A Model Review - Br Brad Elliot OP on the Music of Frank La Rocca

Here is a review of a selection of Frank La Rocca’s compositions called In This Place, written by Br Brad T. Elliot OP; it appeared first, in slightly altered form, on page 49 of the Fall 2015 edition of Sacred Music, the journal of the CMAA.

I have only just seen this, but I thought to bring it to your attention for a couple of reasons, the first being that I think that Frank La Rocca’s work deserves to get more attention.

The second reason is that the principles by which the reviewer judges the merit of La Rocca’s works are themselves worthy of study. Br Brad Elliot, who is a Dominican of the Western Province of the United States, has a good grasp of music theory (way beyond my own) and of the principles of sacred music. He brings his knowledge of both into the discussion. As such, in this short piece, I feel he outlines succinctly a guide for patrons, composers, and for the judgment of such compositions, in accord with general principles are applicable in all the creative arts.

Br Brad explains very well why it is imperative that we always have new compositions to breathe life into any artistic tradition. No tradition can rely on a canon of past works alone; without continuing creativity, it will cease to engage new people and become dead. As he puts it:

Simply put, the giving over or tradere of the past into the future must pass through the present as a necessary middle term; the present is where the real tradition takes place.

He stresses also the importance of exploring modern forms of music, as he says:

...modern harmony should not be feared as a threat to sacred beauty.

But he is quick to point out that such exploration can never be used as a reason for compromising the essential principles of sacred music.

Is Frank La Rocca’s music doing this? Perhaps. I think so, and Br Brad thinks so. But we must be clear that fulfillment of the criteria that Br Brad lays down is not the only requirement. In the end, it has to appeal at a natural level to many people as well. This is the great challenge to the artist in any field, and the mark of true creativity. Neither Br Brad nor myself are the final arbiters of taste and so the final test of its goodness is not if he or I like it, but its popularity. If it is good, it will be performed, and congregations will be drawn to it. And only time can tell us this in regard to Frank La Rocca’s or any other composer’s music. You can decide for your self by listening to his work. Here is his O Magnum Mysterium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SMLinOVi7c

We ought to encourage the continued creativity of people who understand the principles of sacred music and modern music, and are prepared to take that great risk in looking for ways of combining the two. Frank La Rocca looks to the incorporation of modern classical forms. This is not the only area of modern music in which people can look for inspiration, but whatever approach is taken, it has to be done with the dedication and respect for tradition with which we see from Frank and a few others. (Another example is my colleague on this blog, Peter Kwasniewski). The more people who are doing so, the more likely it is that the sacred musical form of today will break out of the esoteric circle of those who are deeply interested in such things and emerge as a new, popular and noble form. The music that does this will characterize our age when future generations look back at the early 21st century.

Someone once tried to persuade me that I should appreciate the highly dissonant classical music of the 20th century with the absurd opening argument that “modern music isn’t as bad as it sounds.” While there is always a place for guiding people into an appreciation of what is good, if we have to persuade people that they ought to like something, we have failed.

Thoughtful criticism that highlights what is good is as necessary to the process of cultural transformation as the work of the creative artist. I think both Br Brad Elliot and Frank La Rocca are showing us the path by which we can succeed (not forgetting Sacred Music which prints the review of course!)

The Fall edition of Sacred Music has just appeared online, so you can read the review in the journal, here. Alternatively, I reproduce it here with permission:

Composers of sacred music are in a precarious position in today’s world; in many ways, they are a dying breed. On the one hand, they find themselves competing with an aesthetic of the past, as so many in their audience are driven by a nostalgia for a form and harmony indicative of music centuries-old. On the other hand, they are immersed in a post-modern world that has all but forgotten the very natural laws of beauty, the very symmetry, proportion, and order imbued in creation that any authentic imitation of that creation – the ancient notion of art – should reflect. The contemporary composer of sacred music seems to be straddling two incommensurable worlds. How is he to be faithful to the tradition by assimilating its rich vocabulary, and yet express this vocabulary and pass it on to a post-modern world that has all but revolted against that language?

The tension between purist and progressive is deeply felt by the sacred music composer. The Christian audience in today’s world inevitably defaults to equating a sacred aesthetic with an ancient or an old aesthetic, and this antiquity tends to become more and more idealized as it fades into a past known only through the frozen images of paintings or the archaic prose of worn books. Yet if the tradition of sacred music is to be handed on at all, if it is to be a true tradition –tradere – or giving over of something, it cannot remain in the idealized past. After all, sacred music is not a mere platonic universal floating in a world of ideas; it must be instantiated in a present particular work, that is, a piece of music that contains all the individuality and unrepeatable character of any other. If the tradition of sacred music is to be known, it must be incarnated in the here-and-now, given flesh and matter through some distinct composition. Simply put, the giving over or tradere of the past into the future must pass through the present as a necessary middle term; the present is where the real tradition takes place.

But here is precisely the dilemma; if any particular composition is to be a true giving over of something and not a mere replica of the past, than this work will naturally embody the character of the present time. The harmony, feel, texture, and aesthetic of the contemporary world will serve as the matter out of which the tradition again takes flesh. But can contemporary music actually provide a sufficient matter for a true expression of the sacred? Has the twentieth century, and now the twenty-first, provided a musical language with which the tradition can again be spoken? Or would not modern harmony, with its dissonance and atonality, compromise the sacred to an unrecognizable degree? Unfortunately, many answer this last question with a simple “yes.” This is the nature of the tension that composers know all too well.

For the past twenty years I have been a lover of sacred music, both its history and contemporary trends, and I have grown accustomed to this tension. I confess that, for much of my life I would have, like the many mentioned above, simply denied that the modern aesthetic could ever express the transcendence which is the hallmark of sacred music. As easy as it may be to succumb to this doubt given the pervasive banality of so much contemporary music, every so often a composer emerges who provides the needed exception to this presumed distrust, a composer who fully embraces contemporary forms of structure and harmony and yet still remains rooted in the sacred tradition. The composer Frank La Rocca has again provided this welcomed exception and the album In This Place is proof that an artist fully immersed in twentieth-century music can again speak the language of the sacred musical tradition to contemporary ears in a way that is understandable and attractive.

The album In This Place is unquestionably a work born from Catholic Christian spirituality with six of the eight compositions as settings of biblical or liturgical texts. From the opening, O Magnum Mysterium, a setting of the responsorial chant of Matins of Christmas, to the closing Credo, a setting of the Latin text of the Nicene Creed, the album is an explicit expression, in music, of the faith of the historic Christian Church. There is Expectavi Dominum with text from Psalm 40, Miserere with text of King David’s great prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, the Pentecost Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the famous prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas, O Sacrum Convivium. In addition to these vocal works, there is a piano work entitled Meditation, and an instrumental chamber work, In This Place, from which the album gets its name.

The entire album is a kaleidoscope of colors, textures, and moods where, like the psalms and liturgical prayers themselves, the full spectrum of human emotion is embraced and felt. La Rocca is undoubtedly adept at composing with the dissonance and set-harmony of twentieth-century music fully playing with all its qualities, and yet the album touches tonal harmony at every turn. As one listens from start to finish, the composer takes the listener on a journey through both the traditional narrative-like tension/release of tonal harmony and the persistent chromatics of the modern era. In a sense, La Rocca pulls the best from both worlds and weaves them together into his own distinctive voice. While the influence of Renaissance composers like Orlande de Lassus and William Byrd may be heard, particularly in the choral works, the influence of twentieth-century composers is evident. One can hear the harmonic sharpness and rhythmic agility of Stravinsky as well as the mystical naturalism of Mahler. Far from being a patch-like jumble of the old and the new, it is an authentic blending in the truest sense of the word. Any lover of twentieth-century music will find in La Rocca a composer who fully understands his taste. Nonetheless, through these works, the lover of traditional sacred music will also hear, echoing as from the past into the present, a true icon of holy transcendence once again instantiated in the present.

