A transformative journey that combines traditional Catholic spirituality with holistic artistic formation and is offered to everyone. Become the creative you were meant to be. Designed by David Clayton, Artist-in-Residence at the Scala Foundation and Provost, Pontifex University
The Vision for You is a process by which we discovered our true calling in life—what we call our ‘personal vocation’; and through which we discovered the Great Fact—that we have a choice in life: WE CAN CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY OR TO BE MISERABLE.
"He who does Christ's work, must stay with Christ always."
One of the greatest Christian artists is Giovanni Fiesole, better known to the world as Blessed Fra Angelico, the "Angelic Brother." Fra Angelico is a patron saint for artists. His style of painting beautifully bridges the iconographic and gothic traditions. Giorgio Vasari, author of "Lives of the Artists," referred to Angelico as a "rare and perfect talent."
Going Local for Global Change.
How About a Chant Cafe with Real Coffee ..and Real Chant?
There is a British comedienne who in her routine adopted an onstage persona of a lady who couldn't get a boyfriend and was very bitter about it (although in fact as she became a TV personality beyond the comedy routines, she revealed herself as a naturally engaging and warm character who was in fact happily married with a child). Jo Brand is her name and she used to tell a joke in which she said: 'I'm told that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I know that's nonsense - guys will take all the food you give them but it doesn't make them love you. In fact I'll tell you the only certain way to man's heart...through the rib cage with a bread knife.' Well wry humour aside, I think that in fact there is more truth to the old adage than Jo Brand would have acknowledged (on stage at least). Perhaps we can touch people's hearts in the best way through food and drink, and in particular coffee.
There is a coffee shop in Nashua NH where I live called Bonhoeffer's. It is the perfect place for conversation. They have designed it so that people like to sit and hang out - pleasing decor, free wifi, and different sitting arrangements, from pairs of cozy arm chairs to highbacked chairs around tables. The staff are personable and it is roomy enough that they can place clusters of chairs and sofas that are far enough apart so that you don't feel that you are eavesdropping on your neighbors' conversation; and close enough together that you feel part of a general buzz of conversation around you. There is not an extensive food menu but what they have is good and goes nicely with the image it conveys of coffee and relaxed conversation - pastries, a slice of quiche or crepes for example. It has successfully made itself a meeting place in the town because of this.
This is all very well and good, if not particularly remarkable. But, you wouldn't know unless you recognized the face of the German protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the cafe logo and started to ask questions, or noticed and took the time to read the display close the door as you are on your way out, that it is run by the protestant church next door, Grace Fellowship Church. Furthermore a proportion of turnover goes towards supporting locally based charities around the world - they list as examples projects in the Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Haiti and Jamaica on their website. Talks and events linked to their faith are organised and there are pleasant well equipped meeting rooms available for hire. I include the logo and website to illustrate my points, but also in the hope that if Bonhoeffer's see this they might push an occasional free coffee in my direction...come on guys!
Well, it was worth a try. Anyway, back to more serious things...the presentation of their mission does not even dominate the cafe website which talks more about things such as the beans they use in their coffee, prices and opening times and the food menu. The most eye-catching aspect when I was nosing around is the announcement of the new crepes menu! There is one tab that has the heading Hope and Life Kids and when you click it it takes you through to a dedicated website of that name, here , which talks about the charity work that is done.
I went into Bonhoeffer's recently with Dr William Fahey, the President of Thomas More College, just for cup of coffee and a chat, of course, and he remarked to me as we sat down that this is the sort of the thing that protestants seem to be able to organize; and how we wished he saw more Catholics doing the same thing.
I agree. What the people behind this little cafe had done was to create a hub for the local community that has an international reach. It is at once global and personal. I would like to see exactly what they have done replicated by Catholics. But, crucially, good though it is I would add to it, and make it distinctly Catholic so that it attracts even more coffee drinkers and then can become a subtle interface with the Faith, a focus for the New Evangelization in the neighborhood.
I don't know how to run coffee shops, so I would be happy with a first step that copied precisely theirs - the establishment of coffee shop that competes with all others in doing what coffee shops are meant to do, sell coffee. Then I would offer through this interface talks and classes that transmit the Way of Beauty, many of which are likely to have an appeal to many more than Catholics (especially those with a 'new-age spiritual' bent). There are a number that come to mind that attract non-Christians and can be presented without compromising on truth - icon painting classes; or 'Cosmic Beauty' a course in traditional proportion in harmony based upon the observation of the cosmos; or praying with the cosmos - a chant class that teaches people to chant the psalms and explains how the traditional pattern of prayer conforms to cosmic beauty.
A yoga class that has the word yoga but is simply a adoption of the physical aspects would attract people who are open to spirituality. Yoga is very successful in turning people with no previous inclination to the spiritual to Eastern spirituality - so why not offer Christian mediation/contemplative prayer and incorporate this into the instruction. I once had discussions with a Dominican about the known prayer postures of St Dominic. He showed me some stick figure diagrams he had drawn to represent them. He thought that these could be the basis for a Christian yoga that engages people spiritually through a focus on the physical. I don't know if he was right, but something on these lines would be good.
Another way of engaging people who are then going to be open to mediation, chant and retreats is to have 12-step fellowship groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous meeting closeby. I am aware of several priests who go to AA and also many converts to Catholicism who were first given a faith in God through such groups. The 12 steps are a systematic application of Christian principles (without reference to the Church). The non-demoninational character of the groups does mean that people can be misdirected towards other faiths in their search, but if we were present to provide an attractive picture of the Faith, it would attract interest I am sure.
Another class that might engage people is a practical philosophy class that directs people towards the metaphysical and emphasizes the need of all people to lead a good life and to worship God in order to be happy and feel fulfilled. This latter part is vital for it is the practice of worship that draws people up from a lived philosophy into a lived theology and ultimately to the Faith. For it is only once experienced that people become convinced and want more. This works. When I was living in London I used to see advertisements in the Tube for a course in practical philosophy. These were offered by a group that had a modern 'universalist' approach to religion in which they saw each great 'spiritual tradition' as different cultural expressions of a single truth that were equally valid. The adverts however, did not mention religion at all but talked about the love and pursuit of universal wisdom that looked like a new agey mix of Eastern mysticism and Plato. The content of the classes, they said, was derived from the common experience of many if not all people and from it one could hope to lead a happy useful life. They had great success in attracting educated un-churched professionals not only to attend the class, but also to go in to attend more classes and ultimately to commit their lives to their recommended way of living. They were also prepared to donate generously - this is a rich organisation. Their secret was the emphasis on living the life that reason lead you to and not require, initially at least a commitment to formal religion. Most became religious in time, which ultimately lead some to convert to Christianity - although many, because of the flaws in the opening premises and the conclusion this lead to, were lead astray too. It was by meeting some of these converts that I first heard about it. There is room, I think, for a properly worked out Catholic version of this.
Along a similar line are classes that help people to discern their personal vocation, again using traditional Catholic methods. Once we discover this then we truly flourish. God made us to desire Him and to desire the means by which we find Him. While the means by which we find Him is the same in principle for each of us, we are all meant to travel a unique path that is personal to us. To the degree that we travel this path, the journey of life, as well as its end, is an experience of transformation and joy.
Drawing on people from the local Catholic parishes I would hope to start groups that meet for the singing of an Office - Vespers and or Compline or Choral Evensong and fellowship on a week night; and have talks on the prayer in the home and parish as described by the The Little Oratory. This book was intended as a manual for the spiritual life of the New Evangelization and would ideally be one that supports the transmission of practices that are best communicated by seeing, listening and doing. These weekly 'TLO meetings' would be the ideal foundation for learning and transmitting the practices. They would be very likely a first point of commitment for Catholics who might then be interested in getting involved in other ways. It would enable them also to go back to their families and parishes teach any others there who might be interested to learn.
We could perhaps sell art by making it visible on the walls or have a permanent, small gallery space adjacent to the sitting area (provided it was good enough of course - better nothing at all than mediocre art!). All would available in print form online as well of course, just as talks could be made available much more widely and broadcasted out across the net if there was interest. This is how the local becomes global.
What I am doing here is taking the business model of the cafe and combining it with the business model of the Institute of Catholic Culture which is based in Arlington Diocese in Virginia. I wrote about the great work of Deacon Sabatino and his team at the ICC in Virginia in an article here called An Organisational Model for the New Evangelization - How To Make it At Once Personal and Local, and have International Recognition. His work is focussed on Catholic audiences, and is aimed predominently at forming the evangelists, rather than reaching those who have not faith (although I imagine some will come along to their talks). By having an excellent program and by taking care to ensure that his volunteers feel involved and are appreciated and part of a community (even organising special picnics for them) Deacon Sabatino has managed to get hundreds volunteering regularly.
Another group that does this just well is the Fra Angelico Institute for Sacred Arts in Rhode Island run by Deacon Paul Iacono. I have written about his great work here. The addition of a coffee shop give it a permanent base and interface with non-Catholics and even the non-churched.
I would start in a city neighborhood in an area with a high population and ideally with several Catholic parishes close by that would provide the people interested in attending and be volunteers and donors helping the non-coffee programs. It always strikes me that the Bay Area of San Francisco, especially Berkeley, is made for such a project. There is sufficiently high concentration of Catholics to make it happen, a well established cafe culture; and the population is now so far past 'post-Christian' that there is an powerful but undirected yearning for all things spiritual that directs them to a partial answer in meditation centers, wellness groups, spiritual growth and transformation classes, talks on reaching for your 'higher self' and so on. Many are admittedly hostile to Christianity, but they seek all the things that traditional, orthodox Christianity offers in its fullness although they don't know it. Provided that they can presented with these things in such a way that it doesn't arouse prejudice, they will respond because these things meet the deepest desire of every person.
Here's the additional element that holds it all together. As well as the workshops or classes I have mentioned I would have the Liturgy of the Hours prayed in a small but beautiful chapel adjacent to and accessible from the cafe on a regular basis, ideally with the full Office sung. The idea is for people in the cafe to be aware that this is happening, but not to feel bound to go or guilty for not doing so. I thought perhaps a bell and announcement: 'Lauds will be chanted beginning in five minutes in the chapel for any who are interested.' Those who wish to could go to the chapel and pray, either listening or chanting with them. The prayer would not be audible in the cafe. So those who were not interested might pause momentarily and then resume their conversations.
From the people who attend the TLO meetings I would recruit a team of volunteers might volunteer to sing in one or more extra Offices during the week if they could. If you have two people together, meeting in the name of Jesus, they can sing an Office for all. The aim is to have the Office sung on the premises give good and worthy praise to God for the benefit of the customers, the neighbourhood, society and the families and groups that each participates in aside from this and for the Church.
When the point is reached that the Office is oversubscribed, we might encourage groups to pray on behalf of others also in different locations by, for example singing Vespers regularly in local hospitals or nursing homes. I describe the practice of doing this in an appendix in The Little Oratory and in a blog post here: Send Out the L-Team, Making a Sacrifice of Praise for American Veterans.
As this grows, the temptation would be to create a larger and larger organization. This would be a great error I think. The preservation of a local community as a driving force is crucial to giving this its appeal as people walk through the door. There is a limit to how big you can get and still feel like a community. Like Oxford colleges, when it gets to big, you don't grow into a giant single institution, but limit the growth and found a new college. So each neighborhood could have its own chant cafe independently run. There might be, perhaps a central organization that offers franchises in The Way of Beauty Cafes so that the materials and knowledge needed to make it a success in your neighborhood are available to others if they want it.
I have made the point before that eating and drinking are quasi-liturgical activities by which we echo the consuming of Christ Himself in the Eucharist (it is not the other way around - the Eucharist comes first in the hierarchy). So it should be no surprise to us that food and drink offered with loving care and attention open up the possibilities of directing people to the love of God. If the layout and decor are made appropriate to that of a beautiful coffee shop and subtly and incorporating traditional ideas of harmony and proportion, and colour harmony then it will be another aspect of the wider culture that will stimulate the liturgical instincts of those who attend. (I have described how that can be done in the context of a retail outlet in an appendix of The Little Oratory.) We should bare in mind Pope Benedict's words from Sacramentum Caritatis (71):
'Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1Cor 10:13) Here the instrinsically eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (cf Rom 8:29ff). There is nothing authentically human - our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds - that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived in the full.'
So Jo Brand, we'll put away the bread knife and offer the bread instead!
Step one seems to be...first get your coffee shop. Anyone who thinks they can help us here please get in touch and we'll make it happen!
Modern research into how firefighters and nurses respond to a crisis supports the idea that a traditional education in beauty will develop our powers of intuitive decision making.
In a great series of recorded lectures entitled The Art of Critical Decision Making, former Harvard business school professor and current Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University, Michael A Roberto discusses the importance of intuition in making decisions; and the factors that influence the reliability of our intuitive faculty. He illustrates his points with some striking real-life stories of people relying upon or ignoring intuition (sometimes with dire consequences); and backs up what he says with modern psychological research.
