Ron Howard’s new movie, Angels and Demons, which is another Dan Brown conspiracy theory about the Catholic Church, is all the rage, quite literally, from consertavei Catholics.  Which is making Ron Howard’s day:

Though Donohue had recently criticized the film, the hubbub and response was relatively muted compared to 2006’s fracas. Similarly, it appeared as if Angels & Demons might just slip quietly into theaters unmolested. No more. Within hours, Donohue responded to Howard’s essay with a statement, calling Howard “delusional” and accusing him of “hating Catholicism.” And now we suddenly find the Web abuzz with discussion of Howard’s upcoming film.

This is a good contrarian view of the typical Susan Boyle adulation, which, I’ll be honest, I totally got swept up in.  I put it on facebook and on gchat that I love this woman, and I admit to being deeply moved by the performance.  But then something happened: when she was appearing on the Today show, I realized that I didn’t care.  I just wanted to watch the clip again.  I had no interest in seeing another version of her.  And so it wasn’t really about the person at all, it was about the catharsis that comes from feeling (temporarily) triumphant over my own stereotypes, of being part of a collective effervescence that connects everyone to Beauty and Truth and sees past Differences That Divide Us.  Boyle’s later performances will not be this heightened: they will instead be relatively straightforward musical performances, none of which are necessarily cathartic or moving.

Yet I was still moved by the clip, which, yes, is staged, but I would argue its staged quite cleverly and it is, frankly, still moving.  So what’s the problem?  The problem is that Boyle is a real person and her performance is being instrumentally used by me and by millions of others for a brief emotional moment that is more about moral superiority and self-mastery than  connection or the conquering of stereotypes.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if Boyle were a character on a TV show–after all, there’s no moral problem with the cahtarsis we get from Oedipus (to bring back Aristotle).  The problem, again, is that Boyle is real, and this gets to the larger ethical problems of reality television: we care about these people not as people, but as individuals who can bring us certain emotional moments.   That’s all we want from them, and so the moment they won’t bring us these scripted highs, we’re no longer interested.  At least, I wasn’t.  And that’s something I’m fairly ashamed of, and it makes me question my motivations and true attraction to Boyle in the first place.

A good article from famous poet Robert Pinskey that mentions the Very Manley Gerard Hopkins’s Carrion Comfort, and here’s one of my favorites, from W.S. Merwin, calling Thanks.

It’s on at a terrible time, I know, and like all good shows, it seems destined for the endtimes.  But that does not mean you should not wach it!  Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, watch this show!  It is smart, witty, has great acting, and it’s about not just religion in some abstract way, but, in fact, characters from the Bible.  It’s got sex and violence with a Biblical precdent, and that’s something.

Anyways, watch the show.  You’ll like it, and you’ll keep it on air.

Thanks to Jake for his continued comments despite an upcoming law exam. A few quick thoughts in response to his:

Good comments on my recent post about Catholic art and why we fight about it, especially from Jake, who calls it like it is. I would say a few things in response: first, Catholic art has always been in bad taste and terrible.  This is true for all art, everywhere.  I guarantee that if you go to an average church at any point in history, you will find the same level of, well, average art.  It’s just the way the world goes.

But then you can criticize those averages–average art in a time of modernism, some would say, is a lot worse than average art at a time of baroque.  Okay.  So let’s talk about modern art and its influence on the Catholic church.  The problem here, is that most criticisms of “Catholic art” are criticisms of music and literature, and believe me, Catholic songs are not modern music, and do we even have Catholic literature anymore?  The song are folk songs, and there has been a long and epic tradition in the Catholic faith of tension between high and low expressions of devotion.  The elite have always liked songs (among other things) that are a  bit less melodramatic, prayer that is not superstitious, and a bit of refinement and subtlety.  The folk have always liked things big, with beliefs others might denigrate as magical or superstitious, and a faith that makes for a good cry, or at least some other high emotional response.  Obviously, this popular Catholicism changes shape based on its separate culture, but I think it’s safe to say “On Eagle’s Wings” ties into a lot of classic folk American idioms.  So this is nothing new either. (And this doesn’t even get into the question of actual quality, which, let’s face it, is actually pretty arbitrary.  A lot of these Haas/Haugen/St. Louis Jesuits songs would make pretty decent folk songs/pop songs, while a lot would not.  Those that might work in folk or pop DO succeed as songs, just not the kinds of songs Jake might like.  So they are terrible, yes, but they’re terrible at something they’re not trying to do, which is a bit like accusing a pitcher of being a terrible quarterback.  This might be true but it’s not the point.)

