I called Kresta yesterday. This was my first time calling that show and I got right on. You can hear me hang up pretty early because of some other voices you can hear in the background. If you call a show send me an email (benanderson@cleansingfiredor.com) and I’ll put up your clip.
Here’s the article I refer to:
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/16.33.html?start=1
and the audio clip:
Tomorrow is the first of the month. Remember to print out your Monthly Prayer Requests for Priests calendar so that you can personally pray for all the individual priests across our diocese:
http://www.mprp-roc.org/mprp07-10quarter.html
Let me take a moment to introduce myself. My name is “Monk.” I am one of the new staff members here at Cleansing Fire. I have seen enough liturgical abuses, poor catechesis, and heretical homilies to fill a lifetime. In spite of this I am truly blessed. I have wonderful Catholic friends that support me in every way. I know beautiful priests that remind me of our hope for the future. Cleansing Fire is a great addition to my Catholic life! The psalmist says…..”only goodness and kindness follows me all the days of my life…” Cleansing Fire truly helps to bring Christ’s goodness and kindness to my life. My hope is that my occasional post will help others to find truth, humor and hope amongst life in the DoR.
Tonight at midnight, the five Catholic parishes of Irondequoit will cease to exist as decreed by Bishop Clark. Please remember their current parishioners, former and departed parishioners and all the good priests and sisters that staffed these parishes through their long histories in your prayers tonight. The Irondequoit faith community is moving into uncharted and dangerous waters. Pray that souls will not be lost!
Below is a greeting from the new co-administrators of the Northeast Rochester Cluster, Deb Housel and Fr. Paul Gitau. This confirms our report from a few days ago.
Three churches chosen from St. Michael, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Corpus Christi, St. Andrew, and Church of the Annunciation are said to be closing by June of 2011. Read our analysis of the situation here. Fr. Michael Mayer has begun his sabbatical, though we are uncertain as of now whether or not he will be returning to lead St. Andrew/Annunciation when it is finished. The decision on which churches to close should occur before he returns from sabbatical. Fr. Mayer will soon be blogging at: http://faithperformances.blogspot.com/
(also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Succour and Our Lady of Perpetual Help; )
Previously in the series: Mother of God Icons: Virgin of Hodegetria
–Click on image for a larger, clearer display–
Our Lady of the Passion
Ank Landwier – Boonekamp, Iconographer (1944-1993)
“Attired in mortal flesh and fearing fate doth gaze upon them in trepidation”
(Text in the margin of the original archetypal icon.)
This is one of the more traditionally popular images among Catholics of Madonna and Christ Child icons. Depicted is the very human reaction of the child Jesus to a premonition of his passion symbolized by the two angels. In the upper left corner is the Archangel Michael carrying the lance and sponge of the crucifixion of Jesus. In the upper right is the Archangel Gabriel carrying a 3-bar cross, and nails. Jesus has fled to his mother, jumping into her arms; a sandal has fallen off one of his feet. The child looks anxiously at the vision, clasping the hand of his mother with both of his hands. Solemnly, she looks out at us.
Gabriel, who announced and explained the Incarnation to Mary explains the meaning of the cross to her son in this image. His human reaction is to seek comfort and assurance from his mother. Both angels, however, hold the objects of the passion with covered hands, symbolizing that they hold holy things. In a type of time warp, they have retrieved the instruments of torture from Golgotha on Easter morning. The instruments are actually symbolic here of victory over sin.
We can see that this is a variant of the Hodegetria icon except the child looks neither at us or his mother, and he does not hold a book or scroll or raise a hand in blessing as he so often does in the pure Hodegetria type icon. Angelos Akotantos had introduced this Mother of God Passion iconic theme into icon painting on the island of Crete in the second half of the 15th century. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Greek icon painting lost its center, many artists going to Crete which belonged to Venice. In this way these painters got into contact with Western painting and especially Italian influences. Cretan icons were often imported to Europe at that time where they became widely popular among westerners. Italian Andreas Rico and his sons made this image type popular in Europe after producing many copies of the original. Influenced by Western art Mother and Child wear a crown on their heads. Strictly speaking, this is against iconographical principles, which do not admit any distraction of attention from essentials.