For example, he tells of a number of occasions when nurses in cardiac intensive care units predict that a patient is going to have a heart attack. This is despite the fact that the specialist doctors could see no problem and the standard ways of monitoring the patients' condition indicated nothing wrong either. When such nurses are asked why they think the situation is bad, they cannot answer. As a result their predictions were disregarded. As it turned out, very often and sadly for the people involved, the nurses were right. In order to protect patients in future people started to ask questions and do research on why the nurses could tell there was a problem. What was it they were reacting to, even if they couldn't say initially?
The most dramatic tale he related was of a crack team of firefighters who were specialists in dealing with forest and brush fires and would be helicoptered into any location within a large part of the West to deal with fires when they broke out. The leader of the group was respected firefighter who was a taciturn individual who lead by example. He was not a good natural communicator, but usually this did not matter. One day they responded to a call and went to a remote site in California. When they assessed the situation they discerned the pace of spread of the fire, the direction it was going and so worked out how to deal with it safely. These judgments were important because if they got it wrong the brush fire could move faster than any man could run and they would be in trouble. Initially things went as expected but then suddenly the leader stopped and told everybody to do as he was doing. He threw a match to the ground and burnt an area in the grass of several square yards and then put it out. He then lay down on the burnt patch and waited. When asked why, except to say that he thought they were in danger he was unable to answer - he couldn't articulate clearly the nature of the danger or why this would action help. As a result even though he was respected, his advice was ignored by the team. Suddenly the fire turned and ran straight at them, in the panic the reaction of even these firefighters, was to run. This was the wrong thing to do, as the fire caught them and tragically they died. The only survivor was the leader. He was lying in the already burnt patch that was surrounded by brush fire as it swept through the area, but was itself untouched by the advancing blaze as there was no grass to burn within it. He just waited until the surrounding area burnt itself out and then walked away.
In both cases, the practitioners were experienced people who got it right, but weren't believed by others because people were not inclined to listen to the intuition of others if it couldn't be supported by what they thought was a reasonable explanation.
Dr Roberto describes how research since suggests that it is the level of experience in situ that develops an intuitive sense that is accurate enough to be relied upon. What experience teaches is the ability to spot patterns of events. Through repeated observation they know that when certain events happen, they are usually related to others and in a particular way. Even in quite simple situations the different possible permutations of events would be quite complex to describe numerically and so scientific theorems may have difficulty predicting outcomes based upon them. However, the human mind is good at grasping the underlying pattern of any given situation at an intuitive level, and then can compare with what usually happens by consulting the storehouse of the memory of past events. In these situations described, of the fire and the cardiac unit, all the indicators usually referred to by the text books were within the range of what was considered safe. However, what the experienced nurse and firefighter spotted was a particular unusual combination that pointed to danger. This apprehension of truth was happening at some pre-conscious level and is not deduced step by step, hence their difficulties in articulating the detail of why they felt as they did.
While this ended in disaster at first, lessons were learnt. As a result of this, it was recognized that a good decision making processes ought to take into account at least, the intuition of experienced people. Prof Roberto described how hospitals and firefighters and others learning from them, have incorporated it into their critical decision making processes. This should be done with discernment - intuition is not infallible and the less experienced we are in a particular environment, the less reliable it is so this must be taken into account as well.
It also depends on the person. Some people develop that sense of intuition in particular situations faster than others because the intuitive faculty is more highly developed. This, in my opinion, is where the traditional education in beauty might help. In order to develop our sense of the beautiful, this education teaches us to recognize intuitively the natural patterns and interrelationships that exist in the cosmos. When we do so, we are more highly tuned to its beauty and if we were artists we could incorporate that into our work. For non-artistic pursuits we can still apply this principle of how things ought to be to make our activity beautiful and graceful. Also, we have a greater sense of the cause of lack of beauty, when something is missing and the pattern is incomplete or distorted. In these situations we can see how to rectify the situation. This is the part that would help the firefighter or nurse, I believe. The education I am describing will not replace the specialist experience that gave those nurses the edge, but by deeply impressing upon our souls the overall architecture of the natural order, it will develop the faculty to learn to spot the patterns in particular situations and allow them to develop their on-the-job intuition faster.
The greatest educator in beauty is the worship of God in the liturgy and especially when the liturgy of the hours harmonized with our worship of the Mass with the Eucharist at the center. When we pray well it should engage the whole person, body and soul, in such a way that we conform totally to that cosmic pattern. In our book, The Little Oratory, A Beginner's Guide to Prayer in the Home, I describe both the nature of that pattern and also how in the home we can even reinforce certain aspects of it in the formation of children. In God's plan that intuitive sense is developed to help us in ordering all our daily activities to his plan (which would include potentially firefighting and nursing and indeed most human activity). This development of intuition not only improves decisions made in a crisis, but also makes us more creative. I discuss the connection between intuition and creativity in a past article about creativity in science. Through this at work, in the home or in our worship, we can contribute to a more beautiful culture of living for everyone. This is the hoped for New Evangelization and John Paul II's 'new epiphany of beauty' that draws people to the Faith.
In a recently published interview on LifeSiteNews.com, here, Cardinal Burke made the following statement about the value of the liturgy. The question asked by the writer, Izabella Parowicz: how can our worship of God help us stand up in defence of human life?
The Cardinal's reply was: 'According to the ancient wisdom of the Church, the law of worship is essentially connected to the law of belief and the law of practice. Christ comes into our midst through the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Sacraments of the Most Holy Eucharist and of Penance, to cleanse our hearts of sin and to inflame our hearts with His own love through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Only when we have a strong sense of the reality of the encounter with Christ in the Sacred Liturgy will we understand the truths of the faith and the moral life, and what they mean for our daily living. This sense is fostered by a manner of celebrating the Sacred Liturgy with our eyes fixed on Christ and not on ourselves. It should not surprise us that the period of post-Conciliar experimentation with the Sacred Liturgy, a period which was marked by so many liturgical abuses, was accompanied by a loss of faith and by moral decline. If the Sacred Liturgy is seen as a purely human activity, an invention of man, it will no longer be true communion with God and, therefore, will no longer nourish the faith and its practice in everyday living.'
This simple explication of what is summed up in the ancient phrase lex orandi, lex credendi - rule of prayer, rule of faith. If we accept what he says, it tells us the when the faith is waning, we must look first at liturgical practice for the answer. Furthermore, given that the contemporary culture is an incarnation of the core priorities and beliefs of society, the greatest weapon we have for the evangelization of the culture is the liturgy. This is how we create a culture of life.
As an aside, this is precisely the principle that Leila Lawler and I had in mind when we wrote our book, The Little Oratory - A Beginners Guide to Prayer in the Home. This is promoting the idea of liturgical piety in the home that is derived from and points to the Mass. The Liturgy of the Hours is an overflowing of the Mass into the day and into our daily lives and the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, therefore, is a supernatural key to the ordering of every aspect of our lives in accordance with a liturgical piety. So as well as focussing on the most important matter of the Mass, we should consider also the Liturgy of the Hours. Accordingly all Catholic devotions should support rather than distract from our liturgical practice. When all of this is harmonised the life prayer is one that makes ordinary living easier and not (as one might believe sometimes) a burden - an ever increasing list of things that I ought to be doing, and feel more and more guilty about when I fail to do them all.
And how it is connected with the rosary. Have you ever had the experience of walking into an art gallery and being struck by a wonderful painting on the far side of the room. You are so captivated by it that you want to get closer. As you approach it, something strange happens. The image goes out of focus and dissolves into a mass of broad brushstrokes and unity of the image is lost. Then, in order to get a unified picture of the whole you have to recede again. The painting is likely to be an Old Master produced in the style of the 17th-century baroque, perhaps a Velazquez, or a Ribera, or perhaps later artists who retained this stylistic effect, such as John Singer Sargent. I recently made a trip to the art museum at Worcester, Massachusetts and there was a portrait by Sargent there that was about 12ft high and forced us back maybe 35ft so that we could view the whole.
This is a deliberately contrived effect of baroque painting. These paintings are created to have optimum impact at a distance. It is sad that the art gallery is the most likely place for us to find any art, let alone any sacred art that conforms to its principles. The stylistic elements of the baroque relate to its role firstly as a liturgical art form in the Counter-Reformation. The baroque of the 17th century is also the last style historically that Benedict XVI cites as an authentic liturgical tradition - where there is a full integration of theology and form - It should be of no surprise that this has an impact upon prayer.
The best analysis of the stylistic features of the baroque of the 17th century that I have seen is in a book about Velazquez, published in 1906 and written by RAM Stevenson (the brother of Robert Louis). RAM Stevenson trained as a painter in the same studio in Paris as John Singer Sargent. This studio, run by a man called Carolos Duran was unusual in the 19th century in that it did not conform to the sentimental academic art of the time (such as we might have seen in Bougeureau, whose painting is shown above), but sought to mimic the style the great artists of the 17th century, such as Velazquez. In this he says: “A canvas should express a human outlook on the world and so it should represent an area possible to the attention; that is, it should subtend an angle of vision confined to certain natural limits of expansion.[1] ” In other words we need to stand far enough away from the painting so that the eye can take it in as a single impression. Traditionally (following on from Leonardo) this is taken to be a point three times longer than the greatest dimension of the painting. This ratio of 3:1 is in fact an angle of 18°, slightly larger than the natural angle of focused vision of the eye, which is about 15°. When you stand this distance away, the whole painting can be taken in comfortably, without forcing the eye to move backwards and forwards over it to any extent that is uncomfortable.
If the intention is to appear sharp and in focus at a distance of three times the length of the canvas, it must be much painted as much softer and blurred on the canvas itself. In practice this means that when one approaches a canvas, the brush stroke is often broader than one first expected. So that if we do examine a painting close too, it is often hard to discern anything, it almost looks like a collection of random brush strokes. The whole thing only comes together and knits into an image once we retreat again far enough to be able to see it as a unified image. This property makes baroque art particularly suitable for paintings that are intended to have an impact at a distance. The scene jumps out at us.
There is an additional optical device that contributes to this. The composition of the painting is such that the figures are painted in the foreground. Two things: the placement of the horizon; and the relationship between the angle of vision of the perimeter of the canvas and that angle which spans each figure within, affect the sense of whether the image is in the foreground, middle ground or background in relation to the observer. Baroque art tends to portray the key figures in the foreground. When these two effects are combined the effect is powerful.
If we look consider the very famous painting of Christ on the cross by Velazquez, for example. Its appearance at a distance is of a perfectly modeled figure. As we approach we see that much of the detail is painted with a very loose, broad brush. I have picked out the loin cloth and face as detail examples. The artist achieves this effect is achieved by retreating from the canvas, viewing the subject at a distance and then walking forward to paint the canvas from memory. Then after making the brushstroke the artist returns to review the work from the position from which he intends the viewer to see it several feet back. I learnt this technique when I studied portrait painting in Florence. I was on my feet, walking backwards and forwards for two three-hour sessions a day (punctuated by cappuccino breaks, of course). Over the course of an academic year I lost several pounds! I was told, though I haven’t been able to confirm the truth of it, that Velazquez did not feel inclined to do all that walking, so had a set of brushes made that had 10ft handles.
This dynamic between the viewer and the painting is consistent with the idea of baroque art which is to make God and his saints present to us here, in this fallen world. There may be evil and suffering, but God is here for us. Hope in Christ transcends all human suffering. The image says, so to speak, ‘you stay where you are – I am coming to you. I am with you, supporting you in your suffering, here and now’. The stylistic language of light and dark in baroque painting supports this also. The deep cast shadow represents evil and suffering, but it is always contrasted with strong light, representing the Light that ‘overcomes the darkness’.
This is different to the effect of the two other Catholic liturgical traditions as described by Pope Benedict XVI, the gothic and the iconographic. These place the figures compositionally always in the middle ground or distance, and so they always pull you in towards them. As you approach them they reveal more detail. (See a previous article on written for the New Liturgical Movement on the form of icons for more the reasons for this).
In this respect these traditions are complementary, rather than in opposition to each other. It has since struck me that the mysteries of the rosary describe this complementary dynamic also. They seem to describe an oscillating passage from earth to heaven and back again that helps us understand that God is simultaneously his calling us from Heaven to join him, but He is also with us here and helping to carry us up there, so to speak. If we consider the glorious mysteries, for example: first Christ is resurrected from the dead and then he ascends to heaven. Then He sends the Holy Spirit from heaven to be with us. Then we consider how Our Lady followed him, in her Assumption, and she and all the saints are in glory praying for us to join them. Both dynamics take place at the Mass itself. Christ comes down to us and is really present in Blessed Sacrament. As we participate in the Eucharist, we are raised up to Him supernaturally and then through Him and in the Spirit to the Father.
[1] RAM Stevenson, The Art of Velazquez, p30.
