Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.
Recently I've been thinking about that Ratzinger quotation I mentioned in my 4 October entry, the one about the only effective apologia for Christianity being its art and its saints. We've already discussed saints to some degree; now for art. I daresay Protestantism has held its own pretty well on the aesthetic front: George Herbert, John Donne, Cranmer's tremendous prose, Buxtehude, Handel, and Bach – Bach, perhaps the pinnacle of Western music, who was a devout Lutheran. Is it terribly shallow of me to admit that I am reluctant to convert to Roman Catholicism — or to Eastern Orthodoxy, for that matter — due in no small part to aesthetic reasons? Why, if art is one of the great justifications for Christianity, should I renounce the treasures of my Protestant musical and linguistic heritage in exchange for the Gather hymnal and the New American Bible? Gerard Manley Hopkins admitted frankly that "bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of [Roman] Catholicism", and he lived long before the Novus Ordo and guitar Masses.
Interesting. I felt drawn to Catholicism because of beauty, but I must say it had nothing to do with art or music. Catholic doctrines are stunning beside their anemic Baptist counterparts; Catholic saints entranced me because they radiated holiness without hypocrisy--it was a huge magnet. I felt like I went from wading to treading in the Pacific (bit of a limp metaphor but you get the picture). I didn't realize that Catholics had a decent musical tradition until Sophomore year of college and music history class--first encounter with Victoria CHANGED MY WHOLE LIFE. :)
ReplyDeleteI went to the choral concert of one my best friends who attends Houston Baptist, and whatever you can say for Catholic taste, it's far FAR better than Baptist taste. The organist was skilled (her blonde hair in a huge southern pouf!), but that prelude was purgatorial.
Here's where I come off as terribly elitist: well of course Roman Catholics have it better than their benighted Baptist, or Pentecostal, or Evangelical brethren. I doubt it is coïncidental that all the greatest Christian artistic traditions (viz., the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox) are all heavily liturgical.
ReplyDeleteThe question, so far as R.C.s are concerned, is whether they are going to use the centuries — or millenia, rather — of remarkable art and music nurtured in the bosom of the Church, or whether they'll continue to prefer the hymnody of Breaking Bread.
As a Lutheran church musician, it is my job to ensure that we continue to hear Bach and Buxtehude and Scheidt (and, for that matter, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Distler).