What are new, however, are the stained glass windows and church design, both of which are often quite modernist.  I’m with Jake on preferring the old style of more representational art, just because I think that is harder to mess up.  (A great example of a quite modern version of this is the LA Cathedral, which is just beautiful).  However, that doesn’t mean we have to keep all of our Churches Gothic.  I do think there’s something stunning–even ancient–about good modern art (a la Picasso, who, after all, was mostly just imitating African masks) and trying to figure out how to make that representation work in a way that’s not trite and overintellectual is an important effort.  It also produces a lot of risks though, and a lot of shoddy stuff.  But, again, don’t most attempts at art?

And here’s an important reminder.  We probably could not do any better.  This is not to deny the importance of excellence and it’s certainly not to excuse mediocrity.  But the fact is, we are all pretty mediocre.  None of us can really produce art that is worthy of God, or even worthy of our vision of Church.  So let’s let the fact that our artistic projects often fail be a reminder of our own need for humility, rather than a reason to get angry and self-righteous.  We’re all basically failures, but we keep on trying, and what better way to remind ourselves of that then to take a deep breath before criticizing someone’s artistic choice?  Hear me right on this: I am not saying forget all artistic decisions and hang up the sixth-graders’ banners all over the Church.  We should still strive for excellence in all things, especially the art with which we worship.  I am saying that a bit of humility and a recognition of human brokenness in all things would help us all.

There was a smart comment on one of my recent posts on the military industry.  Fair enough: I was probably a bit too harsh.  Here’s the trick, though: I recognize that we really need to protect ourselves, and that the military industry helps us do that.  So yes, it’s a necessary evil.  Just as cops holding guns, and the people who make those guns, are a necessary evil.

But let’s be clear: it’s still an evil.  Weapons are designed to kill or at least seriously injure people.  War weapons often cause massive damage to property and to innocent human life.  Of course, there are “smart bombs” and defensive missiles, and things like this, but they tend to be the exception (a) and (b) they rarely prevent any death or destruction.

And this is what’s most important: the military industry has a vested interest in there being more wars, or at least more preparedness for wars.  Of course, they are affected by policy, and of course there is coercion in all directions.  Of course these contractors pay taxes too.  But then they get paid.  A lot.  And this payment makes them more likely to support a certain kind of military intervention rather than not.  They’re not neutral sources.  Of course, if you’re a contractor, you don’t think you’re biased–at least, I hope you don’t.  You think you’re doing the right thing.  But you’re in a system in which more tech is always the right answer AND more tech makes your company stay afloat.  So of course more military technology has to save the day, and it just so happens that the stuff you’re making works out best.

My uncle’s a military contractor.  He’s a great guy.  But he’s also got kids to feed and bills to pay and he does this by selling weapons that might or might not be used to kill people (yes, I know, this is for our defense, but let’s still call a spade a spade).   So I think there should be, honestly, a presumption of guilt about those deals rather than a presumption of innocence.

(Frankly, I think there should be a presumption of guilt about most things, but that’s my take on original sin, and it’s a totally different post).

You could also call it critque, which is what I do, or even dialectic, if you want to get all fancy and Hegelian. Or you could just call it dissagreement.  But I think it has a place.  I think, however, it has a limited place, and as someone who disagrees with the Church a lot, I’d like to explain a bit how I think that works.

First, I accept that the leadership is conservative.  In fact, with a few exceptions, I more or less like it that way.  I would not want the Church to change with the wind anytime that a new idea or intellectual current comes up.

However, I think there’s impressive emprical evidence the Church has been wrong before.  Not about the fundamentals, of course, which are never in error, but about how those are interpreted–the role of democracy and religious freedom in the world, as just one small example.  Now what’s interesting here is that things that might have befeore appeared fundamental and un-changeable we now realize are quite negotiable and do not affect what we now realize is the fundament.  This is really important, because conservatives like to argue that the Church never changes, and they are able to make this point because what they deem fundamental, has, in fact, never changed.  To take an analogy from the US (borrowing from sociologist Jeff Alexander): the US always thought it was a land of the free, and it still is.  That freedom now extends to African Americans in a way that was once not thought necessary.  Has the US changed fundamentally?  No.  But what those fundaments looks like have changed.  The same can happen to the Church.

So how does critique work?  Critique functions by certain people speaking their mind within the Church, and the leadership pretty much disagreeing with them.  That’s good.  That’s how it should be.  And then most people wind up going with the leadership, which is also fine, and then a few more disagree still because they think it’s super-important or because they’re vain or whatever.  (And let’s be clear here, that if the dissenters’ motivations are impure, then the orthodox might also be motivated more by fear, or cowardice, or complacency, or the love-of-authority that is characteristic of totatilitarian regimes.  I’m not saying conservatives DO feel this way.  I’m just saying that if you’re going to call a liberal arrogant or prideful, recognize that a conservative is subject to a vast range of other vices.  Oh–and it’s also ironic that we liberals are called prideful by a Church incapable of error.  But that’s another kettle of fish).

The point is: there’s disagreement.  And in the end, as Truth shall set you free, the truth wins out.  So someone like Luther was super important for the Church,because ultimately he spoke some truths (and a lot of what I think was wrong) and those particular truths helped the Church.

