On Catholic Symbolism and Sacred Art

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, one of the biggest feasts to be celebrated within the Catholic Liturgical Calendar. On it, we celebrate the greatest gift Jesus Christ could have ever given us, the gift of Himself.  Through the Body and Blood of Christ, we receive the grace necessary to grow in holiness in our own lives.  The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, and therefore having at least a good working understanding of the Eucharist is paramount in the life of a Catholic.  Brace yourselves, this may get a little long.

In preparation of this feast I was looking through both a modern Sunday missal and a pre-Vatican II missal.  In doing so, I noticed something.  Both of the missals have artwork for the various Sundays and the bigger feast days.  Here are the artworks for the two missals, dated:

The top image is from a 1958 missal, pre-Vatican II in its time setting.  The bottom is from 40 years later, in 1998.  You can see the dramatic difference yourself.

The top image is full of symbolism about the nature of the Eucharist, the full reality of the Feast that is being celebrated. The Body and Blood of Christ stands center, the font of life.  Pouring forth from the base of the chalice are the waters of life, from which white stags, traditional images of Christ, drink.  Two censors flank the chalice, the incense representing the divinity of Christ and the respect that is due to his Body and Blood, as well as our prayers rising up to Christ.  On the left of the chalice wheat can be seen behind the smoke, and on the right, grapes on the vine.  On the left above it all is superimposed what I think is the Passover sacrifice, and on the right, the bread and wine offered by Melchizedek, both precursors of the Eucharist.

I think the true nature and promises of the Body and Blood of Christ, and the Fest itself, is clearly made evident.

The more current one, of which I do not think there has been a revision since its publication in 1998, simply shows Christ holding the bread and chalice.  Why? Why has the symbolism been thrown away? A story is no longer told by the image, it simply restates a historical moment.  The teaching moments of children or adults even of asking what each thing represents is lost.  No longer will they be able to learn such grand truths at an early age.  They simply know that Christ offered the Eucharist to his apostles that night.

The same things can be seen in Churches from the two periods as well.  A friend of mine has recently coined the term "Gnostic architecture" to refer to those who deny the importance of good Catholic symbolism within Church design.  They do so either out of some misplaced notion that to build a tastefully designed church is waste of Church funds, or because to worry about the design is to forget that we should be worrying about Christ being the center of lives.  However, they fail to see that the goal of good art and architecture in the Catholic world is to bring all to a greater relationship with Christ, and always guiding our soul, through our senses, to God.

Again, I return to the question of why this change took place.  Was it simply because of a bad interpretation of what Vatican II said about sacred art?  Or was it do to secular forces working their way into the life of the Church? 

Let’s first take a look at what Vatican II said about sacred art.  Growing up in Catholic schools, when I asked why things had changed from when my father grew up to when I was a kid, I always received the same answer of “Vatican II changed it.”  Sadly, I am sure this is a common experience even today.  Most people have never even looked at what the documents actually say.  There are certain parts of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s document on Sacred Liturgy, that  could be misread and cited as changing things.  These are in Chapter VII, Sacred Art and Sacred Furnishings, Articles 123 and 124.

The Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her very own; she has admitted styles from every period according to the natural talents and circumstances of peoples, and the needs of the various rites.(SC 123)

The art of our own days, coming from every race and region, shall also be given free scope in the Church, provided that it adorns the sacred buildings and holy rites with due reverence and honor; thereby it is enabled to contribute its own voice to that wonderful chorus of praise in honor of the Catholic faith sung by great men in times gone by. (SC 123)

Ordinaries, by the encouragement and favor they show to art which is truly sacred, should strive after noble beauty rather than mere sumptuous display. This principle is to apply also in the matter of sacred vestments and ornaments. (SC 124)

Some at the time saw these as saying that not only is modern art approved for sacred use, but should replace art from previous years.  The documents say nothing of this, of course.  The use of modern art is not mandatory by any means.  The next sentence actually says that the Sacred Art from the past ages must be “preserved with care.”

  Article 124 deals with the difference between noble beauty and “sumptuous display.”  This does not mean we purposefully make things look more pedestrian or go with that’s cheapest.  Those who favor the “gnostic architecture” mentioned earlier would favor an interpretation such as this. In reality, it simply means to put an end to bishops and priests that were attempting to show off with the affluence of their art and vestments. 