In my opinion there are two simple goals for an artist who wants to make a living: first is that he creates good works of art; and second he knows how to sell it. This might seem like a statement of the obvious, but I didn't always see it that way, and when I talk to unsuccessful artists I hear many who still don't. I regularly used to complain that the culture doesn't support art, or most people have plebeian tastes and don't appreciate good art (people today get all their information from the internet and blogs for heaven's sake); or that the Church doesn't train its priests to be good patrons. All of this may be true some degree and even relevant to some degree; but complaining about it never got me anywhere. Rather than expecting society to change until it demands what I am already producing, I was forced to conclude that my success depends more on creating forms that appeal to people. Furthermore, I had to work out how to do it without comprimising on the principles of tradition. The main barrier to my accepting this is my pride: if my work is not selling at high enough prices then I must accept - in this age of the internet when marketing has never been easier - that the most likely reason is that what I produce just isn't good enough. This presented me with a choice: keep complaining or strive to improve. I have chosen to follow the second option (and have much progress to make).
In fact an artist can do both: improve his work and transform the society to which he aims to sell it, thereby creating a demand. The means by which he will do so is the same in each case, through the creation of works of beauty. It is beauty that will change the world. So I need first to create it, and then strive to get people to see it. If people value what I produce sufficiently, then they will pay me for it. The truly beautiful will transform those who see it, and people will want it. If this is not happening, I must work harder to create something that they will value more - I must become a better artist, or a better salesman, or both. This is the principle of noble accessibility coming into consideration again. We have to create forms that are so powerfully beautiful that they connect with people today. The nature of beauty is that tends to creates the desire for it once seen. As John Paul II put it in his Letter to Artists in the context of art, beauty is the 'good made visible'.
In that same letter, John Paul II was so confident in the supernatural power of beauty to do this that he called for a new epiphany of beauty. He did not appeal to society as a whole, or even the Catholic community to change itself and become more tasteful; nor did he even appeal to educators to change society so that it would appreciate good art (not that either is undesirable); but rather he addressed his call to artists. The clue, its seems to me is in the title of the document. It is the artist who will effect this epiphany through the creation of beautiful works of art.
Pope Benedict after him chose to address artists for the same reason, as did Paul VI before him. Each is echoing what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council articulated. In his letter, he talks about art both inside and outside the church and points out that the beating heart of the tradition is sacred art. He writes: 'At the end of the Council, the Fathers addressed a greeting and an appeal to artists "This world - they said - in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. In this profound respect for beauty, the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Consilium recalled the historic friendliness of the Church towards art and, referring more specifically to sacred art, the ''summit'' of religious art, did not hesitate to consider artists as having a ''noble ministry'' when their works reflect in some way the infinite beauty of God and raise people's minds to him. Thanks to the help of artists ''the knowledge of God can be better revealed and the preaching of the Gospel can become clearer to the human mind''.
(In this he distinguishes 'sacred' art from 'religious' art. I am assuming here that he considers 'sacred art' to be that worthy of veneration and appropriate for the liturgy - in accordance with the criteria laid down by Theodore the Studite- and to be distinguished from the more general criterion of protraying religious subjects.
This, by the way directs our focus in education today. The greatest need in all the arts is for people who create beautiful work. Therefore education should be directed as much to the stimulation of creativity, as to cultivating an appreciation of what is good. Patrons have a huge part to play in the creative process and education of future patrons, lay and religious, is certainly part of this. John Paul II called also for a dialogue between artists and the Church, in accord with the 7th Ecumenical Council, which stated that artists are merely executors of ideas and the ideas originate with the Fathers. Ideally, this dialogue would be a real one between the artist and living breathing Fathers. However, when an artist chooses to conform to principles of tradition, he is in connection with the Fathers of the past who directed those artists who formed the tradition. The reason that the Popes addressed the artists, I believe, is that it is the artists' responsibility to initiate this dialogue today by demonstrating that he can produce works that possess this transforming beauty. This will then draw the other parties into the dialogue.
The successful Christian artists that I know who are working in traditional forms have certain things in common. Each produces work of high quality and they assume that this is the basis upon which people want to buy it. Each knows how to sell his work and each manages to support their families comfortably through their artistry.
I have never heard either complain that the culture or the Church doesn't appreciate what they do. The majority of these artists have not been through any formal long term training and are mostly self taught. Regardless of how they were trained originally, the successful artists are constantly looking at new methods and materials that will help them to improve, largely teaching themselves now. And all are great students of their traditions: if there appears to be a need for innovation and there is any doubt as to its validity, they always seek advice from those who are aware of the great body of Church teaching, the theologians, philosophers and liturgists.
None has a precious attitude to the craftsmanship. Making money from what they do is as important as being able to do it. This is good, I feel, for if they cannot pay the bills by doing it, then they cannot keep on doing it; but also because the market is the most efficient mechanism for the distribution of goods that we have today. Postscript Incidentally, this is something that all manufacturers might take note of. This says that if what they make is beautiful then people will be attracted to it and will pay a premium for it. The success of Apple computers is based upon this premise. Mass production doesn't need to detract from this. In fact, if an object is beautiful, then mass production means more beauty than if only a limited number are produced. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that ugliness is intrinsic to the manufacturing process. The cost of making something beautiful is not necessarily greater than the cost of making something ugly and even if it is, it is as likely to be an investment that pays off, as in the case of Apple where people will pay more for a more appealing design. The reason, I believe, that we associate mass production with ugliness is that since the rejection of tradition values in art and design, most designers simply don't know how to make something that participates in the timeless qualities of beauty. The quality of the article that is mass produced is dependent upon the quality of the original design. If the design is bad, then we have ugliness in great quantity; and if good, then it produces beauty in great quantity. And that is a desirable thing...isn't it?
How understanding the difference between hypothesis and theorem can often enable us to assess the validity of these proposals. There is a video produced by Illustra Media called Darwin’s Dilemma that discusses how recently observed scientific data raises doubts about the validity of Charles Darwin’s hypothesis concerning the origin of different species of animals – ‘evolution’. In order to be able to make a judgment as to whether or not Darwin’s proposal about the origin of species is scientifically proven or not, one must understand clearly the distinction between hypothesis and theorem. This is because hypothesis does not constitute scientific proof; theorem does. This video is good because it clearly explains the difference between the two cases.
The scientific method involves the observation of natural phenomena and then a presentation by the scientist of a possible explanation of these observations in the form of the physical laws that govern the processes. This first explanation he produces is a hypothesis. Darwin’s ‘theory’ of evolution as most people refer to it was in fact presented not as a theory, in the strict scientific sense, but as a hypothesis. And here is the important point to understand: even if we assume that research and logic behind the hypothesis is sound, if all we have is a hypothesis, it does not yet constitute scientific proof. We might characterise it at this stage it as only considered possibly true. In order to make that transition from possibly true (hypothesis) to probably true (theorem) the hypothesis has to be tested. Most commonly, the scientist tests the hypothesis by looking for new phenomena that are predicted by the hypothesis and which could not have been predicted otherwise. If these data are subsequently observed repeatedly, then the hypothesis is confirmed and it is now considered a theorem; and probably true.
Darwin’s hypothesis predicted the existence of fossils of intermediary species that indicated that all known species of animals were descended from a common ancestor. The dilemma referred to in the title is that the fossil evidence has not yet supported the hypothesis. This does not in itself disprove the hypothesis. It is still possibly true and in the past many argued that we still might find the fossils in the future because the fossil record is incomplete. The point that the video makes is that after more than 100 years of scientists looking for such fossils, they still have still not been found. Furthermore, advances in science coupled with the recent discovery of many new fossil records seem to indicate that a strong argument could made that the fossil record is close to being complete. This being the case it is most likely that we will never find fossils of those intermediary species. Therefore, it argues, it might be time for even the hypothesis to be discarded as probably not true; at the very least we should start looking for an alternative explanation for the origin of species.
In reaction to this the following points are probably worth making also: first, invalidating one hypothesis doesn’t automatically make another true. Each should be considered on its own merits. For example, intelligent design or creationism should not be considered true simply because we consider that we failed to demonstrate that evolution constitutes a theory. These hypotheses should be considered on their own merits.
Second, it is important to be aware of whether or not a proposal is hypothesis or theorem before we can decide whether or not to take action in response to it. Just as one can be too quick to accept a hypothesis as truth, one can in the other extreme be overly skeptical and reject proven theorems. Scientific proof is not a formal proof of truth according to deductive logic (for reasons too long to go into here). This means that even when a proposal makes the transition from hypothesis to theorem it does not go from being categorized as ‘possible’ to being categorized as ‘certain’; but rather from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. We cannot be absolutely certain of our theorem because unless we have data in regard to our proposal as it applies to the whole universe over all time (which we never do) it is always possible that in the future new data will emerge which will undermine it. All theorems are in this sense merely provisional. However, although we say that an element of doubt remains, we say also that once a theorem has been established that we consider it to be sufficiently close to certainty that we behave as though it is true. So we go ahead and build the bridge, construct the building, or manufacture the drug and entrust our safety to them all. Some who are overly skeptical of science as a discipline reject even proven theorems on the grounds that some doubt remains, or that past theorems subsequently proved false and had to be revised. This is not, in my opinion, a reasonable course of action. At some point you have to act with the balance of probability and behave as though it is true, and the transition from hypothesis to theorem is that point. The steady progress of our scientific knowledge since the scientific method was developed in the middle ages points to the general (if not perfect) reliability of acting on the assumption that a scientific theorem is true.
To summarize: to the degree that we must act on a proposal, we treat a hypothesis as not true, and a theorem as true. Certainly, sometimes this will end in disaster - bridges do fall down from time to time, and medical cures sometimes prove to have previously unforeseen side effects. However, in order to lead a life at all, we have to do the best we can with the best information available and this is why we do it.
In regard to Darwin’s proposal concerning the origin of species: some protestant Christian denominations especially seem anxious to establish that evolution could never become proven theorem, because they fear that it undermines the truth of the Bible rather than a desire to find out what is true. As a Catholic I have no such worries and can look at how the science plays out with a detached interest.
To understand the distinction between hypothesis and theorem often allows non-scientists to assess the validity of most discussions about science without ever needing to see the raw data or understand deeply the scientific analysis of it. A huge proportion of the articles written about hot scientific topics, such as anthropomorphic global warming, make arguments (pro- and con-) that claim to be based in scientific fact, but are in fact presenting hypothesis and not theorem. Often they do not use scientific arguments at all. They might for example give anecdotal stories based upon personal memories about how hot or cold it was in the past compared to now, especially if we are now going through a cold snap or a heat wave. Notwithstanding the unreliability of memory in gauging temperature, this ignores the fact that extreme conditions do not indicate general trends. Sometimes we are told that something must be true because ‘2,000 scientists say so’ (when democracy is not a principle for determining truth in science - it has to be tested using objective standards); or tell us we have to act now because the penalties of not doing so are too great to contemplate (without regard to the actual likelihood of it being true, which is absurd). None of these types of argument should be taken seriously when considering whether or not something is true and demanding greater clarity from our journalists might actually force them to be more responsible and rigorous in reporting on such things (although I’m not holding my breath).
Incidentally, this lack of rigour in reporting science is not new. The dispute between members of the hierarchy of the Church and Galileo was about many different things, but in regard to science it was about whether his proposal could be considered a hypothesis or a theorem. Galileo was told, you can teach this, but only as a hypothesis. Galileo insisted on describing it as proven theorem however. In this regard Galileo was wrong and St Robert Bellarmine was right. The necessary data that confirmed the proposal as a theorem was not observed until the 19th century.
Understanding that man is body, soul and spirit might be step towards establishing a culture of beauty. I have written before, here of the idea that liturgy and culture are linked. Each forms and reflects the other. If this is the case, then the answer to the question of how to reform a culture of ugliness, even a culture of death in any lasting way has its roots in, or at least must include firmly at its heart, liturgical reform.
I read recently Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: the Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, edited by Alcuin Reid. One of the presentations was by Stratford Caldecott, who runs the Thomas More College Centre for Faith and Culture in Oxford. Mr Caldecott argues that the problems lay in the fact that the anthropology - the understanding of the nature of man - had strayed from a full recognition of the spirit as part of the anthropology described by scripture. St Paul for example, talks of body, soul and spirit. There had been tendency argues Caldecott, to equate, or at least insufficiently differentiate between (in our understanding), soul and spirit. (His presentation is online, at the Second Spring website, here. Go to the section on the left that says 'online reading' and then click the title of the article: Liturgy and Trinity; Towards a Liturgical Anthropology.)It strikes me that such a neglect as a result of the Enlightenment should result in a cultural decline as well as a liturgical decline is made all the more understandible when one considers the role of the intellectus, or spirit, in the apprehension of beauty. In the first part of her little essay Beauty, Contemplation and the Virgin Mary, Sister Thomas Mary McBride, OP describes succinctly in just a few paragraphs, the traditional understanding of beauty and how man apprehends it (and as such I would recommend this piece for anyone seeking an introduction to this subject). She draws on the Latin medievals and states that beauty illuminates the intellectus, describing the apprehension of beauty as the 'gifted perfection of seeing'. Then echoing Caldecott in the connection between intellectus and spirit says: 'In the light of the above, this writer would suggest that the proper place of beauty is in the spirit.'