The mother renders comfort and protection to her son under the title of Our Lady of Perpetual Help while the title Our Lady of the Passion suggests her own anticipation of suffering and passion in union with her son. She is an example for all of us.
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Lk 1:38)
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*Image source: Icon
Whispers in the Loggia is reporting that Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of Bishop William Stephen Skylstad, the leader of the Diocese of Spokane who turned 75 last year. Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City is said to be his successor. Skylstad is the latest Abp. Jean Jadot appointee to enter the land of retirement.
And then there were four…
Serving past retirement age:
Retires in 2011:
Retires in 2012:
Retires in 2013:
Previous edition: here.
Subtitled: Why Presidential Elections Matter
In spite of President Obama’s rhetorical promises to find “common ground” on the issue of abortion, I’ve never been able to find any evidence to support his claims. In fact, his record indicates that he’s never met a pro-abortion measure he didn’t like. In addition to the fact that as an Illinois state senator he voted twice against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) which sought to protect children born as a result of a failed abortion, we now have to deal with his most recent nominee to the Supreme Court – Elena Kagan. And Elena Kagan, my friends, is bad news for the pro-life cause.
Over at National Review we find this article which details Elena Kagan’s role in formulating language used by opponents of the federal ban of “partial-birth abortion” (PBA). Shannen Coffin, a lawyer charged with defending the PBA ban during the Bush administration explains:
“Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.)”
The “language”( which says that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”) is the same language cited by the Supreme Court in striking down Nebraska’s PBA ban. Many believed this language came directly from a panel of ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) experts. Turns out, this language was actually written by Elena Kagan while serving under President Clinton as a policy adviser. ACOG’s own language was distinctly different: [it] “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” A very different statement, indeed.
It gets worse. Internal memos make clear that Elena Kagan was aware that ACOG’s position “would be a disaster” for PBA proponents and that the official ACOG position was “in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health.” She got to work solving the problem by writing new language and suggesting that ACOG include it in their statement regarding PBA. ACOG complied with her wishes and the rest is judicial history. Thankfully, the PBA ban was eventually enacted under the Bush administration, but Elena Kagan did everthing in her power to prevent it.
St. Thomas More pray for us as Congress considers this Supreme Court candidate.
In His Peace,
Nerina
**If you want to see political machinations up close, take time to read the above linked documents. Scary stuff.
Often times on the blog and in personal conversation, people ask me, “Why doesn’t the Pope do something about what’s going on? Why are we being forgotten about?” I always respond the same way, but this is a new manner of explanation which, perhaps, will show you why things are the way they are.
This video is from a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna in Wolfsthal, Lower Austria. Keep in mind that this is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. We can’t sort out our local bishops and their liturgical improprieties without first doing away with the insipidity of our higher-ranking Church leaders.
I can think of many ads the Catholic Courier would never run, not because they contained falsehoods, but because they were too close to the truth.
This would be one of them …
DOR Pastors and Pastoral Administrators,
Are you running a progressive Catholic parish in the Diocese of Rochester and watching your weekend Mass attendance plummet? Are your offertory collection totals going south right along with your head count?
Well, there is a solution to your dilemma.
No, it doesn’t involve reaching out to your strayed sheep and inviting them to return. And you won’t have to get rid of your liturgical dancers, or rewrite all your “Jesus loves you; don’t litter” homilies, or start teaching your flock right out of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Rest assured, you will not have to shift towards orthodoxy in any way, shape or form.
All it takes is a single phone call and our highly experienced and fully professional fundraising staff will come riding to your rescue. For a modest fee our experts will be more than happy to design a tasteful campaign fine-tuned to get more money out of the few parishioners you have left.
Over the years dozens of your fellow pastors and pastoral administrators have taken this simple step and many of them have seen a dramatic uptick in their weekly collection totals.
It’s called Stewardship, DOR Style.
Why not give it a try?
Call 1-800-SQUEEZE
This ad may be a bit over the top but there is a group of consultants out there whose mission in life is helping Catholic parishes bring in more money.
One of them is Cunneen Fundraising, Inc. and, according to their website, they have worked with Catholic parishes all over the country on both capital campaigns and offertory collection enhancement projects.