Sacrosanctum Concilium says  in article 122 that it is the nature of the arts to praise God and raise the minds of men toward God:

These arts, by their very nature, are oriented toward the infinite beauty of God which they attempt in some way to portray by the work of human hands; they achieve their purpose of redounding to God’s praise and glory in proportion as they are directed the more exclusively to the single aim of turning men’s minds devoutly toward God. (SC 122)

It goes on to say that all things set aside for divine worship (this would include all sacred art since it’s goal is to raise man’s mind toward God) should be:

…worthy, becoming, and beautiful, signs and symbols of things supernatural. (SC 122)

Works of sacred art then should be SIGNS and SYMBOLS of things supernatural.  That’s what Vatican II actually says on Sacred Art.

Well then.  Vatican II did not call for a change in art that would have abandoned such rich symbolism.  So what did?  I am of the opinion that it was a perfect storm of bad timing that cause the shift.  At the same time the bad interpretations of Vatican II were being made, there were two other major forces that were at work.  These were the postmodern movement along with major trends in exegesis that were undermining the traditional view of Jesus.

Here’s the short version. Postmodernism is a philosophical viewpoint that rejects the idea that things have meaning inherent to them.  According to postmodernism, these meanings are constructs given to them by society.  Therefore, meaning becomes relative and dependent on the viewer.  It developed out of a reaction towards Modernism, which had also disregarded the possibility of inherent meaning.  The difference between the two rests in their reaction to that discovery and what their primary concern would be.  For Modernism, the reaction over the lack of meaning was one of lament and seeing it as problematic and it was concerned with identity and certainty.  Postmodernism’s reaction however was essentially “Yeah, there’s no meaning. We might as well have fun with it".”  Their focus was rather on the plurality (an example is an author providing two endings for a novel and saying they are both the ending) and skepticism.  This is just a brief little sketch of the movement in order to show that one of the reasons symbolism was dying because the postmodern view was telling man things don’t have meaning, and that it is a good thing.  Postmodern art shouldn’t have been admitted into sacred art: because of the philosophical rejection of meaning, it does not follow Sacrosanctum Concilium’s prerequisite that it must be in line with the view of the faith.

The final piece to the puzzle is the emergence of newer forms of exegesis.  Shortly before Vatican II, what is now called the historical-critical form of exegesis was gaining massive popularity.  The form (which actually has its merits when used properly, but that’s for another day) challenged the notions held about Scripture at the time, which challenged how the faithful began to view Jesus and the Church.  A major player in this movement was Rudolf Bultmann, who is known, or rather infamous in some circles, for his work in form criticism.  Though his work, Bultmann was very influential changing in the  supernatural views of scripture (which he denounced as myth added in by later disciples), including dogmatic truths like the pre-existence of Christ and the existence of miracles, to a purely historical or existential view.  The ""Quest for the Historical Jesus” reduces Christ to merely a good teacher, the miracles of Scripture into mere historical events that have some natural explanation (or that they were made up).

To recap: When the reforms of Vatican II were taking place, many of the reforms called for were erroneously interpreted.  It also happened that the emergence of post-modernism, which celebrated the lack of meaning, coincided with the implementation of these reforms.  So when given the chance to change things around, legitimately or not, the symbolism was removed due to the ill-fated logic of post-modernism.  This also coincided the height of the search for the "historical Jesus" movement, which sought to find the Jesus that supposedly existed behind the miracles and "later fabrications" of the apostles.  As symbolism has fallen apart, it has been replaced by a simple, unadorned attempt to show the historical event, with no thought to the meaning of the event. 

Yet, there is hope.  Out of the atrocity of post-modernism has emerged another movement, which is being called by some post-post-modernism for lack of a better term.  This movement acknowledges the fallacy of modernism and post-modernism’s proposal that there is no meaning.  It does so simply by pointing out that the thought or statement "there is no meaning" has meaning in itself, and therefore the proposal is a contradiction and falls in the fire of ruin. 

What we can hope for, and what I am glad to report I am seeing, is the introduction of post-post-modernism into modern Church design where good symbolism and stained glass is returning.  Meaning is being slowly restored to the reality of the modern man.  I  can only hope that it continues on into the periods of art, literature, and architecture that await us.  All of these aspects are reflections of the current philosophy society holds.  Meaning experiencing a renaissance is a stepping stone to guiding man back to the discovery of faith at its core.

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