The blending of old and new elements is best seen in La Rocca’s use of old church modes. Traditional modal harmony is present in much of the album yet the composer never compromises its contemporary feel. For example, Veni Sancte Spiritus, for soprano voice and chamber ensemble, is composed in the Aeolian mode. The piece remains rooted in the church mode from beginning to end and yet, by exploring the range of intervals imbedded therein, La Rocca is able to extract gradations of dissonance and consonance that one would not expect. In modern fashion, the composition is held together by an angular motif, a succession of open ascending intervals that is heard from both voice and instrument. While a calm melancholic feel pervades, there is also expressed a subtle note of hope and expectancy so appropriate for the text of the Veni Sancte Spiritus which begins, “Come, Holy Spirit, and from your celestial home radiate divine light.”

Similarly, the title track of the album, In This Place is also composed in the Aeolian mode. The composition, a solely instrumental work, is passionately mournful with an interplay between reed and string that is eerily prayer-like. La Rocca creates this mood, not only through harmonic dissonance, but also through taking advantage of the biting tambour of string and reed. There is a deep introspective element to the work reminiscent of the art songs of Mahler.

The Credo is, as one might expect, most reflective of traditional forms. The influence of Gregorian chant can be heard in the opening phrase yet the music quickly expands to the use of counterpoint indicative of Renaissance polyphony. It is an experiment in the balance and contrast that may be achieved when music suitable for liturgy is combined with more modern concert forms. The settings of the psalms, Expectavi Dominum and Miserere, likewise harken back to an earlier polyphonic style but utilize modern harmonic colors to punctuate the biblical text. For example, Expectavi Dominum, the text of Psalm 40 which begins “I waited patiently for the Lord,” highlights the ache of this waiting by opening with the unconventional dissonance of a minor second. Miserere is, like the text of Psalm 51 itself, a musical journey from the bitterness of contrition, through the pain of repentance, and finally to the tranquility that accompanies faith in the Lord’s mercy. The music first expresses, through minor modes and dissonance, the sadness and gravity of King David’s confrontation with the horror of his own sin. But then as the text “cor mundum crea in me, Deus” is sung (create in me a clean heart O God), the music transforms into a joyful, restful praise of God. Following the biblical text, the music begins with mourning and anguish but ends in a musical Sabbath-rest.

A particularly noteworthy piece is the sixth track on the album, O Sacrum Convivium. This is a setting of the prayer composed by St. Thomas Aquinas in praise of the Holy Eucharist and, like the rest of the album, it is a hauntingly beautiful blend of classic and contemporary elements. The work most reveals the influence that English Renaissance polyphony, particularly that of William Byrd, has had on La Rocca’s choral style. Of all the compositions, it contains the most triadic harmony and best represents traditional polyphonic structure. A classical yet unexpected opening occurs when the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano each respectively state the opening melody in ascending sequence. However, these ascending statements are not removed by a perfect fifth as one would traditionally expect, rather, they are each removed by a perfect fourth giving the opening a suspended and otherworldly feel most fitting for the text of the prayer. The polyphonic chant is interrupted by a recurring motif, arresting of the attention with its dense chromatic clusters, that emphasizes the theologically rich texts “in quo Christus sumitur” (in which Christ is received) and “mens impletur gratia” (the mind is filled with grace).

The album as a whole is a courageous blend of styles and genres that is atypical for the fractioned world of modern music. Thus, it bears a confidence that is only born of years of artistic maturity. The sheer variety of the album pays testament to the diversity of influences that have shaped the composer’s ear and, what is more, pays greater testament to a composer who has himself wrestled with the interplay between these influences and has emerged from the battle. All lovers of sacred music wearied by the divide between the traditional and modern aesthetic will find happy repose in the album In This Place. Its varied collection hints that La Rocca has gone before us through this divide and is now giving to others the fruits of his own musical and spiritual journey.

Indeed, modern harmony should not be feared as a threat to sacred beauty. In This Place is proof of this. For sacred beauty, like God Himself, is timeless; no age can claim Him as its own. Beauty, wherever it is found, may be used as an icon of God’s holy presence, and the composer Frank La Rocca has again given the world a fresh example of this truth. The album In This Place, far from being a mere restatement of the old, is a new instantiation of the tradition of sacred music in our own time. Far from re-creating the past, La Rocca speaks the tradition with his own musical voice. I encourage all lovers of music to invest time in listening to his work. It is time well spent.

Philosophy and the School of Chartres, by Carrie Gress Ph.D

Here is an interesting nugget of a post by Carrie Gress from blog.pontifex.university. In it she contrasts a traditional approach to philosophy, as would have been taught at the School of Chartres, with the typical modern approach. The example she gives of the discussion in a contemporary philosophy class emphasizes how philosophy - the love of wisdom - has become too focussed on analytical thinking, which looks at details, and neglects synthetic thinking. Synthetic thinking is that which allows us to take a step back, so to speak, and create a synthesis by placing the detail in the context of the whole. This is precisely what a traditional formation in beauty - which included the seven liberal arts that Carrie mentions - trains the person to do naturally. Knowledge only becomes wisdom when we can understand how any information relates to the bigger picture, which in the final synthesis (as distinct from the final analysis!) is our human purpose. Carrie is a philosopher, author (and mom) . I encourage you to check out her personal site carriegress.com

Carrie writes:

I’ve just started doing some research on Chartres Cathedral and ran across this quotation from 11th century Thierry of Chartres. In his work, the Heptateuchon, Thierry says, “Philosophy has two principal instruments, the mind and its expression. The mind is enlightened by the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), its expression, elegant, reasonable, ornate is provide by the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric and dialectic).” These seven liberal arts and the artists who most exemplify them are featured on the Royal Portal of Chartres Cathedral. (Geometry: Euclid, Rhetoric: Cicero, Dialectic: Aristotle, Arithmetic: Boethius, Astronomy: Ptolemy, Grammar: either Donatus or Priscian)

What is striking about this is:

A) How foreign the notions of the Quadrivium and Trivium seem to us today. What does astronomy have to do with philosophy?

B) How technical and abstract philosophy has become. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, has only a few academic corners where it can actually call itself that. In most university settings, philosophers resort to very precise language and techniques that strike most on the outside as, at best, impenetrable, and at worst, nonsensical.

The one semester I spent doing doctoral studies at a well-known university drove this home to me. The methods of logic have overtaken the field in strangely anachronistic and confounding ways. For a course on Plato, a general assignment would be to read five paragraphs from a given text and then evaluate the argument as logical or illogical, while the rest of the text was of no consequence. When I suggested that one paragraph was made clearer by understanding what Plato said in another book, my comment was met with glazed eyes and a quick changing of subject. Such elements were simply irrelevant.The imposition of twentieth-century techniques upon an ancient text was really what we were after.

Thinking of Thierry of Chartres, few philosophers today give much if any consideration to the elegant, ornate, reasonable expressions available to their trade. For all the efforts to understand the logic of great thinkers, philosophers in the trade have left entire generations of philosophy students empty-headed about great works. Ironically, because philosophy has become so off-putting in content, it has also left students bereft of its modern raison d’etre, the use of logic.

The west portal, above, has the Seat of Wisdom on - sedes sapeinta - on the right. It  is Our Lady seated with Our Lord on her lap. The personifications of the liberal arts are in the pointed arch above them.

