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This article was originally
published in Caelum
Et Terra, Fall1995, volume 5 no 4,
and is used here with the author’s permission.
To obtain permission to republish
this article, contact the author by clicking on the author's name link above.
"Beauty is truth, truth
beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all
ye need to know.
- Keats,
"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
As the good denotes that toward which the
appetite tends,
so the true denotes that toward which the intellect tends.
-
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
When
I converted to the Catholic faith early in 1978 at the age of 27 I was
motivated by only one thing: my
conviction that Catholicism was true, that Catholicism's account of reality was
in fact the way things really are. But
long before that date, when I did not yet believe that the Catholic religion
was true, I found myself increasingly attracted by the beauty of the
Faith. And though I would never urge
anyone to become a Catholic simply because of the beauty of the Faith or of Catholic
life, nevertheless I am still convinced that not only is the Faith true but
that it is compellingly attractive and beautiful, even exciting. Moreover, I think that the beauties of the
Faith are not merely accidents, but are close to the heart of what God has done
for us.
Though
I had little contact with Catholics or Catholic things while I was a boy, my
father's library did contain a few important Catholic books. These included part of Aquinas's Summa
contra Gentiles, Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, Ronald Knox's The
Belief of Catholics and the Baltimore Catechism. As I was growing up I read some of these books and parts of the
others. And two things about the
Catholic Church gradually impressed themselves on my mind. The first was the fondness of Catholicism
for clear thinking. Distinctions were
distinctions. If A was A, then, dammit,
A was not B. If something was proved true,
then it was true, whatever we felt about it. In contrast I found most of the other religious ideas I
encountered, either in people or in other books, mushy and vague. (I exempt C. S. Lewis from this
charge.) But though it is easy to see
how I became aware of the tight logic and clear distinctions of the Catholic
mind, I am less clear on the second thing.
Indeed, I am not sure I can even define or name it very well. But I must try, for I think it is one of the
most salient features about Catholicism, and something that ought to be
attractive, especially to those of my generation.
What
is this second thing? It is simply that
at some point in my adolescence and early manhood I began to find the Faith
attractive, exciting, beautiful.
Catholicism gradually became to me a vision of things at once more
vibrant and full of life than the culturally Protestant world in which I had
always lived. I say here deliberately
'Catholicism' rather than 'the Catholic Church,' not because I felt any
coldness toward the Church itself, but because my vision was broader. In the center of it indeed stood the Church,
but around that Church stood Catholic civilization, Catholic life. The latter obviously came from the former,
but the latter also made manifest what was often hidden and latent in the
former: the beauty and vibrancy of
Catholicism.
Now,
as I say, I do not remember how this conception arose in my mind. As an undergraduate I read some more in
various Catholic authors, especially Chesterton and Belloc, and I am sure that
they helped strengthen this image of the Faith. I remember at the time reading some of Chesterton's The Catholic
Church and Conversion
and accepting without demur his words about
Catholicism being the new religion, one of the "enthusiasms that
carry young people off their feet and leave older people bewildered or
annoyed," the very reverse of an old, feeble or stodgy affair. As he writes here,
It
is perhaps no longer the custom to regard conversion as a
form of dissipation; but it is still
common to regard conversion
as a form of revolt. And as regards the established convention
of much of the modern world, it is a
revolt. The worthy merchant
of the middle class, the worthy
farmer of the Middle West, when
he sends his son to college, does now
feel a faint alarm lest the
boy should fall among thieves, in the
sense of Communists; but he
has the same sort of fear lest he
should fall among Catholics.
For
a time as an undergraduate I was also part of a folk choir that sang regularly
at a Saturday night Mass. It was
certainly not the music nor even the liturgy (by 1970 already Englished) that
especially reinforced my attraction to the Faith, but rather parts of Catholic
life that I was now beginning to experience.
Although it is a caricature that Episcopalians are all crusty, rich and
stuck-up, nevertheless it is true that among Catholics I saw a popular
and familiar side to religion that I did not see among Episcopalians or other
Protestants. This Catholic atmosphere
is touched on by Ronald Knox in The Belief of Catholics.
There
is among Catholic saints a familiarity which seems to raise
this world to the level of
eternity. There is among Catholic
sinners a familiarity which seems (to
non-Catholic eyes) to
degrade eternity to the level of this
world. The point is most
clearly demonstrated in connection
with that attitude toward
religious things which we call
"reverence." For good or for
evil, the ordinary, easy-going
Catholic pays far less tribute to
this sentiment than a Protestant, or
even an agnostic brought up
in the atmosphere of
Protestantism. No traveller fails to be
struck, and perhaps shocked, by the
"irreverence" or
"naturalness" (call it what
you will) that marks the behaviour of
Catholic children wandering about in
church. Even grown-up
Catholics will usually talk in
church if anything needs to be
said, while Protestants will usually
whisper.
