic sacramental worship and of adherence to tradition.
 

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website, SoundCloud page, and YouTube channel.

Notes from the Underground - Icon Graffiti in the Subways of Moscow

Is graffiti legitimate if it is beautiful? These Russians are spray painting icons onto the otherwise drab concrete walls and fascias of Moscow. I don’t know what the government or the people of Moscow make of them, but it is a novel way to bear witness to the Faith.

I wonder what the response would be if such a project took place in the New York subway or in LA? I can imagine the secular elites hating them, while the people who actually live around them enjoying them, regardless of whether or not they are Christian. If the paintings are beautiful - and I would say these are - then people will like them. If that were the case, then it would undermine the value of the dreadful installations and public art that our town governments typically commission.
I personally would love to see such work brightening up the streets around me. What do you think?