An appropriate active participation in the liturgy is one that engages the full person in order to encourage within us the right interior disposition. Any participation in the liturgy that does not engage body, soul and spirit therefore does not engage the full person. Our participation in the liturgy is the primary educator in the Faith at all levels. A true conformity of body, soul and spirit is what is desired. One can see that any participation in which consideration of the spirit is neglected (through a balanced active participation of soul and body) will result in therefore necessarily result in a deficiency in our ability to apprehend beauty, which resides in the spirit. This explains this link between culture and liturgy and how important liturgical reform is in our efforts to create a culture of beauty today.
St Ephrem the Syrian who lived in the 4th century AD in modern-day Turkey is a Doctor of the Church and one of the Church Fathers referred to by Pope Benedicti XVI in one of his weekly addresses and whom he encouraged us to read. St Ephrem wrote the following in the 9th of his Hymns to Paradise:
Far more glorious than the body is the soul, and more glorious still than the soul is the spirit, but more hidden that the spirit is the Godhead.
At the end, the body will put on the beauty of the soul, the soul will put on that of the spirit, while the spirit shall put on the very likeness of God's majesty.
For bodies shall be raised to the level of souls, and the soul to that of the spirit, while the spirit shall be raised to height of God's majesty;
Modern Astrophysics and Ancient Cosmology Both Support the Idea that the Heavens Proclaim the Glory of the Church Many people that I have come across say that they believe in God, and might even acknowledge the need to conform to a moral code (quite how they discern it is another matter) but see no reason for ‘organised religion’, which they see as arbitrary creation of mankind. I think that the beauty of the cosmos provides an answer to this question and here’s why. There is a book (and a film made from book) called the Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery. I show the film regularly to my students. It was published in 2004 by the Discovery Institute and was written by Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez, it describes how recent developments in astrophysics impact our sense of the place of the earth in the universe and the chances of life occurring within. It runs through all the conditions necessary for mankind to exist. (For example, we have an atmosphere that both shields us from the harmful part of the solar spectrum and is transparent to the life sustaining part of the same spectrum.) Then it details the chances of all these conditions (and there are dozens) occurring in the same place through the random processes that govern the laws of physics and chemistry in the universe. When all these probabilities are taken into account, the mathematics says that the chance of a place existing that can support us is negligible - so low that it is almost certain that there is no other life in the universe at all. The earth is probably the only planet in existence in the universe that can sustain intelligent life. Furthermore, it is surprising given the probable age of the universe that these conditions occurred even once, here on earth.
Then it goes further. The fact that scientists are able to study such things at all depends on the fact that man is able to observe the universe from here on earth to obtain data about the rest of the universe which he can then analyse and draw conclusions. Surprisingly, it is not a given that he would be able to do this. In order for us to be living within the universe and able to observe the rest of it, another string of specific conditions have to be met (for example a transparent atmosphere through which we can see the stars). It turns out that these conditions coincide with those necessary for the existence of life. That is, the conditions that allow a particular form of intelligent life to exist at all are the same conditions that allow the same form of intelligent life to observe the rest of the universe. The odds of this happening are lower than negligible such that it is even hard to accept that it could ever happen. Yet it has. One conclusion that one could draw from this is that there a forces other than the laws of physics and chemistry in operation here. The case presented doesn't prove God as Creator exists, but it certainly it supports the idea very strongly.
Furthermore it supports the idea that the universe is made for man. Read the following from a sermon by the 5th century Doctor of the Church, St Peter Chrysologus: “Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes and yet so precious to God? Why render yourself such dishonour when you are honoured by him? Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made? Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with the varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation. And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; he has made you his legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord’s representative. Then in his mercy God assumed what he made in you; he wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as he had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now he would be in reality what he had submitted to be in symbol.” (Sermon 148, taken from the Office of Readings on his feast day, July 30th)
This passage leads us more deeply into the question as to man’s place in this universe. If God made the universe for us to observe, then one can assume that he wanted man to go ahead and observe it. But why? This is not discussed in the Privileged Planet (I think it leaves a place for a sequel video and this is my pitch for it!). If God went to such lengths to make man so that he could see and respond to the cosmos then it suggest that there are profound reasons for his doing so. I put the forward the following reasons speculatively:
1. The beauty and order of the cosmos point us to its Creator. We are hardwired to see the divine order that permeates all that is, seen, and through this we gain insights into the order that permeates all that is, unseen. The cosmos bears the thumbprint of the One who made it and when we see its beauty we are moved to love Him and to praise Him.
2. The beauty and order of the cosmos are models that show us how to direct that praise. The rhythms and patterns of the cosmos and the numerical description of its beauty (for example, the movements of the sun, the moon) are those upon which the patterns of our worship are based. The seasons of the liturgical year, the patterns of worship in the each week and each day are based upon this. This is the organizing principle behind ‘organised’ religion, which is so detested by modern man. If we all worship in harmony with the cosmos, then we worship also in harmony with each other. That is why when we go to church there are others there too. They are following the same principle. God gave us this cosmic sign to order our worship. When we worship in harmony with the cosmos, we are in harmony with all the saints and angels in the heavenly liturgy. This is what makes the liturgy the most ‘effective and powerful’ prayer there is (as the Catechism says). Our action of love for God is sychronised perfectly with his gift of himself for us and his grace. This is our route, therefore, to greatest joy in this life.
3. The beauty and order of the cosmos are the models upon which all other human activity, beyond the church, can be ordered. The culture in the broadest sense of the word can be infused with these values. To the degree that man can order time and space he can do so in harmony with the cosmos, and therefore with the liturgy. All that he creates and does can be graceful and beautiful. When the culture reflects the cosmic order in this way, then just as with the cosmos itself, it can raise hearts and minds to God and to praise of Him in the liturgy. Everything stems from and points back to the liturgy. God is still the ultimate author of its beauty, but is now working through man and inspiring each person in his work. Historically, all Christian culture was founded on this principle and it is an important part of what makes the liturgy the basis of culture. It can be illustrated in so many ways and is the basis of my course The Way of Beauty taught at Thomas More College.
The worship of God in the liturgy is the basis of the deepest personal relationship that it is possible to have; it is an earthly but supernatural participation in the heavenly state for which we are made: a perfect and dynamic exchange of love with God the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, partaking of the divine nature. Therefore, the consideration of man as a human person is founded first on this relationship. Both modern astrophysics and ancient cosmology point to the same idea: that the ‘heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord’ and that it is intrinsic to man’s nature to see this and to respond with praise and worship God. Therefore any anthropology must be founded on the liturgical nature of the human person. It is incomplete if it does not. Similarly all considerations of man and society that rely on anthropology for their basis (such as economics) will also be incomplete if they do not take this into account.
And to come back to the original question posed at the beginning of this article: the beauty of the cosmos is an argument not only for the existence of a Creator but for the liturgy. It sings the song that calls us to church, and to pray the Mass and Liturgy of the Hours. As was said to me recently, the Mass is a jewel in its setting, which is the Liturgy of the Hours; and the Liturgy is a jewel in its setting which is the cosmos. The heavens, therefore point to Heaven, and we participate in the Heavenly dynamic through the liturgy, which is modelled on the heavens…and so the cycle is completed, forever reinforcing and adding to itself. All of this is for man. He is indeed a privileged person.
Postscript:
When I posted this article some readers contacted me to point out that there have been announcements of the discovery of planets that could support intelligent life and that we may not be alone. Does this undermine any of the arguments.? I don't think so because it does not change the statistical argument in any way. The authors of the book upon which the film was based simply presented the statistical arguments for such an event occurring. The chances, while negligible, were not zero. This means that for it to happen once is amazing. For it to happen twice is even more amazing since the chances are even less, but still possible. Furthermore, before we accept that such planets other than our own exist, we should try to find out how certain the information is. If it is merely hypothesis, then it is not yet scientifically proven. And many newspaper articles mistakenly present scientific hypotheses in tones that portray the information as certain.
As Jay Richards one of the authors put it to me: 'We have discovered many hundreds of extra-solar planets, but none that come anywhere near fulfilling the basic conditions for habitability. Often when an extra-solar planet is discovered, though NASA puts out a press release claiming we've discovered an earthlike planet. The most earthlike planet we know of is...Mars.
'That said, nothing in our argument requires that Earth be unique. Our argument simply entails that however many habitable planets there are, they will be extremely earthlike, and they will be better platforms for scientific discovery than the alternatives.'
What about the idea that it points to the existence of a Creator? This is to my mind not undermined either, but represents even more circumstantial evidence; provided that the probablitility of such an event has not been challenged. And to my knowledge it has not.
The fact that there turn out to be more such privileged planets does, one might argue, lessen our privilege in a relative sense (there is another part of the universe that is equally privileged so we are not so privilege relative to the rest of the universe although the reduction is tiny). however, it does not lessen the privilege in an absolute sense (the a priori chances of any one planet in the universe possessing such a privilege, remain unchanged . The material evidence of God's love and generosity that has increased ).
What if at some stage we find such a planet and then can get close enough to find life there? This is an interesting point that is purely hypothetical at this stage. It might be that we would discover that such life had a common salvation history and an immortal soul like man; or could have an immortal soul but unlike man on earth, never experienced a Fall, so have a distinct salvation history; or could be intelligent but possess no immortal soul and so would be a sort of hyper intelligent monkey. All of these life forms would be privileged too.
When I was given the courage to follow my dream of being an artist (by some inspired vocational guidance 20 years ago) I wanted to paint like the Italian gothic artist Duccio. My reasons were based upon personal preference rather than a deep knowledge of Catholic liturgical art. It was just that I loved what I saw when I went to the National Gallery in London: it had enough naturalism to make it accessible, and enough idealism that gave it a sense of the sacred. It was later that I read The Spirit of the Liturgy in which the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote of the gothic an authentic liturgical tradition.
Once I had decided I wanted to paint like him, it raised the problem of how to learn to do so. I didn't want to create pastiche, but to learn in such a way that it might become my natural way of painting and so if required, I could paint new works of art in this style. The problem was that as far as I was aware, this was not a living tradition and there wasn’t any practising artist who could teach me.
I had a sense that historically, the gothic was a transitionary phase between the iconographic and the classical naturalism of the High Renaissance/Baroque (transmitted through the ‘academic method’ of the academies and ateliers). The methods of both of these traditions were still just about alive, I knew, if not always applied in the full glory of the past. So I decided to seek a training in both traditions and hoped that through this, somehow, I would be able to take elements from both and patch together my own gothic style.
This twin training was extremely valuable to me to this end, but not in the way I had imagined. Rather than learning stylistic elements from two traditions that I could combine to create a hybrid, I learnt how a tradition preserves and passes on its core principles and so was able to see how the gothic could be reestablished as a tradition in its own right, without reference to the other two if necessary.
Both the academic and iconographic methods emphasized the importance of two aspects in the training: first the observation from nature and second the copying, with understanding, of masters in that tradition. The balance of these two aspects was different in each tradition (with the emphasis on observation from nature much stronger, as one would expect, in the naturalistic tradition).
This aspect of understanding when copying is important. Aidan Hart, my teacher, always stressed this strongly. When we studied an icon, he would relate the form of the painting to both the natural form and the theology. Take the example of the eyes: he pointed out that the eyes in an icon have no glint. This is because a glint is reflected light, and this is absent in the icon because it portrays eschatological man who shines with uncreated light which is stronger than the reflected light.
Sometimes he would point out features that might seem at first glance to be an arbitrary stylization but were in fact related to natural form. For example, the dark line above the eye is the deepest point. Below it, the eyeball is curving forward out of the orbit and above it the skull coming out from the orbit towards the brow. (This line only appears in nature if we have deep set eyes.) To accentuate this as a shadow line it is often painted as a red or red-brown shadow line. A warm, reddish shadow is often used in the deepest shadow of flesh even when painting naturalistically (this is what I was taught to do when I was studying in portrait painting in Florence).
So from this lesson I learnt that if I want to learn any tradition, I must learn to draw skillfully from nature as well as copy masters. If I want to paint figures in the style of musclebound superheroes, I would sign up for life drawing classes and copy lots of pictures of Spiderman and Superman. Similarly, if I want to paint like Duccio I can copy his work, while considering how the style relates to the theology; and (as we know the gothic masons did from their surviving manuscripts) draw from nature.
The study of iconography taught me that a tradition can be reestablished as living tradition successfully, even if the line of tradition has been broken. The Enlightenment affected the culture in both East and West and this caused a break in the iconographic tradition. The iconography which we see today is a living tradition that was reestablished in the 20th century through the devoted work of Greek and Russian iconographers and scholars. These pioneers analysed the tradition for its essential elements, and then sought to account for these by relating them to theology of eschatological man. (The work has not been done yet. It has been developing and changing even in the time that I have been exposed to icons over the last 20 years.)