And here are some more photos of Chartres!

Fr Michael Morris OP, RIP

It was with sadness that I learned of the death on Saturday of Fr Michael Morris OP after an illness. For many years he has been a great advocate for beauty in sacred art and the culture, who could talk about anything from traditional Christian iconography to Hollywood movie posters. Many will know of his writing through his monthly art reviews in the Magnificat magazine.

I met him first in 2001 when I turned up at his office in Berkeley, California, looking for help and advice about transforming Catholic culture. I was a complete unkown who had read John Paul II's Letter to Artists and had set off for America armed with a few poorly formed ideas and plenty of passion, but very little else. He was kind enough to take the time to listen to this odd stranger hammering on his door out of the blue, and offered encouragement and wise advice. He was also very amusing.

We had been in touch ever since and I saw him only 10 days ago. Although obviously suffering, he still just wanted to talk about art and a course he was planning to teach for the DSPT, the Dominican School in Berkeley next year; and to introduce me to an artist friend of his. The program at the GTU in Berkeley, Religion and the Arts, which he devoted so much time to is known internationally.

He will be missed by many.

Why Do So Many Choir Directors Have “Van Gogh’s Ear for Music”?

The choice of music at Mass matters to me. It was hearing polyphony and chant done well that contributed to my conversion. It was hearing practically every other style of music in church that contributed to my not becoming a Christian until I did.

I grew up hearing Methodist hymns in church, and today I can’t bear to sing them or any other “traditional” 19th century-style hymn, even if the words are written by Fr Faber. I hate Christmas carols and find them sentimental. I had grown tired of Silent Night and Ding Dong Merrily on High before I was 10 years old, and today always refuse to go caroling in the neighborhood on the grounds that I don’t want to chase any more people away from the Church.

I find the attempts to be musically current in church even more repellent. Whether it’s the Woodstock-throwback-with-added-sugar of the standard pew missalet, candied Cat Stevens presented by a cantor in a faux operatic or broadway-musical style, or the more recent equivalents, imitations of the pop music of the moment to “get the young people in,” it’s all the same to me. If ever there was an award that labels a musical artist as a legend in his own lunchtime, it’s “Christian album of the year.” Attempts at being Christian and cutting edge always seem outdated five minutes after they were composed, and most weren’t that great for the four minutes they were relevant.

Whenever I am in church and expected to sing along to such inventions, I shift uneasily and look down at the ground, hoping nobody notices I’m not joining in. (That’s assuming I can hit the pitch, which is usually too high for most men anyway.) It is an attempt to appeal to young people that feels to me like an imitation of the foolish parent who tries to hard to be liked by his adolescent children by adopting inappropriate teenage fashions; he inevitably misses the mark, and loses self respect and the respect of the younger generation in the process. To my mind, there’s nothing more embarrassing than a grown-up trying to be hip and groovy when the words “hip” and “groovy” haven’t been hip and groovy for a long, long time. I thought that when I was 13-year-old atheist and I still think it today.

And I’m not just talking about the music for the Novus Ordo or the Masses in the vernacular. I am amazed at how often I struggle at the choice of hymns and the sentimental Masses from the 19th or early 20th century that some choir masters seem manage to dig up when given the freedom to choose music for the Extraordinary Form. Where do they get them from?

All of this music drives me to distraction; and before I heard chant and polyphony and found out there was something different, it drove me to atheism too.

Am I am unusually narrow minded and intolerant in regard to music? Well, in the context of the liturgy. I am very likely spoiled by having had the benefits of the choirs of the London Oratory and Westminster Cathedral, or occasionally Anglican chant at Choral Evensong at one of the great Anglican cathedrals in England.

But I should point out that as long as I can remember, and long before I converted, my gut reaction told me that contemporary styles of Christian music were just the epitomy of “naffness,” to use the English colloquialism. Even when I was a schoolboy in Birkenhead, the bad musical taste of Christians gave me plenty of ammunition for deriding them for trying to be trendy when they “didn’t have a clue.”

Furthermore, I don’t think I am overly traditional or reactionary about music in other contexts. I don’t believe that it all went downhill after Bach, for example, or with Wagner (the Siegfried Idyll is one of my favourite pieces). I enjoy operas, swing, jazz, and pop music. I play Appalachian Old Time on my banjo (very badly, and if you’re interested, my favorite Old Time tune is called Waiting for Nancy.) I sing the pop songs from my past when I’m driving and think nobody is listening - Stephen Bishop’s sentimental love songs, Rory Gallagher’s Wayward Child, Betty Boo’s Where Are You Baby or Stereo MCs’ Connected. (I lost touch with the pop world after 1992).

But I have never thought that any of this was music for the liturgy.

For a long time after my conversion, if I couldn’t get to the Oratory, I would seek out a spoken, low Mass. If I visited a church for the first time, I picked an early morning Mass in the hope that the parish didn’t have the resources to put on any music that early. But even then I found that it’s not unusual for the 7:30 am to have a troop of local schoolchildren doing a hand-bell version of Immaculate Mary for the Offertory. I don’t think I am alone in this.

Although the others in attendance will probably not have exactly my taste in music, there will be many who are as strong in their likes and dislikes as I am, and will most probably dislike the music at Mass as much as me.

I would maintain that it is the music at Masses that has contributed as much to the the drop off in the numbers attending as any other factor. Putting aside those who attend the rare parishes that offer predominantly chant and classic polyphony, for the most part the only people left in the pews of most churches are the tone deaf, those who have sufficient faith to offer up the pain of listening to music they hate, or the very small number of people who actually like what they hear.

Whenever I bring this up with priests, their concern is for those who currently go to Mass. The priest will tell me that for “pastoral” reasons, he has to be careful about changing things, as he doesn’t want to offend people and drive them away. This is an understandable reaction, but my thought when I hear this is that for every person who is enjoying the music in Mass, there are a ninety-nine more who don’t like it, and most of these 99 people don’t come to church at all, and won’t as long as the music stays as it is. I always want to ask the question: when are we going to start being pastoral to the 99% outside the church and stop pandering to the 1% (if I can borrow a slogan from elsewhere!)

But even if there is a desire to create attractive music? What music should we choose?

Perhaps we could just cut out all modern forms and stick exclusively to chant and polyphony? Unlike all the other styles mentioned above, we can say objectively, regardless of personal taste, that according to the tradition of the Church these styles are appropriate for the liturgy.

I think therefore a switch to chant and polyphony across parishes would help and attendance at Mass would increase a little bit, after an initial drop. Some people will respond to it immediately, and others will grow to like it. But I don’t think this measure alone would be enough. Not everyone will persist in developing that taste unless there is other music that can be accessible to them, and lead them into an appreciation of the canon of great works.

This has been pointed out by popes in the past. While asserting the centrality of chant and polyphony, Popes such as Pius X and Pius XII have also acknowledged the need for new compositions in the liturgy. For example in Mediator Dei, Pius XII wrote:

'It cannot be said that modem music and singing should be entirely excluded from Catholic worship. For, if they are not profane nor unbecoming to the sacredness of the place and function, and do not spring from a desire of achieving extraordinary and unusual effects, then our churches must admit them since they can contribute in no small way to the splendor of the sacred ceremonies, can lift the mind to higher things and foster true devotion of soul.'

The necessity of accessible contemporary forms as well as the canon of traditional works is the message of Benedict XVI’s book, A New Song for the Lord; Faith and Christ and Liturgy Today. And he places the responsibility for making it happen on the artist or composer, telling us that it is the mark of true creativity that an artist or composer can “break out of the esoteric circle” – i.e., the circle of their friends at dinner parties – and connect with “the many.”