The essence of this Catholic atmosphere, at least
as it attracted me, was this easy intermingling of the sacred and the
secular. In our conventionally
Protestant culture piety is associated with an overtly "religious"
sort of behavior. And when one is not
being religious one is being entirely secular.
The twain do not meet. But among
Catholics I was seeing that the twain do indeed meet, in fact, that the twain
are intertwined. Religion is not
something apart from our everyday lives, requiring a special and sanctified
kind of comportment. I saw this same
thing during a visit to a popular pilgrimage site, the Shrine of Our Lady of
Consolation in Carey, Ohio, on Assumption Day in 1974. Here were crowds of pilgrims of many ethnic
groups, Chaldean rite Catholics (originally from Iraq) prominent among
them. Now the pilgrims at Carey are by
no means all pious in the conventional understanding of that term. That is, they do not walk around with long
faces and folded hands; they mill around talking with friends, teenagers parade
around the streets, little children dart about playing. People come to Carey for a pilgrimage to a
shrine of the Mother of God and yet this act is not cut off from the rest of
their lives by some kind of wall, a wall which sharply demarcates the sacred
from the secular. As it was for
Chaucer's pilgrims, journeying to a shrine unites much of what some might seek
on a vacation with what would clearly be accounted works of piety.
While
still an undergraduate I took my first tentative steps toward affiliation with
the Church and the Faith. But the
priest I consulted who assured me that now that we had done demythologizing
Scripture we would begin to demythologize dogma was not exactly what I had in
mind, so I stayed out of the Church for several more years. During these next few years I made my first
visit to Santa Fe (in 1975). I
immediately fell in love with the Spanish culture, with its buildings, its art,
its people, its life. Twentieth-century
New Mexico can hardly be called a Catholic culture in its fullness, but enough
of the externals of the Faith remain so that it helped to build up in my mind
this image of Catholicism. One of the
most memorable things that I saw was an exhibit at the Museum of New Mexico of
colonial religious art from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Here I saw religious art as a living and
popular tradition, for the exhibit included a few paintings done well into this
century, pictures depicting answered prayers.
That is, a painting might show someone lying on a sickbed with others
praying and perhaps a saint above receiving the petitions. And the next panel might show the invalid up
and about again. These were paintings
done by or on behalf of families living in New Mexico in the 20th century to
commemorate some actual answered prayer.
Here was Catholic culture alive and well and part of the lives of
ordinary believers.
But
something else in Santa Fe that at the time created a maybe even bigger
impression on me involved less authentic Catholic art. This was the rosaries and plastic statues of
the Infant Jesus of Prague for sale at the Woolworths on the Plaza. Here again was a sign of the matter of
factness Catholics felt about the Faith.
Though doubtless for Woolworths it was simply a means of making a buck,
for one brought up in a Protestant culture it was a revelation. I had never seen anything like it and it
delighted me. Here was another example
- to me refreshing - that among Catholics religion was not something to be put
in a little box, something separate from life, something so special that it was
almost unreal. No, religion was a part
of life. Why? Because God, the Virgin, the angels and the saints, were all as
real as, and as close as, the other things Woolworths sold, such as soap,
hangers or underpants.
About
this time I began to develop devotion to our Blessed Lady. Around 1973 or 1974
I began to pray to her and she was definitely part of this undefined sense of
romance that always pulled me toward the Faith. As I will explain below, I think it was quite natural that
attraction to the Blessed Virgin should be mingled with this attraction to the
Faith in the world, for I think her historical role in salvation history has
had much to do with the creation of these aspects of the Faith that so
enchanted me.
Now
what do I think was behind all this?
Some perhaps, in view of
Chesterton's words about "conversion as a form of revolt" that
I quoted above, might be inclined to dismiss my conversion, at least, as
my own version of the revolt of the 1960s, a revolt which happily for me did
not end up either in Zen or in crystals.
I revolted against Protestant culture and ended up a Catholic. But I think there is much more to it than
this. For just as St. Thomas tells us
that the good is what attracts us, and that ultimately goodness and being are
the same, so I think there is something objective that was always at the root
of my attraction toward the Church and toward Catholic life. This is the
Incarnation.
"And
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." From the doctrine and fact of the Incarnation, the taking of a
human nature by the Eternal Logos, come, I think, those aspects of the Faith
that so attracted and excited me, and still do. In the first place, the Incarnation was surely the most wonderful
and startling intermingling of the divine and human that is possible. Here was the almighty Creator of the
universe living among us. Here he was a
suckling at his Mother's breast, eating his first solid food, playing,
assisting Joseph, eating, sleeping. If
the other little boys of Nazareth had known, they could have said to their
mothers, "I'm going over to play at God's house now, okay, Mom?" or
"Can God come over this afternoon and play?" To have the Eternal Infinite running around
your backyard. Here is a juxtaposition that we would never have dared to
imagine, had God not effected it himself.