A similar process is now going on in in the West, both in regard to re-establishing the Baroque and gothic traditions; and in taking a discerning look at the Orthodox interpretation of the iconographic tradition, which is at times limited by its focus on the Greek and Russian traditions to the exclusion of other iconographic forms, for example the Romanesque or the Celtic forms of iconography.
I am confident therefore of a flowering of Catholic culture, especially when one sees how it is underpinned by the liturgical renewal that is taking place under the guiding hand of the Holy Father.
Images from top: Madonna and Child, Duccio; detail of Christ Pantocrator, 6th century; detail from triple portrait of Charles I, Sir Anthony van Dyck, 17th century.
Below: first, a portrait by yours truly in which the eyes are not deep set and so the line above the lids is not visible. Nevertheless, I used a deep red-brown, as instructed, to give the shadow tone in this naturalistic style. Below those we have large scale, full images of those above.
The iconographic, the Gothic and the Baroque are Complementary Here is a passage taken from the Office of Readings, Saturday, 6th week of Eastertide. It is part of St Augustine’s Commentary of the Gospel of John:
"There are two ways of life that God has commended to the Church. One is through faith, the other is through vision. One is in pilgrimage through a foreign land, the other is in our eternal home; one in labour, the other in repose; one in a journey to our homeland, the other in that land itself; one in action, the other in the fruits of contemplation.
The first life, the life of action, is personified by the Apostle Peter; the contemplative life, by John. The first life is passed here on earth until the end of time, when it reaches its completion; the second is not fulfilled until the end of the world, but in the world to come it lasts for ever….”
This passage seems to me to describe very well why the Church has different liturgical artistic traditions. The form of the iconographic tradition is governed by the theology of the ‘world to come that lasts forever’ symbolized by St John.
Gothic is art of the ‘pilgrimage through a foreign land’, as Augustine puts it. Stylistically the Gothic is a naturalized iconography. I have written about this here. However, the fusion is not arbitrary. This is a naturalization that is integrated with the theology of pilgrimage that Augustine describes. In this regard it should not be confused with the degenerate forms of iconography that dominated the Eastern Church from the period of the 18th century. (It was not until the 20th century, with figures such as Ouspensky, Gregory Kroug and Fotis Kontoglou that the iconographic prototype was re-established in the main churches of the East.)
Historically, the Gothic can be seen as something that develops gradually from the Romanesque (a Western variant of the iconographic form). It is almost as if the art form gradually appears from heaven, descending down to earth to join the pilgrims. Duccio, for example, who lived in the late 13th and early 14th centuries has a style that is very closely related to the iconographic. Fra Angelico, in the 15th century, uses both the iconographic visual vocabulary as well as naturalistic ones (such as perspective and shadow) in a theologically coherent way.
Where does the third authentic liturgical tradition of the Church, the Baroque, sit with these? It was during the Baroque of the 17th century that the integration of theology and form in the most naturalistic of these styles occurred. The controlled variation in colour and focus (described in more detail here) were given theological meaning: we live in a fallen world, with evil and suffering present, but there is hope because God is present – in Baroque art contrast of light and shadow is always painted so to communicate the idea that the Light overcomes the darkness.
Although we cannot reach heaven fully in this life, supernaturally we partially and temporarily step into it through the liturgy and the sacramental life. This is a transforming process that by degrees takes us towards that heavenly state.
In this context, the Baroque is the ground zero, the starting point of our pilgrimage, and the gothic describes the partial and gradual ascent to that heavenly state in this life, before reaching the final repose. The Baroque and the Gothic together represent that aspect of our life in faith symbolized by St Peter in the picture that Augustine paints.
Therefore, these three styles are not in opposition to each other but are complementary. In the light of this I hope to see all three traditions. As each tradition develops, if it bears the mark of a genuinely living tradition, it will be consistent with the timeless principles that define it will, without deviating from the core defining principles, to reflect the time and place that it comes from. Those aspects that are subject to change will be the common ground for each of these traditions. It is possible to envisage a church containing all three traditions that are distinct, yet because they bear the mark of their time, yet containing aspects of form that are common and through this participate in a unified artistic vision.
In regard to the idea that both the Johannine and Petrine aspects of Christian life should be communicated, I leave the last word to St Augustine. Here is the closing passage from the same reading:
“We should not separate these great apostles. They were both part of the present life symbolized by Peter and they were both part of the future life symbolized by John. Considered as symbols, Peter followed Christ and John remained; but in their living faith both endured the evils of the present life and both looked forward to the future blessings of the coming life of joy.
It is not they alone that do this but the whole of the holy Church, the bride of Christ, who needs to be rescued from the trials of the present and to be brought to safety in the joys of the future. Individually, Peter and John represent these two lives, the present and the future; but both journeyed in faith through this temporal life and both will enjoy the second life by vision, eternally.
All the faithful form an integral part of the body of Christ, and therefore, so that they may be steered through the perilous seas of this present life, Peter, first among the Apostles, has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to bind and loose from sin. And also for the sake of the faithful, so that they may keep the still and secret heart of his mode of life, John the evangelist rested on Christ’s breast.
It is not Peter alone who binds and looses sins, but the whole Church. It is not John alone who has drunk at the fountain of the Lord’s breast and pours forth what he had drunk in his teaching of the Word being God in the beginning, God with God, of the Trinity and Unity of God — of all those things which we shall see face to face in his kingdom but now, before the Lord comes, we see only in images and reflections — not John alone, for the Lord himself spreads John’s gospel throughout the world, giving everyone to drink as much as he is capable of absorbing.”
Images from top: Baroque - St Peter being Freed by an Angel (Guercino); iconographic - St John with Christ at the last supper; Gothic - St Peter preaching (Fra Angelico)
What can businesses do to regain their equilibrium after the financial meltdown? The standard responses to tough times, such as reducing staff, pruning the product range and balancing budgets may cut costs but they do not stimulate the profit-generating activity needed for sustainable recovery. In fact, these actions often contribute to the downward spiral by degrading the very assets – the resources, projects and people – needed to grow revenues and profits. What else can be done? A better alternative comes from the organizational principles that form the core of the Christian tradition and have been practiced, for example, by Benedictine monasteries. These principles are based on the idea that God is the Creator of all that is good. Profit is the end to which a good business is ordered, so the activity of any business will be improved if it can tap into a set of principles that open it up to this source. While the effectiveness of these principles can by explained in the context of Christian faith, one does not need to be a Christian or even have a faith in God to follow them and reap the benefits.
The example of the Benedictine monastery is a good starting point for exploring how to restart growth in our businesses and world economy. St Benedict developed his Rule for monastic life in the 6th century AD and Benedictine monasteries have been flourishing over the centuries ever since. Some will be aware from their history lessons of the important role that Benedictine monks played in the preservation of culture and the intellectual life in the early middle-ages. The Rule of St Benedict required that monasteries were required to be financially self-sufficient. For this reason, the Benedictines turned their minds to trade and commerce as well as to prayer and the intellectual life. They were so successful at this that sometimes their assets were eyed with envy. Henry VIII of England dissolved them in order to seize and strip them of their assets. You might say that the Benedictine monastery is the longest existing and most successful business franchise in history.
What did the Benedictines do so well? While there is very little mentioned explicitly about trade in their rule; St Benedict suggested for example that wherever possible, the monasteries should aim to sell the goods they produce at slightly lower than market price so that there should be less temptation to greed and so that ‘in all things God can be glorified’. The monasteries were good at business because their activities were deeply infused with Christian principles and therefore focused on people and the relationships between them. Underlying these relationships is the creative principle of love – of God first, but also of neighbor and of all of God’s creation. By ordering their activity so that it was in harmony with the divine order, they sought to act in loving service to each other and all others with whom they related, both inside and outside the cloister.
Today we view this type of business model superficially as one of superior customer service or in management-consultant speak as ‘quality-based management’. But it involves something deeper -- trade and commerce practiced in a loving, sustainable way. When all people who are impacted upon by the company are genuinely valued, including employees, customers, and suppliers or service providers, then the company is tapping into the creative and productive force that generates revenues and profitable growth. This principle in business was recently highlighted by a modern-day Benedict – Pope Benedict XVI – in his latest encyclical Love in Truth as one of ‘superabundance’. The result of this superabundance, he describes, is a sustainable profit that is naturally in harmony with the spiritual and material well-being of employees and their families, with society as a whole, and also with the environment. Put in another way, all parts of business are in harmony with the common good.
For all that companies tell us how they care about their employees and customers, the nature of their business activity often says something else. If their business relationships are in fact governed only by the alignment of self-interest, then the message transmitted is just that – I am driven by self-interest – thus, the customer or employee feels treated as no more than a means to profit. If, on the other hand, the relationship is governed by the striving for mutual self-sacrifice, then the impact will be the opposite and people very often respond by pulling together and giving to the full. The former is termed contractual, the latter as a covenantal relationship. It is the covenantal relationship that is genuinely and fully productive. This is not to say that contracts are unnecessary. They are; however, they should be seen as defining the minimum requirements in an employee relationship, management contract, business partnership, or merger and acquisition.
Those companies that achieve sustainable growth are the ones that give more in their relationships. Often the things given are those that can be given freely -- an attitude of care, courtesy and genuine concern for those with whom they deal expressed in a myriad of ways. It is most often seen working effectively in entrepreneurial start-ups and in family and private firms. When the covenantal element is present in organizational relationships, employees can be heard to say, “I feel part of something good,” “I love my job,” or “I love our customers.” They, in turn, give more, ask less, and work longer hours on projects, so as to make the overall organization successful – not because they are forced to, but because they want to. Similarly, customers can be heard to say that they buy from or work with the company because they feel valued and that they can trust them. The covenantal principle of giving beyond the minimum requirement was also referred by Pope Benedict in the same encyclical. He called it ‘gratuitousness’.
When the covenantal aspect is absent, we see the weakening of businesses, even when they have a viable business model (considered in purely economic terms). This results, for example, in the familiar pattern of CEOs and top executives siphoning-off excess pay and firing lower-paid workers thoughtlessly; in theft at all levels of corporate intellectual property, equipment and other assets; and even litigation.
A covenantal model of business relationships encourages and promotes an atmosphere of creativity and productivity. It generates more ideas and better ideas and is better equipped to see those ideas implemented through to the generation of revenue. The source of this creativity and productivity is supernatural. It is the principle of love that is made present whenever a relationship is, at least in part, covenantal. Love is always fruitful. If God is Love, then where there is love, God is present also. We are used to seeing this fruitful love in the context of the family, where the love between the father and the mother gives us out of nothing, so to speak, the gift of children. Love, in the context of the business, is creative too, but is ordered to those things that a business should create. Entrepreneurs come together to turn their ideas into products and services directed towards profit.
How do we develop these covenantal relationships? In any company, permeating through and sitting alongside the formal and necessary managerial reporting structure, is the naturally developing social network of business acquaintances and friendships. These are the productive relationships that are to be encouraged, and when they flourish, pay back financially at high multiples. This applies as much to small businesses as large ones. In fact the power of the Internet means that its accessibility and the multiples seen are greater than ever. The key to developing this supernatural productivity lies in identifying and developing these naturally occurring covenantal relationships. It can be done, but it must be done with care and sensitivity. It must be built up relationship by relationship, and in such a way that the integrity of the whole organization is not compromised. The ideal upon which this is based comes from consideration that God loves each person fully as a unique individual.
When a business is built around the covenantal principle, its products and services will attract with the radiance of love. The common word for this radiance is beauty. Beauty can be seen as much in a gracefully offered service as in a well-designed piece of equipment.
The free market is the mechanism which best nurtures covenantal relationships and so best enables commerce to generate growth, profit and wealth while benefiting society. Freedom is the operative word here, as all that is given in this context must be given freely. Most would accept that the freedom of the market should be tempered, however, by moral considerations. These moral considerations are not really restrictions on freedom; rather, they point to the right exercise of freedom for the good of all. We say also that there is another set of useful guidelines: those of harmonious covenantal relationships – the principles of beauty. The moral and the beautiful do not restrict profit. On the contrary they increase it by directing us, when faced with an array of choices, to the source of sustainable profitability in harmony with creation.
This is the Way of Beauty, the via pulchritudinis, recently described by Pope Benedict XVI as a principle of harmony that points to God. In his address to artists in Rome last year, he described this as one of the ways, ‘perhaps the most attractive and fascinating’, to be able to find and love God. In the context of business, it is also the path of creativity and productivity. The reason that the Benedictines knew how to apply this principle was that beauty is a principle the apprehension of which can be taught. The study of the order, symmetry, and patterns in creation as reflections of the divine order was part the traditional liberal arts education of the Christian medieval world.