This grave responsibility is one that thus far, it seems to me, the vast majority of Christian artists in almost every creative discipline have not been able to take on. That is not to say, however, that the task facing creative artists today is easy. Indeed, it may be so hard than it needs an inspired genius in any particular field to show us the way before it can happen.

One thing is clear to me: we need a fresh approach. And contrary to what many seem to think, most music in churches today is not broadly popular. It is strongly disliked.

Dr Peter Kwasniewski recently wrote a very good piece for the blog OnePeterFive, highlighting the difficulties in adapting modern forms of Western music to music appropriate to the liturgy. He and I both think that what has been done in the last 50 years particularly has been largely disastrous. He doubted that it could ever be done because of the special nature of modern culture. I agree that it is difficult, but for all that the style of modern music speaks of the secular world, I am a little more optimistic than him. The task is difficult certainly, but I hold out hope and argue that just because it has been done badly up until now, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done well in the future.

Here is one particular difficulty that composers are going to have to overcome if they are to engage with modern culture successfully (and prove me right!). This arises from the fragmented nature of modern culture.

Contrary to what I have heard many say, I don’t believe the general population today is musically ignorant and uncultured. Modern society is highly musical and has sophisticated taste. More people enjoy music and have access to a greater range of styles from all periods than ever before, and they are choosing what appeals most. Most people are not ignorant, for example, of what classical music is, even if they have only heard it in a film score. The problem is that this sophistication is one that fragments rather than unifies. People today know what they like and dislike, and they are sensitive to even subtle changes in style, and will react strongly to them. Within any genre, there are myriad sub-genres that are discernible to devotees and who discriminate between them. And even within the same sub-genre, people will strongly favor one artist, but react strongly against another; hence the cliché that those who like the Beatles hate the Stones. (I am a Beatles person, by the way). This sophisticated level of discrimination exists in every genre of popular music up to the present day. Furthermore, the scene changes rapidly. What was popular with teenagers a few months ago is now forgotten. And at any moment, what is popular with teenagers is not liked generally by the rest of the population.

As a result, there is no form of secular music that I know of, classical or contemporary, that currently exists and will appeal to all people. This is why choir directors should not blamed so much for introducing music that is so disliked. Given the compositions available to them, it is almost inevitable that their choices will be disliked by most people. (Where criticism is fair, I think, is where the choice of these modern forms supplants, rather sits alongside, traditional chant and polyphony.)

So, although virtually nobody will share my tastes in music, there will be very many people, I suggest, who are like me in having a strong sense of what they like and dislike, and because they are used to being able to choose the music they listen to, very little tolerance for what they don’t like, however unrefined that taste may seem to others. This is why, as one newly appointed choir director described to me, a parishioner approached him and told him that he was worried that the music at the church would change because he was “very traditional.” “Oh, that’s good,” said the choir director, “I’m pretty traditional too.” “I’m so glad,” said the parishioner, with obvious relief, “so we’ll still have the music we’ve always had, especially my favorite traditional tune, On Eagles Wings.”

So we can see why, in my opinion, any musical form composed for the liturgy that is obviously derived from any contemporary music style or past style that has not transcended its own time (and I would put all the commonly sung hymns into this category) will almost certainly be disliked by the majority.

Therefore, we need a fresh approach. This, I suggest, will be radically different from the superficial analysis that has produced “contemporary” Christian music. Musicologists will have to get deeper into the embedded code that unites the forms of modern music together, build on what is good, reject what is bad, and incorporate these into the essential patterns of interrelated harmonies and intervals in a form that also satisfies the essential and universal criteria of liturgical music. If these are played in church alongside chant and polyphony, the appropriateness of such music will become apparent even to many who do not consider themselves music experts. To the degree that a composer is successful, the new compositions will not only connect with people today, but will transcend their own time, with the best examples being added to cannon of great works.

If I am wrong, and however penetratingly we search for it, this common code of modernity that is essentially good does not exist, then Peter is right! There is a reason for my optimism, however, for I do see some modern compositions that do seem to me to be accessible to more people, and which are appropriate for the liturgy.

Some of the very best of these examples (although not all by all means) seem to occur in works composed for the vernacular. It seems that seeking the principles that connect music to language at the most basic level, forces composers into that territory where they are beginning, at least, to access a common code for the culture, which today springs from the vernacular. Those that do so in such a way that they respect also what is essential to chant and polyphony, create the beginnings of this crossover music. I have noticed also that modern composers look with some success to Anglican and Eastern forms of chant for inspiration. The result is successful when it seems both of our time, and of all time. Some of the people who come to mind immediately who are doing this are Adam Bartlett, with his material available through Illuminare Publications, Fr Dawid Kusz OP at the Dominican Liturgical Center in Krakow (who composes for the Polish language), Paul Jernberg, Roman Hurko, Adam Wood, Frank LaRocca and our own Peter K. There are more I am sure. What is interesting to me is that the successes in the vernacular can then feed back into composition for Latin. Paul Jernberg composed his Mass of St Philip Neri for the English Novus Ordo. It was so admired by one patron that he commissioned Paul to write a setting for Ecce Panis Angelorum and he has also composed for the Latin Ordinary - appropriate of course for both OF and EF.

I do not know for certain if all, or indeed any of these composers are the trailblazers to whom the future will look back, as we today look back to Palestrina. Only time will tell. But I do feel sure that theirs is the type of approach that we should be aiming for, and is the one that will succeed in the end.

La Vierge Noir - the Power of French Medieval Art and Architecture, by Keri Wiederspahn

Here for the first time is a piece by iconographer, Keri Wiederspahn. She will be doing a series of posts about her faith and her work as an icon painter and influences on both. She is on the faculty of Pontifex University, which will offer courses in the Fall. We haven't featured France much on the Way of Beauty to date (perhaps its a reflection of my being English, I don't know), but this certainly helps to redress the balance. Thank you Keri! Here it is:

Beauty leads the way to inspire wonder and holds the key to mystery and a call to transcendence. 

By Keri Wiederspahn

Several decades ago, as an unchurched 15-year old drawn to art and already identifying myself as an aspiring artist, I was blessed with a transformative encounter on a trip to the ancient cliff-side village of Rocamadour in the South of France not far from where my parents and I were spending the year on my father's sabbatical in the Dordogne Valley.

Medieval discoveries were now expected daily in our lives in this new land, but this pilgrim experience became something altogether different -- my first encounter with the infinite beauty and love of God received through a sacred aesthetic experience.   A true source of theology was manifest in this place of tangible space, color and sculpted form, celebrating the joy and mystery of salvation while revealing an unexpected door of mercy that initiated my early hunger and thirst for God.

With flights of steps worn smooth from the centuries of pilgrimage by kings, bishops, nobles and common folk, various legends and fact intermingle surrounding Rocamadour through St. Amadour who is said to have built the cliff-side chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin, attributed to also having carved the simple Black Madonna known for its miraculous happenings.

The sense of the Other is profound in this place, rich with the gift of Divine inspiration.

The carved Black Madonna remains cloistered in its chapel to this day, and it was from within the centuries-old resonance of prayer that Christ somehow became real to me for the first time through this most simple presentation of Christ through his Mother.

It turns out that many conversions happened in this humble chapel -- composer Francis Poulenc was one of them, a great talent influenced and mentored by Eric Satie, who after spending extended time in the chapel, dedicated the remainder of his life to spiritual themes in his work, beginning with his Litanies à la Vierge Noire. I did not convert immediately, but the memory of my visit to this place has always been with me and was profoundly influential on my being received into the Church in my mid twenties.

