CHURCH AND ART

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 4, 6 January 1936, Page 8

CHURCH AND ART

CATHOLIC INFLUENCE

SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL

FOSTERED THROUGH THE AGES

A scholarly and eloquent discourse jn "The Church in Her Relation to the Fine Arts" was delivered by Father McCarthy in the Basilica yesterday on the occasion of the unveiling of two fine memorial altars erected "to' the memory of the late Archbishop Redwood.

Christian art, said Father McCarthy, dated back to the time of the Catacombs—the underground vaults where the early Christians were often forced to ; hide themselves from tha fury of their persecutors. Here the Church's sense of the beautiful asserted itself, and she bade those of her children possessed of artistic skill to beautify the cold, dark walls with frescoes representing scenes from the life of Christ and the doctrines preached by Him. The tombs of the martyrs were carved in marble, and the low and narrow chapels enriched with all the decorations which Nature or art could supply. When the Roman Emperor became a Christian and issued the edict of freedom of religious worship, the Church began in earnest her second great mission: the ennobling of human society and the fostering of the arts through the medium of which she would enhance divine worship and give culture and refinement to the minds of her children. . Just as the arts were on the verge of perishing from the face of the earth, they were pressed into -the ser-vice-of the Church, and she had since been their unfailing protectress. Become her handmaids, she made them her heralds of all that was inspiring in1 Christianity, and they learned from her how to instruct, elevate and delight our nature without yielding to its unhappy and unholy instincts. BASIS OF MORALITY. The artist learned from the Church that in art there was no enduring success without a basis of morality; that what was opposed to truth and morality could not be worthy of the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel. Here, as in so many other things, the divine philosophy of Christ indicated a remedy for an age suffering like our own from corruption ' of' refinement, and excess of luxury. When Attila with his hordes cl savage Goths and Huns were stayed at the gates of Rome, the priceless treasures of the classic literature and art of the ancient world were saved for the admiration of succeeding ages. Gibbon, the historian, recorded "all that the world has today of ancient art was treasured for 1000 years m the cloisters of the Church." Nor was it the fine arts alone that sought-in the Church a shelter. Suffering humanity crept in beneath the folds of her mantle; round these centres were built the first hospitals and refuges for the orphan and widow, the blind and the aged. After the bleak winter came the Renaissance—the spring time when the Church put forth into leaf and flower 1000 forms of her artistic fertility. It was the age of poetry, painting; sculpture; of religious enthusiasm. CREATION OF THE CHURCH. One art especially was the Church's creation—the architecture now called Gothic though it came from the Orient. It proclaimed that the ultimate term of Christian hope was the vision of truth and beauty in the heavenly Sion. "Across the face of Europe, 1000 of these great poems in stone successively rise into view, each lifting its lofty pinnacles in the clear blue sky; its white towers and broad buttresses seem fitting symbols of the solidity of the faith that reared them and its irrepressible yearning for. the New. Jerusalem of which it is the image and the promise." In and through the Church, the painter, jeweller, engraver, illuminator, the worker in mosaic, and the weaver of delicate tissues found sympathy, encouragement and employment. The art' of music the Church especially ' fostered to brighten her ceremonial and lift the hearts of her children heavenward.

"The Church," said Father McCarthy, "has ever cherished, elevated, and sanctified all the finer instincts of man's nature, but could she do otherwise when she is the architect of the city of God among men."