In DOR alone Cunneen claims to have been retained by some 69 different parishes over the years in an attempt to bring in more money each weekend (see their client database here, selecting Campaign Type=Stewardship, State=New York and Diocese=Rochester).
Cunneen seems to have been especially successful in enhancing offertory collections in at least a few local parishes, as evidenced by glowing thank-you letters written by some of our pastors. This letter from Fr. Ed Palumbos of Fairport’s Church of the Assumption is typical:
Cunneen’s files contain similar letters from pastors or staff members at St. Matthew (Livonia), St. John the Evangelist (Greece), Our Lady of Lourdes (Elmira), St. Cecilia and St. Pius X.
Interestingly, every one of these letters mentions increased offertory collection amounts (i.e., more treasure), while not a single one has anything to say about getting their parishioners to give more of their time and talent. The priorities – or lack thereof – are obvious.
Like the ad says, “It’s called Stewardship, DOR Style.”
Fig. 1 “Transgendered Processional Cross”, St. May’s Church in downtown Rochester
While recently researching images of Christ from the fourth and fifth centuries, I was made to think of the transgendered processional cross that is used at St. Mary’s in downtown Rochester (Fig. 1), as well as the legitimacy of similar contemporary interpretations of Christ. The corpus of the cross, while small, is unambiguously female with wide hips , and breasts.
The cross is actually a variant of the Resurrected Christ Cross; a type of cross that emphasizes the resurrected Christ over the suffering Christ.
To my point: A significant number of images of Christ from the third through the fifth centuries also have obvious feminine characteristics. That’s the conclusion of well respected art historians, not just me. The number of examples and their scattered production throughout the Roman Empire suggests a deliberate interpretation and not a localized peculiarity.
Two figures in particular are interesting as stories related to them highlight their feminine appearance. The first (Fig.2), when it arrived at the Museo Nazionale della Terme in Rome, was titled “Seated Poetess” as it, well, looked like a female figure.
Fig 2 “Statuette of Seated Christ” (ca.350), Rome, Museo Nazionale della Terme
In 1914, research revealed that it was strikingly similar to the figures of Christ used on sarcophagi. The statuette depicts a smooth skinned youth with gorgeous locks of hair and female breasts.
The second figure with an interesting attending story is the large center figure of an apse mosaic (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3 “Vision of Ezekial” (ca. 425-50)
As the story goes, the artist had carefully rendered a figure of Mary in the center of the apse. Returning one morning to finish the rest of the work he discovered that the apse mosaic had miraculously changed into an image of “Christ in Glory.” The wide hips of the figure, the long flowing hair, smooth face and generally feminine curves do, in fact, suggest a female figure.
Men, of course, can exhibit feminine physical characteristics and, depending on the amount of body fat, have pronounced breasts. Are these two examples, then, accidental or intentional expressions of femininity?
A third example makes us think the feminine characteristics are, indeed, intentional. In a sarcophagus front (Fig. 4) Christ is shown standing on a rock outcrop or hill between Peter and Paul. To the sides of the central scene are represented the patrons: a husband (far left side) and wife (far right). Christ is shown with breasts (compare with the wife; contrast with the husband).
Fig. 4 “Traditio Legis” (5th c.)
Take a look at one more example: another seated figure of Christ (Fig. 5); young, smooth shaven, breasts, and hair delicately curled.
Fig. 5 “Seated Christ” (5th c.) Detail from a sarcophagus.
There are many other examples we could look at but let’s leave it at these few.
What are we to think of all this? Are these images proof the early Christians had a feminine understanding of Christ/divinity that was eventually suppressed by a male dominated hierarchical Church?
In Parts 2 and 3 we’ll take a look at some of the contextual background to the images we’ve looked at and offer an explanation for their appearance.
In Part 4 we’ll layout an alternative argument for why the use of feminine imagery for Christ faded away and conclude with a judgment on the liturgical appropriateness of the St. Mary’s processional cross.
I hope you find the subject intriguing.
(Do you know of any other transgendered or female images of Christ in use liturgically [not privately] in the diocese of Rochester? Please let me know.)