Being an artist and a Catholic convert who has been pursuing traditional Byzantine iconography now for close to a decade, there is life-giving purpose to gaze at the origins of imagery and influence that pave the way towards diving deeper into one's artistic practice. Currently, I'm poised to begin a large icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, and recognize the moments that remain constant in the flow of beauty that continue to give back and illumine.

Pope Francis shares: "Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the 'way of beauty' (via pulchritudinis). Every expression of true beauty can be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. (Beauty is) a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it...so a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be a part of our effort to pass on the faith."

Listen to Francis Poulenc's Litany for the Black Madonna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xu6PuqUJfw

Litanies à la Vierge Noire, Francis Poulenc translation:

Lord, have pity on us.

Jesus Christ, have pity on us.

Jesus Christ, hear us.

Jesus Christ, grant our prayers.

God the Father, creator, have pity on us.

God the Son, redeemer, have pity on us.

God the Holy Spirit, sanctifier, have pity on us.

Holy Virgin Mary, pray for us.

Virgin, queen and patron, pray for us.

Virgin, whom Zacchaeus the tax-collector made us know and love,

Virgin, to whom Zacchaeus or Saint Amadour raised this sanctuary,

Pray for us, pray for us.

Queen of the sanctuary, which Saint Martial consecrated,

and where he celebrated his holy mysteries,

Queen, before whom knelt Saint Louis

Asking of you good fortune for France,

Pray for us, pray for us.

Queen, to whom Roland consecrated his sword, pray for us.

Queen, whose banner won the battles, pray for us.

Queen, whose hand delivered the captives, pray for us.

Our Lady, whose pilgrimage is enriched by special favors,

Our Lady, whom impiety and hate have often wished to destroy,

Our Lady, whom the peoples visit as of old,

Pray for us, pray for us.

May we continue to strengthen our lives through the gifts of beauty

past and present to bear light to Christ, the source of our joy,

beholding and leading us further along the via pulchritudinis.

A Walk Near Martinez, California

Here are some photos of a walk I did recently in the hills overlooking the town of Martinez in the San Francisco Bay area of California. As you can see, pasture land that was green and lush a couple of months ago is now brown, and only the oak trees remain verdent, standing proud in the landscape as the send their roots deep into the soil in search of water. I have been visiting this part of the world for many years now (my brother lives in the area) and when I first visited it was at this time of the year and I found the landscape to dry and dusty to seem beautiful - I was used to the English countryside which is green just about all year round. Somehow just to look at what seems an almost dead landscape made me feel thirsty. However after many visits I have now seen this landscape at other times of the year and I realised that in the winter, which is the rainy season, this area looks as green as England. Interestingly, I found that this knowledge of how it changes through the year changed my appreciation of the landscape even in the dry season. It was as though my memory of how lush it could be was always part of my impression. So it now seemed akin to the pleasure of seeing the yellowing and browning of trees in autumn - when you know that this is just temporary and that as part of cycle of seasons there will be a rebirth later in the year, it no longer seems desolate and inhospitable now.

The town of Martinez itself, incidentally, is on the south shore of the Carquinez Strait in the San Francisco Bay. The area to north of this is inlet contains the Napa Valley, famous for its vinyards. I like the views of the town below, which has an oil refinery and is visited by tankers. If you watch the boat traffic, you can see these tankers and tug boats motoring through the straight. They make a majestic sight.

But before we had the pleasure of the view, we had to put in the work and walk up the hillside firstly through the trees and then up the bare hillside in the sunshine.

This is farmland with public access. There is alwas the risk of running into cows - this cowshed gave met a clue...

And then I turned the corner and saw them taking a drink at the pond...

There is an old road that goes West from Martinez that is now closed to traffic and has become a scenic walk. I started and finished the walk on this drive in a little village called Port Costa. This is a tiny village on the coast with a couple of cafes and old, Victorian buildings. It is a charming quiet little town. There is one aspect of this which is undeveloped and that is the coastline. One would have thought that the most attractive thing about this town was its situation right on the coast, and that the town would have taken advantage of this. If we have been in Devon in England, for example, the whole layout would have been created so as to preserve the view out to see first, and then work backwards from there. In common with many American towns, I have found, they don't seem to do it. There is a dusty parking lot on the coast and the strip of land between that and the water is hidden by tall, uncared for scrub. Nevertheless it was still a pleasure to have a glass of lemonade here after my walk!

Why the Live-Aid Industry is Perpetuating Western Imperialism and Keeping Africans Poor

The methods of the poverty aid industry reflect their prejudices against faith in God, freedom and entrepreneurship - the very things that have created the wealth of the West. The effects of this hypocrisy is catastrophic both culturally and economically for the poor countries of the world.

I have just returned from the Acton Institute annual conference, called Acton University. The Acton Institute exists to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

It is easy to believe that groups that convene to discuss  free markets and business are all well-to-do business people talking about how to make lots of money. This couldn't be further from the truth at Acton. The focus is almost exclusively on how to help the poor and how to promote a society in which all people flourish and all ways. There were many talks on the promotion of a culture of beauty for the good of the souls of all, for example. These are things that are effect rich and poor alike and are vitally important.

What struck me this year is not just that Acton not only offers a solution to poverty and human flourishing around the world; but that it might well offer the only way. This is a solution that trusts in the abilities of all people to solve their own problems if they have the environment in which they can flourish.

The opening address by Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade who was urging people to stop giving money to NGOs and charities that channel fund to the developing world. They are (usually) well intentioned, but their effect on the developing world is to make the problem worse. Magatte was scathing, also about the influence of celebrity philanthropists who parachute into a situation, have the photo shoot with smiling children and then disappear. The effect is damaging to the culture because the paternalism that drives it tends to tell the people themselves that they can't create wealth themselves and need handouts from the West.

The evidence on the hopelessness of the West in their paternalistic approaches to fighting poverty in the last 50 years is overwhelming. Haiti, for example, has about the lowest standard of living in the world, and yet it has more NGOs  (and I'm guessing, more high profile celebrity visits from nearby USA) per head of population than any other country in world.

The evidence is that what people need is personal freedom and the environment to create business. In additions there needs to be a legal framework that helps rather than hinders this entrepreneurial spirit where it exists. This means, on the whole, governments and government organizations should cease trying to impose answers on the poor, rather they should try to encourage the environment in which the people themselves create the wealth.

If there is one thing that can be done in these countries, Magatte, told us, it is to help change the legal environments so that it is easier to do business. Education about this is part of it. There is an index listed by the World Bank called Ease of Doing Business. This index does not give the whole story.   What this rating does not reveal are the intangible aspects of a society that will drive the entrepreneurial spirit most powerfully, faith and freedom. What it does tell us is that if the necessary aspects of a society are present then the legal framework in that country will not stifle development.    Nevertheless, it is revealing I think to look at the correlation between ease of doing business and poverty in any particular country.

Magatte was quick to point out that the businesses she wants to see are those that Westerners want to see - any that offer  real jobs, including global businesses not just 'micro-invesments'. All these specialist types of investment and business models come out of the development industry too. It's not so much that they are bad things in themselves, but they are pushed largely because they are seen as forms of entrepreneurial activity that do not offend the prejudices of the development workers who on the whole, to put it simply, as Magatte told us, 'hate business'.  And again, the losers here are the poor themselves who are cut off from the whole range of conventional investment models.

Furthermore, the assumption that where business flourishes, the human spirit is depressed is simply false. The conditions for entrepreneurship are the same as those for overall human flourishing - faith and freedom, the conditions for greatest entrepreneurial activity benefit the whole human person, body and soul! This is not just about money, but when you're poor, it must include money.