When we do something beautifully we are moving on that path to God that is in harmony with the natural order. A scientist does this when proposing a new theorem that is simple and symmetrical – and during their reviews, peers will often use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe the solution. The idea for the solution comes from their intuitive perception of natural beauty. Because beauty is apprehended intuitively, an education in beauty develops the intuitive faculty. It creates possibilities that previously didn’t exist for us. When we conduct business beautifully, we tap into the supernatural principle of abundance in harmony with the family, society as a whole and the environment (because God is the Creator who made these things too). Everyone gains.
This holistic way of thinking offers genuine hope for the future and it can be taught to anyone who wishes to learn it. It has begun to be used successfully by businessmen and businesswomen today to restart growth and sustainability in our businesses and world economy.
This article was written in conjunction with John G. Carlson, CEO of System Change, Inc, a management consulting firm. He has held executive positions at Tessera Technologies, General Instrument and other firms.
When I first met the president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, in Merrimack, New Hampshire, he asked me to describe my ideas for an art school that could contribute train artist to serve the Church. This was relatively easy for me to do. Inspired by John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, I had been on a mission for several years to establish such a school and so describing it was something I had done many times. I described how I would give a training that was rooted in traditional principles, teaching an understanding of what they were doing, so that the tradition becomes a living tradition. A living tradition can develop and respond to the needs of the time without compromising on the timeless principles of beauty, truth, goodness and unity that underlie all genuinely Catholic art. This would enable us I said, to produce art for both sacred and profane settings, and contribute to the establishment of the art of Vatican II. This will evoke the art of the past, yet be distinct and in many ways of a previously unimagined in style. It will characterise our era as beautifully and distinctly as the Romanesque, the Gothic and the Baroque did theirs.
The aim of such an education are threefold: to train in the practical skills; to increase in the individual an ability to apprehend beauty; and to open the individual up to inspiration from God through a disciplined training that looks to Masters for guidance.
Following traditional patterns of art training, there are five aspects (in no particular order):
Students would have an exposure to each of these elements. As study progresses, they would specialise in one of the artistic traditions listed, or into the development of new art forms consistent with the principles they have learnt and as required by the Church.
The president listened without interruption and then asked me a further question. What about those who aren’t going to be artists, can you provide a training that could be part of the core liberal-arts programme as an education in beauty?
I had never been asked this before. I stopped for moment to think before responding, then realized that this really was possible. The traditional artistic training not only taught people the skills, but also the ability to apprehend beauty. This aspect, I was certain could be taught to all and the result would be a transformation of the individual, for to open up someone to beauty, is to elevate their souls to God and to increase their capacity to love what is good. There would be change in emphasis, the practical elements would be there, but those aspects that would not be intimidating to someone who did not consider themselves good at art would be brought to the fore.
The result of this meeting was that I was invited to come to TMC to implement exactly what I had described. The first stage was to be the programme for undergraduates; this would be followed by the gradual identification of gifted artists from the undergraduate body, who would form the core of the specialist art school. I would be looking for those who not only wished to be artists, but were fired by the vision of the college and wanted to play a part in creating the ‘new epiphany of beauty’ called for by Pope John Paul II in his Letter to Artists.
This Fall, Thomas More College starts its Way of Beauty programme to be taken by all freshman (and offered as an elective for other students). It is a course that is, as far we know, unique in the world. It draws on the principles articulated by figures from the early Church, such as Augustine and Boethius and which have been drawn to our attention recently by John Paul II and especially Benedict XVI. What I had described in my interview were the principles of the quadrivium, the ‘four ways’ (the higher part of the traditional seven liberal arts).
The traditional quadrivium is essentially the study of pattern, harmony, symmetry and order in nature and mathematics viewed as a reflection of the Divine Order. When we perceive something as reflecting this order, we call it beautiful. For Christians this is a source, along with Tradition, that provides the model upon which the rhythms and cycles of the liturgy are based. Christian culture, like classical culture before it, was also patterned after this cosmic order; this order which provides the unifying principle that runs through every traditional discipline. Literature, art, music, architecture – all of creation and potentially all human activity – are bound together by this common harmony and receive their fullest meaning in the liturgy. This course teaches a deep understanding of these principles and how they link the liturgy, ie the cult, to its culture. When we apprehend beauty we do so intuitively. So an education that improves our ability to apprehend beauty develops also our intuition. All creativity is at source an intuitive process. This means that professionals in any field would benefit from an education in beauty because it would develop their creativity. Furthermore, the creativity that an education in beauty stimulates will generate not just more ideas, but better ideas. Better because they are more in harmony with the natural order. The recognition of beauty moves us to love what we see. Such an education would tend to develop also, therefore, are capacity to love and leave us more inclined to serve God and our fellow man. The result for the individual who follows this path is joy.
This course not only teaches the students an understanding of these principles. It teaches them how to apply them. The course is directed towards the creation of beauty as well the appreciation of it. We will chant the Liturgy of the Hours, relating not only the structure of the Office itself to the Mass and the Heavenly Liturgy, but the form of the music to the harmonious principles that are replicated in the visual arts as, for example, the abstract geometric art of the Cosmati pavements of the middle ages; and used as principles for compositional design in figurative art. They will construct geometric patterns that reflect this
The practical aspect is not an extra bit of light-hearted fun tacked on to the end of the course. It is considered a vital component. It is the practical creation of beauty that effects the transformation in the person. First, it develops the habit of conforming the whole person to divine order, which is impressed by degrees upon the soul. Second, it is exercising the creative aspect of the intellect in us. We are made by God to be with Him in heaven, partaking of the divine nature. God’s intellect is purely creative intellect – if He thinks something it is. The creation of beauty is therefore a temporal step into our heavenly destiny and so directs us on to the path to heaven. Third, when beauty is created it is a gift for God and directs the hearts of others who behold it to God, bringing glory to Him. Therefore it is an act of love. This is the most powerful transforming principle of all.
The benefits to the person are present most powerfully in the Liturgy, but it is important that there is an experience also of the creation of art other than the praying of the liturgy also. This demonstrates to the students how these liturgical principles are made present in the wider culture. Even the form of the Liturgy of the Hours we are learning is developed to emphasise this link between the culture and the Liturgy. It was first developed at the Maryvale Institute, in Birmingham, England, as part of their art theory course, Art Inspiration and Beauty from a Catholic Perspective, where I taught before moving to the US. The students learn to involve the whole person in the prayer, body and soul, so that it is a greater gift to God and they are fully open to inspiration and God’s grace. This means that we engage the senses directly with sacred imagery, chant, incense and consider bodily posture. This is a simple and beautiful form that draws on the tradition of the Church.
And what about the art school? It was felt that to make all students learn to paint icons was not a good thing, as some would be intimidated by this. There will be elective classes in icon painting and drawing throughout the year so that those who are interested can develop their interest. We will be offering a summer school next year open to people outside the college as well and that offers a condensed form of the Way of Beauty in a week (which like the undergraduate class, is for artists and non-artists). Artists would wish to take in addition a two-week course in iconography and a two-week course in academic drawing, as taught in the ateliers of Florence.
I arrived at Thomas More College in January this year and I have been surprised (and very pleased) by the interest that the appointment of an Artist-in-Residence has created. There have been numerous newspaper features and even a TV appearance (I was invited to talk about the TMC programme on EWTN in late spring). This demonstrates to me that the is a great desire in the Catholic world to see once again a distinctly Catholic culture of beauty united to the liturgy. In fact as a result of this I have had several enquiries from people looking to study art full time who are well grounded in the Faith and committed to the wider vision, so much earlier in the development process than I had originally planned, I am even expecting our first full time art student to begin this Fall.
Beauty calls us to itself and then beyond, to the source of all beauty, God. God's creation is beautiful, and God made us to apprehend it so that we might see Him through it. The choice of images for our prayer, therefore, is important. Beautiful sacred imagery not only aids the process of prayer, but what we pray with influences profoundly our taste: praying with beautiful sacred art is the most powerful education in beauty that there is. In the end this is how we shape our culture, especially so when this is rooted in family prayer. The icon corner will help us to do that. I am using icon here in the broadest sense of the term, referring to a sacred image that depicts the likeness of the person portrayed. So one could as easily choose Byzantine, gothic or even baroque styles.
The contemplation of sacred imagery is rooted in man’s nature. This was made clear by the 7th Ecumenical Council, at Nicea. Through the veneration icons, our imagination takes us tothe person depicted. The veneration of icons, therefore, serves to stimulation and purify the imagination as a means of imaging God’s inspiration. This is discussed in the writings of Theodore the Studite (759-826AD), who was one of the main theologians who contributed to the resolution of the iconoclastic controversy.
In emphasising the importance of praying with sacred images Theodore said: “Imprint Christ…onto your heart, where he [already] dwells; whether you read a book about him, or behold him in an image, may he inspire your thoughts, as you come to know him twofold through the twofold experience of your senses. Thus you will see with your eyes what you have learned through the words you have heard. He who in this way hears and sees will fill his entire being with the praise of God.” [quoted by Cardinal Schonborn, p232, God’s Human Face, pub. Ignatius.]
It is good, therefore for us to develop the habit of praying with visual imagery and this can start at home. The tradition is to have a corner in which images are placed. This image or icon corner is the place to which we turn, when we pray. When this is done at home it will help bind the family in common prayer.
As an artist, I am aware of the need for inspiration and creativity in my work. Traditionally, artistic training was one that was designed not only to teach artists the skills of their craft, but to develop in them the disposition to be open to God’s grace.
In fact all students, not just artists, can benefit from being open to God’s grace in their work. By examination of the structures of the colleges of Oxford University one can see that traditionally Catholic educational institutions were structured so that they facilitated the flow of grace, by ordering all their activities liturgically. That is, they lived by the rhythms and patterns of the liturgy, so that their activities both ushered in grace and were open to guidance from it, for the good of all. Even the design of the buildings was done so as to assist in the liturgical life.
By extension this leads us to consider the possibility of ordering any social institution liturgically, so that it can flourish as God intends. This article considers particularly business. Even a business can be ordered liturgically, joining all of creation in praising the Father and becoming a portal of grace. Such a business would support the human person fully – materially and spiritually – and be a beacon of truth and beauty that assists man in his mission of worship of God, charity to mankind and the perfecting of creation.
Part of my study as an artist was in Florence, in Italy, where I was trained in the academic method of drawing and painting.
The academic method is named after the art academies of the seventeenth century. The most famous early Academy was opened by the Carracci brothers, Annibali, Agostino, and Ludivico, in Bologna in 1600. Their method became the standard for art education and nearly every great Western artist for the next 300 years received, in essence, an academic training. Under the influence of the Impressionists the method fell out of favour so that by 1900 nearly every school teaching the academic method had closed down (the US academies in, for example, Boston, lasted a bit longer).
Within the last 30 years there has been a small but growing re-establishment of the academic method in both Europe and America. The founder of my school was trained by an octogenarian in the 1970s who had studied in Boston about the time of the First World War. By the time of my attendance there in 2005, there were four schools in existence in Florence, each teaching a similar form of “classical naturalism.”
Along with all of the students who attended, I am immensely grateful for the excellent education in technique and the stylistic elements of seventeenth-century Baroque naturalism. Despite this, pretty much everyone at this atelier agreed on one thing: although there were some good contemporary artists, no one in the modern era was producing work of anything like the quality of the old masters (Velazquez was the standard we aspired to). This realization cast a cloud of pessimism over the ateliers of Florence. Something seemed to be limiting the standard of the students. If classical naturalism was to become a mainstream art form again, the students would have to be getting steadily better and surpassing the work of their teachers, but it didn’t seem to be happening.
The pessimism was exacerbated when one looked at the work of the students once they had left these schools. Some were happy doing precisely what they had been taught. They could make a good living as portrait painters, or paint traditional still lives of high enough quality to sell in the alternative “realist” art market of the US. There is a valid place for this sort of art today, in my opinion, but it would never be the basis of the required “new epiphany of beauty” called for by John Paul II. Others who left felt the need to use what they had learnt and develop it. The mark of any truly living tradition is an evolution of style that nevertheless remains faithful to the timeless principles that define it. The problem was that no one seemed to know how to change anything without eroding what we had learned.
I saw a number of people struggling with this. They might introduce some exaggerated and expressive brushwork, or some heightened colour. Guided only by their own gut feeling of what was right they travelled on their own little personal journey through the artistic styles of the later centuries – Romanticism, Neo-classicism, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Expressionism. Some settled for a style somewhere along the way, perhaps with an expressionist or a fauvist influence dominating. Others, sometimes the most talented, knew this was a path that was leading them to the place that they had sought to escape, and after a struggle gave up painting altogether in disillusionment. It seemed that whatever was being given to us contained the same fatal flaw, whatever that might be, that caused the tradition gradually to decline and then finally to collapse when challenged by Monet et al. 100 years before.
How could students break out of this downward spiral?
It seemed to me that there were two things missing in our education. The first was a lack of full acknowledgement and hence limited understanding of the fact that the style we were learning was the product of a Catholic worldview. With a few notable exceptions, the old masters, even if not conventionally Christian, accepted the worldview that the stylistic elements of Baroque art were developed to communicate.