After this nothing we do should be shocking if we mingle the sacred and
the ordinary, indeed, if we make the sacred ordinary and the ordinary
sacred. And this is exactly what the
Faith had done. Medieval Catholics gave
free rein to this instinct. A medieval
Welsh poet wrote "I could hardly sleep a wink though God were to sing a
lullaby." And a modern editor
comments, "In Chaucer's age men spoke freely of sacred persons and
things.... Of course such passages do not necessarily indicate lack of proper
reverence. Sometimes they seem to show
affectionate familiarity with objects of worship." Indeed they do. The English cycle plays, meant to be performed around the time of
the feast of Corpus Christi, abound in instances of putting the sacred and the
secular side by side, but even they cannot compare with what God himself did
when he became man. But this is not how Protestant culture approaches such
matters. The passage from Ronald Knox
that I quoted above continues with this account of the agnostic but culturally
Protestant, Julian Huxley's behavior in a Catholic church.
Those
who have read the statement of his beliefs made by my
friend,
Mr. Julian Huxley, will realise that he is not an
exponent of orthodox
Christianity. Yet I can recall - I am
sure
he will not mind my recalling it -
his attitude of pained
surprise when a Belgian friend of
ours knelt down in a pew to
pose for a photograph. I am passing no criticisms, one way or
the other, in this matter of
reverence; I am simply trying to put
on record a difference of
attitude. It is perhaps most
succinctly stated when it is pointed
out that in Catholic books
of devotion Almighty God is sometimes
addressed not as "Thou" but
as "You." [Written in 1927.]
Although hardly able to put it into words, I
discerned a difference between Catholics and Protestants, including cultural
Protestants, in their approach to the sacred.
Catholics had a familiarity with God and the things of God that others
did not seem to have, a familiarity that, as I said, seems to me to be rooted
in a wholehearted acceptance of the Incarnation and its implications and which,
when translated into actual living acts and material objects, has created a
culture of great beauty and liveliness.
There
is another and related aspect of Catholic life that is likewise, I think rooted
in the Incarnation. This is the
concreteness of Catholicism. After our
Lord assumed flesh he was always in a particular place. Though, of course, he was also at the same
time everywhere (since he is God), you could still find him in one particular
place doing one particular thing. He
might be preaching or eating or healing or sleeping or walking. As if two men who were arguing could say,
"Well, let's go over and ask God what he thinks about this. He's staying in the third house from the
corner." And the means of grace
and sanctification that God instituted in his Church are concrete and use
concrete things: water and oil and
bread and wine. Each is uniquely itself
and uniquely different. So similarly I
found the Spanish-Indian art of New Mexico concrete. It witnesses to eternal truths but does so in a very concrete
manner. It was itself. Byzantine art and Romanesque art are also
themselves. Unique and different from
all others. So I found all Catholic
culture and Catholic life to be. The
more concrete it was the more universal it could be. Just as our Lord was the universal Creator of the universe, yet
in one place at one time, so each Catholic culture, by being itself, witnessed
by its uniqueness to the universal and the supra-temporal. Even the brightness and contrast of the
colors of so much of Catholic art might be said to do the same. Each color was different and by being more
itself, more concrete, was able to become part of the harmonious whole of the
painting. So much of modern life in
industrialized countries is drably uniform.
It attempts to witness to the supposed universalism of secular
industrial capitalism by creating a samenesss wherever it goes. It paints the world a dull dark green or
gray. But Catholic places are painted
in bold and bright colors, each different, a localism that will forever war
against industrial drabness. I saw this
clearly in New Mexico and again I was attracted to the Faith and to what it had
created.
Moreover,
the vibrancy that I perceived underlying this colorful concreteness was the
vibrancy of the Logos, the force that upholds all creation in the veins and
bones of the God-man. If the divine
life could pulsate within human flesh, as it were, then something of that
divine strength could also lie behind Catholic life. It is certainly the principle on which our sacramental theology
is based and in the Eucharist we have it in its most complete form. Indeed, there it is almost a second
Incarnation, for again Almighty God comes down to dwell within the things of
earth and to inhabit what is made by the hands of man.
So
it was chiefly these two things, the daring juxtaposition of the sacred and the
secular and the bold concreteness of Catholic life, both rooted in the
Incarnation, that attracted me to the Faith, that made Catholicism seem
exciting, especially in contrast to the cultural Protestantism of my childhood
and of our surrounding society. And the
Incarnation is also the reason why, I think, that the events of Christmas, and
in fact all that concerns our Lady, have such compelling charm for us. Mary has no meaning for us apart from the
Incarnation, and whenever we turn to her we are at least implicitly recognizing
the Incarnation. And the Word becoming
flesh is a fact astonishing, and attractive because it is astonishing, so that
we never tire of repeating the stories of Bethlehem, of the stable and the
shepherds, of the beasts and the angels.
O
magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum,
ut
animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio.
To which we can only say, Amen, Amen.
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