The cultural and economic effect of the current aid model is to perpetuate the values of the aid workers, which are characteristic of the West, and to keep the West richer relative to those those countries in which they operate. It is another form of Western imperialism.

At the same conference was screening of  a film produced by Acton, Poverty, Inc. which is now on wide release (and is just available on Netflix). Magatte appears in this film. This film, which has won many awards and has been praised by many from both the political left and the political right, supports Magatte's account. I would recommend all to watch it.

Why the Mainstream Media Hide the Real Reasons for Poverty and Unrest in Venezuala

The plight of this country has little to with drop in oil prices and more to do with chronic economic mismanagement by a corrupt socialist government. If ever a country provides a case of the evils, and I mean evils, of socialism it is Venezuela.  A mere 30 years after the collapse of Soviet Russian we see centralized government actions done in the name of the people which have lead to the suffering of millions.There are food shortages, violence, unrest, and roaming government inspired vigilantes terrorizing the population into submission.

And, what, you might ask has this got to do with a blog called the Way of Beauty? The answer is that it was first the decline in the culture of faith that allowed the socialists to gain power in the first place. Venezuela shows that beauty and faith are things that matter for these are the values that bind a society together stably and for the greater flourishing of all people. I will come to this later in this article.

What was once a flourishing democracy collapsed into poverty and anarchy within 15 years because the introduction of socialist policies. Yet this is a story that is barely covered in the news and the reason is that it doesn't correspond to the narrative of those who run the media outlets. If Venezuela gets a mention at all in the large media outlets, for example on the BBC website, then the country's problems are attributed to the drop in oil prices. This is a complete misrepresentation and it is a terrible glossing over of the real cause of the problems, which were present before the oil price dropped. They can be attributed to what can only be described as brain-dead economic policies that began with the dictator Chavez and which his successor Maduro only made worse. Guided by Cuban advisors, they have succeeded in bring the country to its knees faster even than Cuba managed it themselves and starting from a position of much higher prosperity. Chavez, was always viewed positively by the media in Britain and it seems that they can't bring themselves to admit now how wrong they were.

I was reminded of this recently when I attended the Action Institute annual conference, Acton University, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. They are concerned for the poor and oppressed and

In his address to those present, Kris Mauren, one of the co-founders of the Acton Institute, gave special mention to the plight of Venezuela today and said just this. Acton is one of the few organizations that is prepared to talk about this and they understand. There were several Venezuelans present at the conference and I spoke to them about this and they recognized with gratitude that here was one place that understood the problems their country was going through.

I told them also of my concern and prayers for their country (I pray to Our Lady of Coromoto, the patroness everyday). I wished I could do more. I sent them a link to an article I had written about Venezuela. The articles is here: How A Loss of Faith Can Lead to the Reduction of Freedom and Economic Properity. This explains how important the culture of faith and beauty is in maintaining a stable society in which the human person can flourish, and how when this is undermined, there can be terrible consequences.

It was revealing to hear the Venezuelans present at Acton describe with such sadness the terrible situation in their country and how its plight seems to be ignored by the rest of the world for largely ideological reasons. Here is the letter I received from one of these Venezuelan attendees after the conference - I have removed all personal details to protect him. The greater sadness is that since I wrote this article, 18 months ago, the situation has only got worse:

Dear David,

Thank you for keeping in touch after we met in Acton University. I read your articles and found them spot-on and inspiring. For us it’s important that other people around the world share our situation. There is no doubt that inequality/poverty is a fertile ground for these populist regimes to arise, this can happen in any developing country. However I never thought it could happen to Venezuela!!! Now we are in the middle of a struggle to get rid of this corrupt government.

Our president and others around him thinks (or makes people think) they are catholic but in reality they are fascist, evil people that don’t care about the suffering of the poor, only about remaining in power. You mention this in your article and it is really true. You also mention that Venezuelans are very family oriented which is also true. So many of my friends and co-workers have decided to leave the country looking for a better future; I don’t want to but I keep asking myself if that is the best way to secure a prosperous future for me and my family.

I’ll keep checking your blog from time to time to stay in touch and if you need any information or if you come to Venezuela (not really a good idea now…) let me know.

Take care,

[Name removed]

As requested by this man, I am posting this to promote their cause. Other than that I can only close with my daily call to the patroness of Venezuela, Our Lady of Coromoto, and I ask you to pray also to Our Lady for the people of Venezuela and all the poor throughout the world.

Modern Russian Iconographers Who Break the Rules but Conform to the Principles

Thanks to Gina Switzer (an artist whose decorated Easter candles have been featured on the NLM to great interest) for drawing my attention to this write-up in the Orthodox Arts Journal of an exhibition that took place in Moscow earlier this year, a presentation of contemporary Russian icon painters.

What is interesting is the variety of styles on dsiplay that nevertheless all sit within bounds of what could legitimately be considered a holy icon. Many incorporate stylistic features that might not have been seen in the icons of Rublev in the 15th century. I would characterize what they are doing in the following way: the artist may be breaking past rules, but they never contravene the timeless principles that define the tradition. In the way I am using these words, a “rule” is precise and unbending, the particular application of a “principle” suited to a particular time and place. For example, a rule would be “only use gold for the background in an icon,” which is what I was told when I first started to learn iconography. The underlying principle, on the other hand, is flexible, and is applied in different ways according the needs of the time and place. The principle behind the use of gold for backgrounds is that the background must seem flat and not create the illusion of space, in order to suggest the heavenly realm which is outside time and space. If you look at such icons, you see a variety of background colors and even geometric patterned art, something I was told in my first icon classes should never be seen in an icon! However, they can all be used to suggest flatness, and therefore work well in conforming to the underlying principle.

Similarly, when I first learned icon painting I was told that I had to start with a dark background, and then build the form by putting successive layers of lighter toned paint on top; there was even a theological argument used to justify this. Then it was discovered that ancient iconographers used a method whereby a monochrome underpainting was laid down first, and then both light and dark transparent layers washes of paint were put over it. Because the end result - what the final icon actually looks like - was the most important principle, my icon-painting teacher immediately adopted this quicker and easier method of building form.

This flexibility is the sign of a vibrant living tradition, one in which individual expression is allowed, but always in conformity to the principles that define it. As a result, the tradition reinvents itself with each new generation and so is able to connect with the people of its day. No tradition can rely exclusively on its canon of past works to maintain its relevance; it must always create anew, or else it will die.

This is what Benedict XVI calls for in his analysis of culture in his book, Sing a New Song, in which he explains that it is the responsibility of the artist to connect with people beyond the esoteric circle of the artists and academics who “understand” the tradition. In Benedict’s phrase, he must connect with “the many.” Furthermore, he says that it is “the mark of true creativity” that the artist is able to do this. In other words, the responsibility of the artist is to be popular by creating good and beautiful works of art.

Art that is popular isn’t necessarily good, but the very best art will be popular. If the most popular aspects of mass culture today are not edifying and uplifting, then it is the responsibility of Christian artists to produce work that is and which, importantly, connects with modern people. If the artists fail to do so, the fault lies not with the audience, but with the artists for failing to create something that is beautiful enough to command a decent price. This simple test of quality is often seen as too harsh, and I find that there is resistance to it from practicing artists, especially those whose work doesn’t sell.

It is to the credit to those who in the mid-20th century reestablished the iconographic tradition in its modern form, that they laid down the foundational principle that allowed for the right sort of flexibility, and so created a living tradition. These people were Russian ex-pats living in France in the mid-20th century, most notably Vladimir Lossky and Leonid Ouspensky. Lossky was a theologian, Ouspensky was a practicing artist as well as a deep thinker. A third artist whose work was influential in the same regard was Gregory Kroug.