_____________________________________________________
Book suggestions: Thomas F. Mathews’ The Clash of Gods (revised and expanded edition), pp119-138, which is what got me thinking about this subject as a possible post. Some of the examples we will look at came from his book.
Blessed Sacrament and St. Boniface parishes in Southeast Rochester will be clustering by June of 2011. As you already know, five Northeast Rochester churches will be consolidated down to two by the same time. Fr. Richard Brickler, pastor of St. Boniface, is already over the Diocese of Rochester retirement age of 70. Blessed Sacrament and St. Boniface will be sharing a leader beginning next year.
Here is what is written in the Blessed Sacrament bulletin:
“By the time I finish my eleventh year with you (that is, next June), we will have clustered with Saint Boniface Parish in the South Wedge, and strengthened our partnership with Saint Mary’s Downtown. The Blessed Sacrament/Saint Boniface cluster will share a single pastoral leader, and all three parishes will have a new Mass schedule”
Source:
-Click above to enlarge-
Tip: Interstate Catholic
Yesterday marked the last day of the Sacred Music Colloquium in Pittsburgh. What a glorious week it was. Our last Mass was on Sunday, and featured Schubert’s Mass in G for the ordinaries (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus) and Gregorian Chant for the propers and Credo. It was absolutely splendid. Over the course of the week, I ran into several people from Rochester and its surrounding areas – several whom you would know, and several whom you wouldn’t. I hope to post photos of the people and Masses as soon as they are made available at Musica Sacra’s website. (I wasn’t able to take too many pictures – they kept us VERY busy.)
The one thing that really stood out to me at the Colloquium was how absolutely backwards the Diocese of Rochester is. Our vocations program is a shambles compared to other dioceses, our music programs are trash compared with what they could be, especially considering Eastman’s presence, our clergy are, for the most part, lukewarm, and our faithful lay people are, for the most part, clueless and uninformed. The priests who were present (and there were many) came from many different places, not all of them overtly welcoming to the cause of orthodoxy. However, their parishes and communities are all thriving. Why is this?
It’s because they do things right. And when things are done correctly, as they ought to be, our souls realize that. We are created by the Divine – why do we resist our urges towards rendering Him the glory due to His Holy Name? Why do we insist on lowering our liturgical standards? Why do we say that chant and polyphony are too hard? Why do we claim that our people are incapable of understanding the Mass? If people aren’t sure about something liturgical, you don’t change the Mass to suit their misunderstanding – you teach them. When a student says that 2+2 is 5, you don’t change the rules of mathematics to make his misconception a “reality.” You say, “No, it’s not. And this is why ’4′ is the correct answer.”
The main thing that the Colloquium taught me wasn’t how to sing polyphony, or how to direct chant, or even how to sing in a choir of 250 people. It taught me to be unabashedly Catholic, not to tread lightly around liberals and erring children of God, but to confront their ignorance with clear teachings of the Church and with the utmost of charity. We must not let people rest complacently in their ignorance. We must rouse them from their liturgical slumber and show them that “this is what we’re all about.” We need to replace our banal hymns with the chants particular to that day, for the chants always and unfailingly capture the proper mood of the Mass. And there’s no reason not to – they have all been translated into English. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t have an English Chant Mass. In the words of Dr. Mahrt, “The people will love the chant, but they will love it even more when they realize how much more beautiful it is in Latin.” In Fr. Z’s words, “brick by brick,” people. We can’t just change everything we want to in one way, or in a direct fashion. But slowly, over time, we can win hearts and minds back to Holy Mother Church, even those hearts and minds which think they serve Her, but rather, serve to castrate Her message and Her liturgy.
I will be spending the next week or so on a mini-retreat in Buffalo. I’ll be posting some photos from Fr. Baker’s later in the week.
Your News Now has a short video clip up on yesterday’s closing Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Greece. A portion of the clip features a quote from DOR spokesman Doug Mandelaro:
Many of the members [of the parish], if not most, were workers at Kodak and as Kodak has downsized over the last few decades, people move out and go elsewhere. Out migration. financial strife, so the decision was made to close it and again it’s always hard to do that, but you try to do the best thing and right-size as best as you can.