The second reason is one that was apparently ignored completely, and yet it is something that is important in all education: the necessity of grace, without which wisdom and virtue cannot be developed. If Velazquez was the standard we were aiming for, then something must have allowed him to be greater than his own teacher. Perhaps the answer lay not just in Velazquez himself, but in the education he received.
Velazquez’s teacher was his father-in-law, a Spaniard called Francisco Pacheco. He published an instruction manual for painters called El art de la pintura in 1649. This articulated what an accepted authority on the Baroque, John Rupert Martin, called “the clearest definition of the transcendental significance of Baroque naturalism.” Pacheco clearly sees the role of the artist as being to imitate nature in order to bring glory to God. In doing so, he asserts, he will be practising a virtue. Therefore the act of painting will serve to lead both artist and those who see the painting to “contemplation of eternal glory, and as it keeps men from vice, so it leads them to the true devotion of God our Lord.” In doing this the artist will achieve his principal goal, which is “to achieve a state of grace through the study and practice of his profession.”
Velasquez’s training was as much an education in humility and apprehension of beauty as an education in skill. It was designed to open him up to any inspiration that God might choose to give him. He was taught to study nature and the work of recognised masters with self-discipline and under the careful eye of his teacher, who corrected him along the way. But if the process of education were limited to passing the knowledge of the teacher on to the student, then because no teacher can hope to pass on everything he knows to his pupil, it would necessarily involve a diminution of knowledge. Clearly in the case of Velasquez something had enabled the pupil to surpass his teacher. The obvious answer is sheer talent – the genius that enables one person to excel another. We live in an individualistic age, and the post-Renaissance obsession with artistic genius makes it hard to conceive of any other factor. But talent is a gift from God, and not necessarily the most important in producing truly great work. Artistic inspiration itself is a gift, as any artist will tell you. The beauty of nature is a gift, when we recognize that all things come from God. The deeper answer, therefore, is grace. Velasquez surpassed Pacheco partly because of how he responded to the grace of God.
Of course, not every great artist is a Christian, or even a virtuous person. God inspires whomsoever he pleases. But when it comes to opening ourselves to the grace of God, participation in the sacramental life of the Church is likely to help dramatically. “All true human art is assimilation to the artist, to Christ, to the mind of the Creator…. When a man conforms to the measure of the universe, his freedom is not diminished but expanded to a new horizon.” ((Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), 153.)) I do not know if Velasquez was as fervent a believer as his teacher, but as part of the court of seventeenth-century Spain, he will at least outwardly have been a Catholic conforming to the liturgy of the Church. Through that liturgy we can become attuned to the deepest of all sources of inspiration.
The example of Velasquez and his education in beauty could provide an important lesson to anyone seeking to develop a method of education – and not just the education of artists. An education in the perception and making of beauty is inevitably an education in opening up to inspiration, an education of the intuitive faculty that gives us insight into reality. It is hard to see that there is any academic discipline (or for that matter any human activity) that cannot be improved by a development of the intuitive faculty. The scientist tests his hypothesis in a step-by-step application of reason by the experimental method, but the hypothesis itself is more often than not the result of intuition.
Once one accepts the importance of grace it can affect the design of the institution right from the curriculum through to the layout of the buildings and the living arrangements, as well as, most obviously, the sacramental life. As the liturgy is the source and summit of human activity and all aspects of human life can be ordered to it.
The college system at Oxford University can be used to illustrate this. From the thirteenth century, residential educational institutions were founded by the new orders of friars, the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Carmelites as well as the older monastic orders such as Benedictines and Cistercians and the bishops. The community was infused with the rhythm of the heavenly liturgy through participation in the Mass and the Divine Office. The full Office was sung each day, if not by the whole community each time, then by some of its members on behalf of everybody within it.
The liturgy is a source of grace for those who pray it, and by participation in the liturgy, the person becomes a portal of grace that benefits those around him too. In these colleges the whole community would have benefited from living in accordance with a divine rhythm, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts. The sense of a community was reinforced by the practice of communal eating. Eating in community is a quasi-liturgical event echoing the Last Supper, which binds together a family as much as a college. It is interesting to note when looking at the colleges of Oxford how much energy was devoted to making the whole college a beautiful place and how nearly as much energy went into making the Dining Hall beautiful as was used for the Chapel. The library was also created as a room of beauty in order to create a room of inspired learning. When designing the buildings, it was not left arbitrarily to each architect to come up with something original. The proportions of the building followed traditional ideas of sacred geometry that created a physical manifestation of liturgical principles. ((The Way of Beauty; Let the Form Conform; The Cosmic Liturgy and the Mind of God; Number; Harmony and Proportion))
As the University expanded it did so mainly by the establishment of new colleges, rather than by the growth of existing ones. This meant that it remained a series of communities so limited in size that each was able to pray and eat together regularly. Even after the Reformation in England, the liturgical rhythm continued in Oxford in form (if not fully in substance) through adherence to daily Anglican offices and services. Even today Mattins and Choral Evensong are sung daily in some colleges during term time (even though many students never attend); and students are required to attend formal meals in hall.
During my four years as a student at Oxford, which was long before my conversion to Catholicism, I did not even once go into the college chapel. Nevertheless I can now see how profoundly I benefited from the fact that others sang the Liturgy of the Hours on my behalf. In this sense I was a freeloader, enjoying the benefits derived by the work of others. It was after I left Oxford that I suffered. Without the spiritual support of the community (although I wasn’t aware initially that this was the primary reason) I was lonely. Although I had people around me, at work and where I lived, I had not developed the good habits that enable me to be the leaven that could create fellowship around me. It was not until I became a Catholic that I understood that fellowship comes first from the Holy Spirit and that I can receive that fellowship through participation in the sacramental life and especially the liturgical rhythm of the day, even if no one else around me is doing so. It ushers in the Spirit that binds people together. It turns a group of people into a community (liturgy is worship of the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit and is what the other sacramentals and sacraments are supporting).
Things have changed since the England of the Middle Ages. There could hardly be greater contrast between the founding of Christ Church College in Oxford by Cardinal Wolsey in 1524, with all the wealth of the sixteenth-century Church at his disposal, and the establishment of the Catholic colleges in the last 30 years or so. For all the differences, though, the success of each institution may be attributed to some basic structural considerations. Essentially, an educational community that succeeds in delivering a good education will be one that facilitates – or at least does its best not to block – the flow of divine grace. We tend to think of education as a process that connects teachers and students. But unless God is somehow present as well, as the third factor, the community will ultimately fail to deliver an education in the fullest sense of the word. This in no way replaces the usual consideration of what might constitute the optimal combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, exams, and coursework. These are vital matters too, off course. Rather, they enhance them further, for without changing them materially they make God present within them.
In my personal experience, I have seen these ideas implemented to great effect at the Maryvale Institute, in Birmingham, England and now at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. At Thomas More College, through the Way of Beauty programme we explain how the daily Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and college devotions ordered to the liturgy, such as the rosary, weekly exposition and the nine, monthly First Fridays of the devotion to the Sacred Heart are there for sound educational as well as religious reasons.
If we accept the idea that we can order educational institutions in such a way that they encourage the flow of grace, then it should be possible to extend the principles to other institutions too. If recent events are anything to go by, commerce is an area which could benefit from grace. So can a business be ordered liturgically? Is it worth doing so even if we can? I believe that the answer to both questions is yes. The following are my first personal thoughts on the subject.
The Fathers of Vatican II said that ‘for well disposed members of the faithful, the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals sanctifies almost every event in their lives; they give access to the stream of divine grace which flows from the paschal mystery of the passion, death, the resurrection of Christ, the font from which all sacraments and sacramentals draw their power. There is hardly any proper use of material things which cannot thus be directed toward the sanctification of men and the praise of God’. ((Sacrosanctum Concilium 61)) This says to me that anything that is intrinsically good can be ordered liturgically to give praise to God. We should therefore be aiming to make all our activities and anything we produce consistent with this liturgical principle of worship of God the Father. We can look at those aspects of our daily lives that might seem, at first sight, to be most mundane and removed from church worship and order them liturgically, and this can include gainful employment. If we do this then our work will, through grace, become exactly what God intends it to be, a profitable flourishing company.
Some will instinctively react against a proposal that seems to say, ‘God is good for business.’ This is understandable. It conjures up images of the sparkly-toothed business guru selling us the idea that the introduction of spiritual values into the daily transaction of business will increase profits. Go to any bookstore and you will find shelves of books claiming to show how (inverting the natural hierarchy) we can harness the power of God to generate riches. I cannot attest to whether or not this pray-and-grow-rich message generates money for anyone other than the authors of the books who claim it. However, at some level, God must be good for business if business is good at all. Any institution ordered properly, will be open to God’s grace and will, with the cooperation of individuals within it, become what God intends it to be and so will benefit it. Business is no exception, once it is ordered liturgically, it can be directed towards the sanctification of men, just as the Fathers of Vatican II describe. This in itself is an end worth striving for. The Canticle of Daniel, sung in Lauds of Sunday Week I in the Liturgy of the Hours, and on all feasts, lists all aspects of creation and beautifully defines them as liturgically ordered by describing them as ‘giving praise to the Lord’. Our aim should be to order business in the same way, so that we could add, ‘Oh all you businesses of the Lord, give praise to the Lord. To Him be highest glory and praise forever”!
The Catechism tells us directly that just as the natural world is ordered to worship of God the Father, so should all man’s activities be similarly ordered: “Creation was fashioned with a view to the Sabbath and therefore for the worship and adoration of God. Worship is inscribed in the order of creation. As the rule of St Benedict says, nothing should take precedence over the ‘work of God’, that is solemn worship. This indicates the right order of human concerns.” ((CCC, 347))
Does this mean that ordering the business so that it will be open to God’s grace will generate more profit also? The answer is yes, possibly, and certainly over the long term because the generation of profit is part of what a business ought to do. (The exceptions are when the core business is contrary to moral law and the common good – those aspects other than profit to which a business ought to be ordered.) But the point here is that it should create other things as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the ‘Economic life is not meant solely to multiply goods produced and increased profit or power; it is ordered first of all to the service of persons, of the whole man, and of the entire human community...Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another...Everyone should be able to draw from work the means of providing for his life and that of his family, and of serving the human community. Profits are necessary, however, they make possible investments that the future of a business and they guarantee employment.’ ((CCC, 2426, 2427, 2428, 2432.))
If the economic life ought to be ‘ordered first of all to the service of persons, of the whole man, and of the entire human community’, or as Pope Benedict XVI refers to it in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, ‘the common good’ this makes things complicated for the faithful businessman. How can he possibly deal with the practicalities of generating profit, without which the business cannot exist at all, and consider its impact in the world through the network of seemingly infinite direct and indirect relationships with which it is in contact?
Experience tells us that many employers are aware of such obligations and genuinely try to fulfil them. They make attempts to modify the nature of their business in order to be more family – or environment – friendly. However, very often such attempts create a competition for resources because the profit making activity is not the same as that which supports the family or the environment. So as the focus on reducing harm to family or environment goes up, profits go down. The test of the truth of this is that when times get tough economically, employers cut (albeit usually with regret) the benefits to their employees or abandon any ‘green’ policies they are not legally obliged to keep.
If this is what happens, it is a consequence of the fact that the attempts consciously to conform to the common good are in conflict with its core profit making activity. Therefore the more eco or family friendly the company tries to be, the less business it does. Government attempts to force companies to do such a thing tend to create the same tension. Reducing productivity either by regulation (which effectively forces the company to bear the cost of social or environmental measures) or by taxation (to enable the government to pay for such measures).
An alternative, I suggest, is to order it liturgically first and then to strive for generation of maximum profit. Profit is an end to which a good business is ordered. It is the most necessary condition for its continued existence and the easiest guiding principle to apply. This therefore should be the primary motivation. The application of morality tempers this aim however: we should not, for example, take actions that are dishonest. If morality is completely contrary to the profit motive, then we are in an intrinsically bad business (such as drug dealing) and we should close it down.
Similarly, considerations of the common good, as an aspect of morality, should also be seen as potential modifiers to the primary motive of profit, rather than a primary guiding principle. Being ‘ordered to the common good’ does not mean that all mankind should benefit materially directly from what a business does. It simply means that it acts in accord with the small part laid out for it in God’s overall plan. It is God’s overall plan which is directed to the common good and affects all. It is usually very difficult to predict the impact of our actions beyond those directly affected and so it is better for the most part, not to try. Attempts to do so, aside from reducing profits, will just as likely lead to unforeseen and detrimental secondary effects. Rather, we should aim to order it liturgically, and trust that grace will direct us in following our intuitive judgement in following the profit motive, to do what is best. This is not to say that there should be no consideration of the common good at all. Just as with consideration of morality, it is possible that sometimes it will temper behaviour that would otherwise be driven by the pure profit motive. If we can see that the profit is generated to the benefit of a narrow group of people, but it is obvious that the secondary or general consequences of this are contrary to the common good (for example causing damaging levels of uncontainable pollution) then we should modify our actions. It is this intuitive aspect that will lead us to make the more creative and productive ideas, quite naturally, in the environment that encourages it.