Oupensky and Lossky had to develop the greater part of these principles themselves. There were no detailed writings about art by the Church Fathers that they could draw on to define the stylistic elements in the way that was necessary to guide artists, and which anyone who has done an icon class will hear from his teacher. They analysed icons that they judged to be good and holy, and developed a theology of form that seemed consistent with what they were looking at. This is what artists needed in order to create work. The principles of this newly established iconographic tradition tell us not so much what artists did in the past, but rather what artists ought to do in the future in order to produce work that bears the mark of the holy icon.

The test of the validity of this is not historical accuracy of the principles as proposed, but rather the quality of the work produced by the artists who follow them, and the resilience of the tradition they established - can it outlast the generation that created it? We simply don’t know if the formulae that Ouspensky and Lossky developed correspond precisely to what Rublev would have been aiming for hundreds of years ago.

I feel that iconography has passed the test. We are now several generations of teachers and students past Ouspensky. The very best of today’s icon painters are producing icons in this style that stand alongside the great works of the past. and moreover, they are engaging with modern people in the place where they are meant to, in the context of the liturgy.

The analysis of these 20th century Russian ex-pats may very well have little credibility in the art history departments of our secular universities, where, I am guessing, it would be dismissed as purely personal speculation. But that doesn’t prevent what they proposed from being good and valid, given the end that they had in mind, namely, the creation of beautiful art that is in harmony with the liturgy.

I have to admit that I do not know how flexible Ouspensky and Lossky were themselves in their presentation of this. I once had some excellent classes from someone who was taught directly by Ouspensky in Paris, and who constantly referred to him. The instructions of how to do it were presented as inviolable laws; there was no room for discussion, and from the way that she described Ouspensky, it seems this is how it was presented to her. Nevertheless, she did explain the reason for the rule in each case. Once we understand why we are doing something - the end towards which the rule is directed - then regardless of how flexible Ouspensky would have been himself, this builds the possibility of changes that can be justified, provided they bring about the same end.

Even if we discover in the future that these principles are at variance with those used centuries ago - perhaps with the discovery of the some set of ancient scrolls - this in no way alters the validity of what has been developed in the 20th century. It simply gives us an alternative set of principles available to the artist who wishes to paint for the Church.

We can look to this pattern for reestablishing artistic traditions in the Western Church too. There are different things we can do. First is to work within the iconographic style and produce styles that connect with those who worship in the Roman Rite. Icon painters such as Aidan Hart have been doing this. Aidan is Orthodox, but he looks for inspiration to the styles of the Church in the West prior to the schism that were consistent with the iconographic prototype, such as the Romanesque. As a result, he is creating a 21st century style of Western iconography that connects with worshipers in the West, who worship in both the Roman and Byzantine Rites. Moreover, he passes the Benedict XVI “creativity test” - his work connects with the many and is in great demand.

The other thing that we can do is apply the Ouspensky/Lossky type of analysis to the other liturgical traditions of the Roman Church, the Gothic and the Baroque. St John Paul II understood this, and for this reason called in his Letter to Artists for a renewed dialogue between the Church and artists. The final section of my book The Way of Beauty is my attempt to do just this. You can judge for yourself the validity of what I propose, but regardless, we need our own Losskys and Ouspenkys in the Roman Church!

I present my favorites from the article - for the credits for the artists go to the Orthodox Art Journal. The one name I will mention here is the painter of the first icon below, Fr Zinon, who is perhaps the most famous icon painter of the present day.

A Book that Explains What the Brexit Referendum Was Really About

How to Be a Conservative by Roger Scruton and the cultural battle for the West. If you are like me and fed up of all the news articles and Facebook posts telling you that your support for Brexit reveals you as racist, jingoistic, selfish, economically illiterate, small minded or just plain stupid, then I have the antidote for you: Roger Scruton's How to Be a Conservative.

In this small book he  offers a brilliantly thought out practical philosophy of moral and compassionate patriotism, that cares deeply about the liberty and floursihing of poor and the rich alike, and sees a culture of beauty as absolutely necessary to transmit and sustain the core principles and values that bind the nation together (and frankly, make life worth living). It is a religion neutral, natural-law case for a just society that is, as far as I can tell, consistent with Catholic social teaching. Scruton is an Englishman and his discussion is mostly in reference to the English situation; however, he admires and visits the US regularly as well and at various points he adapts what he is saying to the American situation.

His is a philosophical argument, that is, one that is argued rationally from the starting point of observations how people are. He is an acute observer of human nature and so his arguments convince by appealing to ordinary to common sense as much as anything else. He tells us first that his conserative instincts came in part from his father, whom he observed growing up in High Wickham in southern post-War England. Jack Scrution, we are told, was a committed socialist who sought the redistribution of wealth, but, as Scruton junior pointed out, ‘we are all conservative about the things we know about’. And what his dad knew about and loved was local history, and especially the beautiful architecture and the area around High Wickham in Buckinghamshire. This love of the local heritage compelled him to campaign for the preservation these beautiful signs and symbols of traditional English culture and way of life.

Now in his seventies (and made a Knight in the Queen’s 90^th birthday honours list!) Sir Roger Scruton still follows his fathers instincts in this regard even though he never shared his political views. He has had a long academic career which began as an undergraduate at Cambridge, but which steadily  saw him become an independent academic as it was obvious that he had no career in the faculties of the universities of England, dominated as they are by a left wing and intolerant intelligentsia.

He does not seem the slightest bit bitter however, his writing exudes a gentle and optimistic outlook and it it is clear that he understands and accepts that no men are perfect, liberal or conservative, believing or nonbelieving.

Scruton does not tells us his personal religious beliefs, for this is philosophy, not theology. Nevertheless, his is a philosophy that sees the necessity of both religion and religious tolerance. Faith is seed ground from which grow the mores that every society must have in common if people are to feel that they belong to it. And in the West, that pattern of living is dominated by Christianity.

The picture of a society that he builds up with this natural law approach is, as far as I can tell, consistent with Catholic social teaching. One could have as easily quoted St Thomas on the natural virtues of religion, of family piety and devotion to nation to support his conclusions if the desire was to persuade Catholics of the point, but he has a wider audience in mind.

Scruton is a cultural conservative as well as political and economic. Culture is important in his philosophy because it is the pattern of daily living that communicates the mores of the society to the non-religious in a way in which they can absorb them naturally and comfortably, without being forced to be adherents to the religion. It is culture that is the principle of inclusion and which makes a country nation – a society in which the citizens feel they belong. It is the beauty of a national culture that tells its citizens that 'they are at home in the world'.

Furthermore it is tradition, the steadily developing accumulation of what is good from the past, that passes on that culture to us. This is why the conservative spirit always respects what we have and even if critical, looks for modification rather than revolution. It seeks to improve by building on what is good, even in the worst situations, rather than by destroying the present in order to reinstute the past, or a new future.

And for Scruton, society is not an arbitary grouping. Man has a natural inclination to associate with others, which he must be allowed to do freely and those associations – the clubs, societies, sports clubs and so on are the sub-cultures that together form the national culture. The most important associations that are common to all people are faith, family and nation. Even those who are not people of faith, he argues, will in the well ordered society subscribe passively to it by participating in the culture of faith that binds that nation together.

This is why supra-national projects such as the European Union will always fail – without a common culture to keep them together eith either they will fragment as the national cultures within its artificial border clash; or will have to resort to tyranny to stop it happening, as happened in the former Yugoslavia and will happen in he EU if it does not disintegrate first (we can only hope).