Once again the diocese is trotting out its “demographic shift” rationalization for a falloff in church attendance. It used to blame our declining numbers on the “dramatic depopulation” that it claimed was happening in DOR, but had to stop spreading that myth when it became widely known that U.S. Census Bureau data showed no depopulation in DOR, dramatic or otherwise.
The “demographic shift” is also a myth. There are no vacant, boarded-up houses in this or any other section of Greece. The are no sky-rocketing apartment vacancies. The population has been, in a word, stable. For the “demographic shift” to be true, then, Catholics – and only Catholics – would have to have been moving out in droves over many, many years, with non-Catholics – and only non-Catholics – moving in to replace them. There is absolutely no evidence of that having taken place.
No, Mr. Mandelaro, the real reason Catholics have abandoned this and other parishes is that DOR has stopped teaching the true Faith. What is taught, usually by example (i.e., liturgical abuse) but sometimes from the pulpit, simply has no power to draw people into the Church and to keep them there.
That is the problem, Mr. Mandelaro, and when DOR finally starts doing something about it – if it ever does – then and only then will the bleeding begin to stop.
We have been following the story since May that the Northeast Rochester parishes of St. Michael, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Corpus Christi, St. Andrew, and Church of the Annunciation were to cluster by the end of June. Well, here we are. Word has come in to us that the parishes have clustered, and are now under the leadership of Deb Housel and Fr. Paul Gitau (we could use confirmation on the Fr. Gitau part). According to our sources, the five churches will be cut down to two, and these two will form a single parish under the leadership of a priest pastor and Parochial Vicar. This change will take effect by June of 2011, so the decision on which will be closed is likely to be made by the end of this year.
We will post updates as information becomes available. Stay tuned folks. It’s going to be a wild ride during Bishop Clark’s final two years in Rochester.
DOR’s Catholic schools are going to try to drum up some new business over the summer.
A letter from the Superintendent …
June 17, 2010
Dear Parents/Guardians:
As another school year comes to a close, I want to offer my sincere thanks for your continued support of Catholic Schools. I know you make many sacrifices so that your children can benefit from this lifelong gift of a Catholic education. Please know that we work constantly to ensure that our educational programs are worthy of that sacrifice and commitment.
As part of that effort, we are planning to conduct marketing research this summer that will help us clearly identify areas in which we can better serve you and the children you entrust to us and how we might attract more families to our schools. To accomplish this, we are engaging the Center for Governmental Research of Rochester to conduct scientific surveys and collect comments and data. CGR will be conducting mail and phone surveys and providing feedback to us we hope will serve in the important cause of preserving and growing our schools. I thank you in advance for your cooperation and timely return of the survey materials if you are contacted as part of the research.
I wish you all the best and the most splendid of summers. May it be a safe and happy one for your and your family! See you in September!
God love you,
Anne Wilkens Leach
Superintendent of Catholic Schools
Over the last 15 or so years DOR has had just about the worst track record among all dioceses of its size in terms of the number of schools closed and the number of Catholic students lost.
Many families with kids still in this system are victims of the 2008 round of school closings and are not at all shy in saying they are just hoping to get their kids through their current schools before the axe falls again. Other families who escaped that trauma still got to see just how much DOR really values parents and other stake holders in its schools: It considers them far too unimportant to be allowed any input into anything major like school closing decisions.
Given this history and the feelings and attitudes among families with children currently in the system, it is difficult to see how any marketing research can lead to an influx of a significant number of new families into our schools.
For today, I would just like to mention one thing. In his homily today, Fr. Pasley described the relationship between sacred music and the Holy Scriptures. He said that, “Just as the Blessed Virgin was the Earthly tabernacle of her God, so too is sacred music the tabernacle for the Word of God. It adorns and beautifies it, keeping it safe and preserving the sacred.”
The sooner that our music directors, schola leaders, cantors and the like realize that the Mass isn’t a performance, but a prayer, the sooner we will see a profound love for the Gregorian Chants which are so proper and conducive to our worship. To have a crisis in chant is to have a crisis in the Church – no other music is as perfectly suited to the sacrifice of the Mass, in either form, than is Gregorian Chant.