The good business, one that is ordered to the supernatural, generates profit to pay its employees and gives return to its investors; it also supports spiritually those it impacts upon. It is a social institution in itself and one that helps to bind the families together, rather than undermine them by, for example, making excessive demands of time. It is one that works in harmony with the natural world. Its activities and products are directed towards the sanctification of men and, through their beauty, give praise to God. To the degree that a business is ordered liturgically, because it is in harmony with the divine order, it is impossible for the generation of these goods to be anything but in harmony with each other. Therefore, all these other benefits can be accrued through the core, profit-making activities of the business. Pope Benedict, again in Caritas in Veritate, said that the rule of a business ordered to the common good is one of ‘superabundance’. He is not therefore describing a principle that reduces profit, but one that, potentially, adds to it. The good business will last as long as God intends and grow to the degree the He intends. If it is meant to exist at all, given the full range of goods that derive from a good business, there is no reason to believe that sustainable profit will not be one of the results.
There is an assumption by some that the motive for a business transaction is a selfish one. To my mind, while we might describe the motivation as one of self-interest, in the sense that each party is seeking to benefit from it, this self-interest is not necessarily selfish, in the sinful sense. A profit motive, for example, can be either selfishly driven or unselfishly driven – it depends on what you want to do with the profits. Profit is neutral, just as with all money or wealth. Certainly, it can corrupt or give those already corrupted greater power to fulfil sinful intentions, but not necessarily so. The converse can be true. It has the potential also to empower people to do greater good. An action is sinful, and therefore bad, when measured against the objective standard of God’s will. If God wishes us to earn money to support ourselves or our families, then it might be construed narrowly as selfish, but it is certainly not sinful to strive to do so by directing our actions towards greater pay or profit, or purchasing a product at a cheaper price. The greater good, at the individual level and beyond, therefore, is always achieved to the degree that individual motives (most likely mixed in practice) are ordered to what is good and individuals are free to choose to make such decisions; and to the degree that they work within institutions that are structured in harmony with the divine order, so as to encourage and harness the good individual decisions to the common good. The natural extension of this argument is that the business environment, ie the market, beyond the institution should also be one that is ordered to common good so that which will encourage such individual choices, and direct it to what is good for society as a whole. The perfect market environment is a debate for the economists, but it seems to me that it is the free market, prudently regulated according to the principles of justice.
The Catechism directed us to the example of the rule of St. Benedict in describing an ordering principle for work and we look to the Benedictine monasteries for inspiration and confirmation of this. Through right ordering in accordance with liturgical principles, the benefits generated by monasteries have been both material and spiritual. Furthermore, the material wealth generated has at times been so great that it was viewed with envy by the state and secular rulers, such as Henry VIII of England. The Benedictine Rule could be viewed as the most successful and long-standing business franchise in history! ((It should be pointed out, in fairness, that the picture is not one of complete purity. The various reforms to the order over the centuries point to the fact that some Benedictines were as unable to resist the corrupting power of money as the rest of us.))
Any work that is in harmony with the divine order is perceived by us as beautiful. A business so ordered will work beautifully and the product of its work will be beautiful. It cannot be otherwise because beauty, truth and goodness cannot be in opposition. Beauty attracts people to itself and then beyond to God. Through grace, the work of man can potentially surpass even natural beauty. The beauty of the Oxford colleges continues to be a factor in the attraction of students from around the globe, increasing competition for places and so raising standards. Similarly, when the goods and services offered by the company are beautiful or presented beautifully, their value is increased because they are deemed more desirable. The value of goods and services, and hence productivity have increased.
All these benefits will increase in the liturgically ordered business as people follow their intuition, guided by reason, in following the profit motive, modified whenever this contradicts morality or affects adversely the common good. We are talking as much about how people act as what they do. Usually consideration of pure profit motive generates answers to what is done. How those ends are achieved will be the product of the attitudes of those who take them to their fellow man. It will demonstrate whether he values those people or views them simply as a means to an end. Ultimately it is the how which is a much, perhaps more so, the creative principle in all that we do and which generates wealth.
A harmonious relationship is one that is ordered to the divine order. Such a relationship creates something out of nothing, by allowing the supernatural to work through it. This is the source of that superabundance. All decisions made within the working day can benefit from this. Whether they are managerial decisions that affect overall strategy or simple choices made at an almost instinctive level that affect our manner in dealing with others as we go about our daily duties, all can be open to the grace that flows through harmonious relationships. Projects, products, new services and intellectual property are all created and implemented by this process of harmonious relationship which acts as the driver of corporate growth, revenues and profitability, plus, vitally, meaningful work, jobs and well-being for employees and their families. Very often this is manifested in apparently quite straightforward ways, although they are masking a supernatural process. If the relationship with the customer is built on the right principles, they will be your unpaid travelling salesman, drawing others to you through enthusiastic recommendation because they enjoy the service you provide. Even those who are unfortunate to be laid off can be our advocates in the future if they are treated in a way that respects their human dignity. Going back to our Benedictines again, it is worth noting that their monastic vows included one of stability, which kept activity outside the perimeter of the monastery to a minimum. Despite this, even during the so-called dark ages of the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, monastic trade and communication extended from Ireland to Byzantium.
Consider two musical notes. These can exist in isolation but when they played simultaneously something new is created, a chord. If each note is in a harmonious relationship with the other, we will recognize it as something beautiful. What is interesting about the chord is that is created out of nothing. Without destroying the integrity of each individual note, a new third entity has been created.
When we talk of harmonious human relationships, we are referring to a cooperative, harmonious alignment of wills. In fact the most harmonious relationships are those that we would call loving relationships. When we have loving relationships we talk of two hearts beating as one. In considering what this means for us, we can look at the type for all loving relationships, that which exists between the persons of the Trinity. In fact all harmonious, loving relationships are an unfolding of the perfectly harmonious relationship of the Trinity. The love between two of the persons of the Trinity is crystallized as a third person. St Augustine in De Trinitate described the relationships between the persons of the Trinity as follows:
“Now love is of someone who loves and something is loved with love. So then there are three: the lover, the beloved, and the love (Bk 8 Ch 10). If then, any one of these three is to be specially called love, what more fitting than that this should be the Holy Spirit? In the sense, that is, that in that simple and highest nature, substance is not one thing and love another thing, but that substance itself is love and that love itself is substance whether in the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, yet that the Holy Spirit is especially to be called love” (Bk 15 Ch 17)…
This is a description of perfect love; mutual self-gift, in which each person gives him or herself to the other utterly and totally. St Augustine goes on to say (Bk 15, Ch19:36) that ‘there is no subordination of the Gift and no domination of the Givers, but the concord between the Gift and the Givers’.Just as in the chord: two notes combine to form something totally new, the chord, but neither is compromised or diminished by their interaction. The ‘chord’ of the harmony of wills in mutual self-gift is Love. It makes God, who is love, present.
It is this love that is the productive component in the relationship. It generates something out of nothing in a supernatural process. All of creation is made by this love. We know that the cosmos is made by God because its beauty directs our souls to the divine order. The word cosmos is derived from the Greek word that means simultaneously ‘order’ and ‘beauty’ (hence the word ‘cosmetic’).
No other relationships are as profound as that of the Trinity, but any relationship that is founded on the principle of love, that is one of mutual self-gift, entered into freely, will, by degrees resemble this Trinitarian model and will be productive in a manner that is in due proportion to the nature of the relationship. This is true for every human relationship from marriage right through to casually passing the time of day with the bus driver.
It is important to note that we are living in a fallen world, and so seeking to institute a covenantal model of operation does not preclude contracts. Contracts regulate the relationships in accordance with the principle of justice. Contracts are very often necessary, but they are never enough. Contracts alone cannot generate the trust and goodwill that oil the wheels of commerce. This is generated by individuals going beyond the demands of justice – and acting in accordance with the principle of love. Pope Benedict XVI calls this covenantal aspect in the context of business ‘gratuitousness’. This is just as it is in marriage. Marriage is defined within the legal system of society as much as the religious. However, a marriage that operates as though it were only a legal contract lacks love and will not last. The contract defines the minimum level of participation. For a marriage to operate at a covenantal level it requires each party to give to degree that goes way beyond legal minimums. It is the free expression of love – giving without demanding return – that makes God present, because God is love. It is what makes it an abundantly productive relationship.
Similarly, the free market is regulated by law in accordance with the principles of justice, and within this contractual agreements describe the participation of individuals and companies within it, again, if done properly, according to justice. But it is the covenantal behaviour that permeates this legalistic structure that generates wealth. Trust and goodwill are necessary components of commerce.
The corollary to this is that the lack of a covenantal approach to relationships in business can cause the downfall of a company when by all other measures it should succeed. Often, there is no economic rationale and the only explanation for such a downward-spiral is the human failings of egotism, vanity, greed.
One approach is to teach CEOs and those who are in a position to shape a business, the ideas behind the traditional quadrivium (as the Way of Beauty and Thomas More College of Liberal Arts does) so that they can structure a business in accordance with it. Just as with a college, the environment can be created, through the ordering of time and space that encourages a liturgical mode of behaviour in its employees. An institution cannot love, but the individuals within it can. If even one person cooperates on behalf of the community, then it ushers in grace from which all within it can benefit.
In addition, those employees who are open to it can be taught the same principles so that through their free cooperation they and the company will benefit. There can be no compulsion or sense of obligation here for these undermine the principle of charity upon which it relies for its power.
Even if the company as a whole is not structured liturgically at all, it is possible for a single employee to introduce grace by praying for the company in accordance with the liturgical principles and by cooperating with grace, to treat better his fellows in accordance with the principles of caritas. This will introduce the transforming principle that benefits all and draws others to it so that by degrees the culture of the company transforms.
When we apprehend beauty, we do so intuitively. Therefore, an education that improves our ability to apprehend beauty, as Thomas More College’s Way of Beauty does, develops also our intuition. All creativity is at source an intuitive process so this education develops their creativity. Furthermore, that creativity will stimulate in those employees who undergo such a course not just more ideas, but better ideas. Better because they are more in harmony with the divine order. The recognition of beauty moves us to love what we see. It is a transforming principle so such an education would tend to develop also, therefore, our capacity to love and leave us more inclined to serve God and our fellow man. The end result for such an individual is joy.
Beauty like morality, then is a principle of life that guides our freely chosen activities, so that we choose well. Morality tends to work on a negative basis – it cuts out options on the basis that they are immoral. Beauty on the other hand, is a principle that opens up new possibilities and so in contrast to morality works on a positive basis. It is a principle of creativity, which is vital in business. For those whose intuition is tune with the natural order and ultimately the divine order, seeking do what is most beautiful will guide our personal preferences to those choices that are going to be most productive and in harmony with the common good.
Another approach to tapping into the principle of superabundance is to develop further those covenantal relationships that already exist. No group of people is without any covenantal relationships. Within any company there is a natural network of them. These in fact represent, supernatural means, its most important wealth-creating assets. They develop out of the informal contact of employees, clients, customers and the friendly relations and friendships that ensue. They sit alongside and permeate through the formal managerial communication lines. There are many business people who will recognise this and see these relationships as assets. Fewer will recognise this as the supernatural basis for the creation of wealth. ((I am aware of one who does this consciously: John Carlson of System Change Inc (www.systemchange.com) has developed to great effect a method of transforming companies so that their generative covenantal relationships are identified and nurtured and their business strategies modified to encourage and benefit from them. He has been doing this with great success for many years. His work has shown that the effect of applying of these principles is to generate sustainable profit and to make employees feel valued and motivated to work more productively. It becomes, in short, happier more productive place.))
A liturgical ordering of business not only defines how a business can operate in harmony with the divine order; it is also a transforming principle that enables the business to move towards this ideal. If there is a conflict between the generation of wealth and these other goods then in the liturgically ordered business, grace will tend either to transform it into one in which the conflict is diminished and eventually eliminated; or, if the nature money-making activities of the company are intrinsically bad and unreformable it will tend to put it out of business. Racketeering, drug dealing and pimping would not flourish through the introduction of these principles!
The effect of this will be to maximise sustainable profit while benefitting the whole person and the common good. It is the best way to improve workers’ conditions, to improve their involvement with their families and to enhance the environment. In other words in such a company, the more core business that is done, the better it is for those involved, by any measure of good. By following the motive of maximising profits, modified only when it contradicts morality (and as part of the common good), it would tend to perfect and improve the natural environment (or, quoting the Catechism again, ‘prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another)’. It will affect those with whom it comes in contact so that it works for their sanctification. And through its beauty it will praise God and bring joy to man.
This program designed by The Way of Beauty's David Clayton gives you a unique formation in beauty and a Catholic inculturation. For artists of any creative disciplines, catechists and all who love beauty. Learn more at www.Pontifex.University.