I have a lot more thoughts on this, but I think this should get the conversation going.

This past weekend–on Easter no less–I went to the Philly art museum with my family. I was particularly struck by Monet’s  painting, Poplars, which is stunningly simple: it’s just three trees and their reflections in a pond, each forming a continuous pink line for the entire height of the painting with the three lines divided in the middle by the ground-line. The work, I think, perfectly anticipates abstract expressionism as there is only a vague commitment here to actually presenting real physical objects. Monet seems much more concerned with how color and shapes work with each other. Now, of course, visual art has always been about color and shapes, but you see an increasing movement represented in Monet from representations of “reality” in some form all the way to someone like Rothko who wants to figure out how shapes and colors work on their own.

The Church has a reputation for not liking a lot of modernist stuff for some of these reasons–it’s supposedly more committed to representation than abstraction. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I do understand the attraction to art that is not quite so abstract. It’s not that I don’t like or appreciate abstraction. I do. But too much of it feels like a thought experiment, a means of making a point more than making art (if that distinction is worth anything). A perfect example of this is the difference between Picasso’s early super-Cubist stuff (like the Guitar Player) and the raw power of Guernica. Nobody would deny that Guernica is cubist, but its figures and narratives make much more of a visceral and not simply rational connection. You could say the same for Leger’s The City. My thoughts on a lot of contemporary art generally mirror what some critics say about secular modernity: it’s interesting, it’s important, but it’s not particularly meaningful. It’s, as Weber might say, disenchanted.

So what does all of this have to do with the Church? There’s been a lot written about the resurgence of religion, or the idea of post-secularity. I think that a lot of the new commitment to stories in art is dealing with the same societal trends, a reaction to the potential “emptiness” of a secular world. But here’s the thing: stories don’t work so well in abstraction. They need figures, and those figures need bodies and a certain physicality. And while there are certainly tremendous precedents for visually representing the body in other parts of the world–think of various tribes in Africa and traditions in South Asia–I think that Roman Catholics are the best bet we’ve got in terms of Western Europe and the U.S (at least once the pagans all got pulled into Catholicism). (For more on how this relates to modern art, see this link on the Catholic sources of four major artists).

So our world really needs Catholicism, or at least a Catholic sensibility, and it needs Catholics to remind us that the sacred is not just out there, or is not just something to be found once the world is rejected. It is interesting how the extremes of Protestantism and Buddhism– real life is outside this world or real life is suffering–both are so opposed to the Catholic insistence that grace works here, now, and that God’s grace only functions via the human body and the oil and water and ash of this world. (Yes I know those are gross caricatures of Protestant and Buddhist rejection. However, my point is that there is space for those rejections in those traditions, while such a rejection would be impossible for Catholics).

Anyways, while we worry about Obama and Notre Dame, I’d like for us to worry a bit about making sure that the Catholic artistic tradition no longer produced the maudlin, er, stuff that will turn up if you do a google search for Catholic art.

PS–Of course, I’m aware of the psychological power of a landscape or a still life. Yes–especially for landscapes and something like Van Gogh’s Room at Arles. So you don’t need physical figures. But there’s something about landscapes, or in Van Gogh’s case, a room–that make a narrative implicit. And anyways, I’d say that a lot of still life paintings are more impressive than they are moving–and when they are emotionally powerful, its because of some sort of obvious symbolic connection–think of the difference between when Cezanne paints fruit and when he paints skulls.

I am frustrated.  I’ve been looking back at my blog posts, particularly the ones that have gotten attention, and they’re almost always about authority, particularly the authority of the Church to talk about abortion, homosexuality, and condoms.  That’s fine.  People respond to what they respond to.  

But let me tell you what I wish they would respond to.  I’m all about discussions of whether or not any disagreement with the Pope should be allowed.  I’m interested in how the Magisterium works.  But I really wish that people would respond to a post about art or culture or broader cultural trends, and that they would respond as Catholics.  Let’s face it: our religion, among all Christian religions (except the Orthodox) is, I would argue, uniquely capable of dealing with issues of art and culture because of our sense of embodiment and our commitment to physical practice.  I think a great example of this is the novel, My Name is Asher Lev, in which Asher, a Hasidic Jew and painter, takes on Catholic themes in his work because of the just great material.

So what happened to the Flannery O’Conner’s and the Walker Percy’s?  What about Graham Greene?  Why is so little visual art indebted to religion anymore?  What about all the great movies and TV shows about being Catholic or at least religious (Scorsece, for example, and there are many others who are less Catholic but just as interesting).  And all of these ask compelling questions about the nature of belief, of the role of faith in the world, and how we ought to exist in a universe where the True is increasingly in doubt. 

I’m not saying not to talk about abortion or homosexuality.  I’m just saying that, for God’s sakes, isn’t there more to talk about?