Stained glass window in the chapel on the Duquesne campus
The Church asks little of us in terms of the Liturgy. We must participate as we ought to, and we must follow what Her documents set forth. The liturgy documents NEVER decreed that we should do away with chant, but rather, to place it at the head of our liturgical lives. When you remove the chants particular to a certain day, you lose the theme set in place in the earliest days of the Church. And that is a travesty. Fr. Phillips of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius noted that Gregorian Chant is attracting people to the Church. Young couples come to him and say, “We want that music we heard at Mass on Sunday.”
They don’t know what it is, but their souls certainly grasp the sacredness and profound nature of the treasury of that loftiest and simplest of art forms. When we find ourselves in a diocese that experiments with everything except Gregorian Chant, it is only fair and proper that we bring this “experiment” of chant to more churches. Without fail, it will prove to unify a scattered flock. Why? The soul appreciates beauty, even when the mind can’t verbalize what it conjures up. Chant is an echo of the divine, a suggestion of the glories to come, the glories of the Heavenly Court.
First of all, this post is pertaining to the happenings yesterday, Friday the 25th. I was expecting to have the stamina to give you all an update, but things didn’t pan out as they should have. Yesterday was certainly the busiest day, and yet, also the most fulfilling. We had breakfast as usual, had chant rehearsal, etc. . . but in addition to all the normal sessions, we had a Renaissance Polyphonic Vespers. It was beyond my wildest expectations. There were three choirs scattered around the church, each assigned certain antiphons, certain motets, and certain psalms which were sung with alternating chant and polyphony.
Two priests emerging from a polyphony rehearsal.
What was truly inspiring about that, though, was that the sanctuary was packed with real priests, young men in seminary, pre-seminary, and high school, and some of the most brilliant minds in sacred music today. In the sanctuary were a priest from the FSSP, an Oratorian, a diocesan priest, a priest from the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, and seminarians from Canada, New Orleans, and Arlington. The entire service was an experience of liturgical ecstasy. Unfortunately, I did not take any video, audio, or photos of the service. There were, however, professionals recording every aspect of the ceremony.
A Passionist nun partaking in a cool beverage at Starbucks
After the Vespers service (and the Mass which preceded it), I sat down for dinner with two nuns, one a Poor Clare from New York City, and one a Passionist Sister from Duquesne University. They were astounded to see people from Rochester, and we were astounded to see nuns who were wearing habits and weren’t over 70 years old. Folks, Rochester is so demented I can’t even begin to tell you the mental and spiritual cleansing that this Colloquium has been.
As I type this, I’m sitting in one of the campus cafe’s, listening to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” What a wonderful world, indeed. Last night as I walked back to the dorms, a group of young people had taken out their violins and just burst forth into song, playing Mozart with such spirit and gusto as I have seldom heard before. I would relate more to you, but my time is a precious and rare commodity which is being mined to exhaustion by the folks of the Church Music Association of America. And for that, I am immeasurably glad.
Continued from Cathedral’s Hodegetria sculpture
Let’s take a look at this sculpture and try and answer the two questions I proposed in the last post. The first question addressed the success of the image as a faithful presentation of the Virgin Hodegetria type. The second question –more difficult– asked if the image shows a world that has been restored –does it offer us the hope of divinization?
While gazing at us Mary holds up her baby for us to see. He sits on her right arm while she holds him steady with her left hand. Her left arm and hand act as a visual arrow pointing to the child. The child is shown as the savior of the world –the redeemer– for his arms are outstretched as they will be on the cross, the Christian symbol of redemption. Divinity and holiness are indicated by the traditional halos. The red cross inscribed on the child’s halo makes his identity and sacrificial role clear. The artist has skillfully manipulated the elements of art (line, shape, form, value/tone, color, texture, and space) to indicate the close relationship between mother and child. Notice that the lightest value in the color scheme –the white of the child’s robe and the shoulder veil of the mother– forms a common ground or field. Squint and you will see what I mean.