It is also why a strict multiculturalism in which there is no absorption of the cultural practices of immigrants into a the national culture, but separation and the formation of ghettoes on non British cultures within the national boundaries. During the Brexit debate, some of the intellectual elite who seek to destroy traditional British culture deride those who wish to preserve a sense of Britishness in Britain as jingoistic, racist and ingnorant. But it is natural for those who care about Britain as it has been to wish to retain a cultural identity. What gave the greivances of those who are not happy with the changes even greater legitimacy is that the British had no choice in whether or not those changes were made. The changes were being imposed on us by the law created by unelected beaurocrats who were not themselves British and so naturally didn't care at all about the cultural concersn of those who live there.

To object to these changes does not automatically make someone racist or even anti-immigrant (though no doubt some were both). Immigration is not a problem provided those who come are willing to become culturally British. This is not racism or jingoism, but a natural and legitimate response for anyone who loves his country. The ad hominem attacks that those who dare to talk of the value of traditional British culture have to put up with tell us a great deal about what their accusers and their attitudes, figures such as Bod Geldoff an Irishman who shouted and gestured at out of work Cornish fishermen on the Thames, feel about British culture.

All cultures and subcultures are the aggregated effect of personal interractions and so are always formed from the bottom up. It is one of the great paradoxes of man and society that individual actions that are driven by free will, and therefore apparently random and sitting outside the natural order that is described by the scientific laws of cause and effect, but they can nevertheless give rise to a discernible pattern and order when the society as a whole is observed. Generally the best influence of government can have on a culture is to protect personal liberty and allow it to emerge naturally. Top down attempts to manipulate the cultural forms directly by directing personal interraction with law are likely to stifle personal freedom and the human spirit. This in turn leads to a dimunition of human flourishing, both spiritually and economically. It  is why socialism is such an ugly and dismal failure in this regard.

Scruton is well aware that when people claim rights of action and freedoms for themselves, it will lead to clashes. He gives an example where the rights of travellers (people who in the mast might have been referred to pejoratively as tinkers or gypsies) to settle where they wish clash with the property rights of those who live close to where the travellers choose to settle. We might think also of the case where the right of the unborn clashes with the claimed right of the woman to choose to have an abortion. This is where custom, or in the extreme the law must decide whose right or whose freedom has preeminance; and it  a justice system that is rooted in a consensus of morality that will do that effectively and happily. He maintains that religion is the only viable and sustaining source of morality that works for the benefit of that society, even for the non-religious within it. In Britain this is the basis of common law.

In his critique of today’s post modern society,  Scruton still manages, consistent with his conservative ethos, to be constructive by looking for the positive as well. Chapter by chapter he analyses the institutions and ideas of today, the various "isms" - nationalism, socialism, capitalism, liberalism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and internationalism so as to highlight goods to be retained as well as the bad to be discarded. So the chapter titles are, for example,  -  'The Good in Nationalism', 'The Good in Socialism', ‘The Good in Environmentalism’ and so on. He persuades us with good humored reason, and does not try to goad us on with firey rhetoric. And through this analysis he paints a vision of a possible society that does not perfect human nature, but rather accommodates it, with all its flaws and imperfections. He promises no utopia, but rather a realistic prospect of something better.

He builds up his ideas by drawing largely on the philosophy of Aristotle and the Englightenment philosophers such as Burke, Hegel, Adam Smith and Kant and sells it to us through his witty and entertaining writing and the obvious love he has for his own country. As a Catholic I was intrigued at how much the ideas of the Englightenment and Kant espeically, which are not universally admired in Catholic circles (to put it mildly), could nevertheless be helpful.

Intrigued I wanted to know more and wondered if I was going to have to  write another chapter for Scruton’s book for Catholics called, ‘The Truth in the Englightenment and the Truth in Emmanual Kant’.

Never one to read a large amount of 18^th century philosophy if I can avoid it, I started look around to see if someone had done it first. It was Benedict XVI’s little book on the subject of Europe, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures that saved me the effort. Benedict too draws on Kant and Enlightenment thinkng in his analysis.

In regard to the Enlightenment he tells us:

'The Enlightenment has a Christian origin and it was not by chance that it was born specifically and exclusively within the sphere of the Christian faith, in places where Christianity, contrary to its own nature, had unfortunately become mere tradition and the religion of the state. Philosophy, as the investigation of the rational element (which includes the rational element of our faith) had always been a positive element in Christianity, but the voice of reason had become excessively tame. It was and remains the merit of the Enlightenment to have drawn attention afresh to these original Christian values and to have given reason back its own voice. In its Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Second Vatican Council restated this profound harmony between Christianity and the Enlightenment, seeking to achieve a genuine reconciliation between the Church and modernity, which is the great patrimony of which both parties must take care.'[p48]

One flaw of the Englightenment, Benedict tells us, is that it cuts itself off from 'its own historical roots, depriving itself from the powerful sources from which it sprang. It detaches itself from what me might call its basic memory of mankind, without which reason loses its orientation.' [p41]

And in regard to Kant he tells us:

'The search for this kind of reassuring certainty, something that could go unchallenged despite all the disgreements, has not succeeded. Not even Kant's truly stupendous endeavours managed to create the necessary certainty that would be shared by all. Kant had denied that God could be known with the sphere of pure reason, but at the same time, he had presented God, freedom, and immortality of postulates of practical reason, without which he saw no coherent possibility of acting in a moral manner. I wonder if the situation of today's world might not make us return to the idea that Kant was right. Let me put this in different terms: the attempt, carried to extremes to shape human affairs to the total exclusion of God leads us more and more to the brink of the abyss, toward the utter anihilation of man. We must therefore reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment  and say: Even the one who does not succeed in finding the path God ought nevertheless to try to live and to direct his life, as if God did exist. This is the advice that Pascal gave to his friends and it is the advice that I should like to give to our friends today who do not believe. This does not impose limitations on freedom, it gives support to all our human affairs and supplies a criterion of which human life stands sorely in need.’ [p51]

So Benedict, too is a conservative whose instincts tell him not to destroy, but to amend society, building on the best of what he have. Furthermore, it seems to me that Scruton has provided just the template for a way forward towards a society that is in accord with what Benedicti advises. It is through the instutions of the nation state, the family, and religion with an attitude of tolerance of non believers, that we can have a society bound by a common culture that society that, if not perfect, is free enough and beautiful enough that we can at least feel 'at home in the world' to quote Scruton.

Afterword: three days after the Brexit referendum as I write this, and the bitterness and division is not subsiding. This indicates to me that although the issue is multifaceted and the points of debate are most commonly economics and immigration at its heart it is a battle for a worldview and this is why at times the two sides seem to be arguing past each other. One party is rooted in the faith of a Judeo-Christian society and which, as explained, may include those who have no faith but subscribe, broadly speaking, to the values. The other is rooted in post-Englightenment secular humanism which is marked at this stage by a dislike of Christianity and Christian values above all else (even though some Christians subscribe to it, unthinkingly in my view).

The referendum was for the right to sovereignty and a battle against European imperialism driven by unelected and unaccountable beaurocrasts pushing their secular humanist agenda. Even assuming that Brexit does actually happen (and I’m not convinced that all the forces opposed to it will respect it) there is still no guarantee that the hopes of conservatives will prevail. The forces that wish to change it are still strong and will continue to do all they can to argue for their point of view. But at least now this is a British debate and there is some chance that as the nation decides itw own destiney, for the sort of conservatism that Scrution describes to prevail, where previously there was none. I for one am glad about that.