Notice also that the artist uses a principle of design, movement, to unify the child with his mother. The movement begins at the child’s right hand, moves across to his left hand, up the veil on the mother’s left side, around and down the head, terminating near the child’s head at the mother’s collar. The halos, not by accident, overlap. The heads of the two incline inward, toward each other. Yes, this image successfully depicts the Hodegetria type Mother of God icon.
But does the image show us a redeemed world? Does it hold out for us the hope of an eschatological perfection? Is Mary represented as she now is in heaven? All Christian liturgical art must represent the world in glory as it will be after the Second Coming of Christ because that is our Christian hope. A world represented as it is, in a fallen state, does not offer us hope but leaves us stuck where we are, without hope.
Let’s see. Notice that Mary’s robe is lined with precious gold while the outer surface is a gorgeous brilliant blue; sacred colors. The gold echoes the gold of her halo. The three colors in this work are intense red, intense yellow and intense blue. Those three colors are equally spaced on the traditional color wheel. A design that limits itself to three colors equal distant from each other on the wheel is often employed by artists to indicate harmony, balance, well-being and perfection; heavenly peace and serenity. Also, Mary’s day-to-day clothes were probably relatively rough in texture compared to what we see here. These appear soft, shimmering and comfortably flowing. The significance of the decorative band of Mary’s robe is not lost on us. We see golden lilies which are Mary’s flower of purity and the traditional flower symbolizing the resurrection; resurrection to a life of divinization. The human images here are not realistic but stylized or abstracted to indicate grace and a spiritual otherworldliness. Mary’s glance is a peaceful gaze and not an anxious glare. Her pose is a graceful sway.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!
_____________________________________
Book suggestions:
Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy by Dennis R. McNamara, (Hillenbrand Books)
Art in Focus by Gene A. Mittler, (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill). This is the best textbook for an introduction to understanding art history, art appreciation and art criticism. It is written for high school students but is terrific for any audience. If you always wanted to learn the basics this is the book for you. The 2000 edition is the one I used with my classes just before I retired but I had used all the earlier editions since it first came out. I have not looked at the 2006 edition. (Get the teacher wrap-around version if available it has even more good information.)
“They say that one sign of a good leader is that the community continues to thrive when the leader leaves. I have every confidence and hope that that certainly will be the case.”
-Nancy DeRycke’s words in her final bulletin article as self-consecrated “Pastoral Leader” of Church of the Good Shepherd in Henrietta. Good Shepherd’s attendance the week before her departure: 650 (approximately 200 less than when she arrived in 2008).
The new cluster which will be forming in Northeast Rochester has an opening, do they not?
In the “Legislative Alert” thread (found here), Louis and I engage in a discussion about assigning different moral values to human life along the life spectrum. Louis asserts that, once born, a human being becomes a person and not before and therefore, at birth, that person deserves the protections and rights that we all enjoy. In Louis’ words: “Until the life is not part of another’s life it must not be treated as having distinct rights.That is justice.” I countered that because he and others are willing to diminish the moral value of “embryos, zygotes, blastulas and morulas” (words Louis used constantly to refer to life in the womb – and I actually know what they mean, Louis, thanks to several biology and A&P courses), society already does, or will use a similar argument against those living outside of the womb (e.g. in euthanasia, assisted suicide, sanctioned infanticide). He disagreed noting again that, “I believe that the problem comes precisely from pretending being born does not raise you far far above the level of an embryo.I do not accept any alternative before natural death at the end of life.Physical attachment is of the HIGHEST importance even if you think it doesn’t matter.What makes this person different?,,,HAVING BEEN BORN!”
In our discussion, Louis hit on all the common pro-choice talking points. First he attempts to dehumanize the preborn child by referring to the various stages of development with their scientific labels. Then he asserts that the preborn child is nothing but a parasite since it is completely dependent on the mother for it’s life (he wouldn’t address the impact of having children born prematurely at 21 or 22 weeks on his argument or comment on abortion restrictions based on gestational age). Next he says the embryo has the potential, but is not fully human! Finally he says that preborn human life is of lesser value. Which brings me to this post found on the First Things blog, “Secondhand Smoke.” This post describes exactly my concern about Louis’ take on the situation. We are living in a crazy world.
6/25 at 7:17PM:
I received an e-mail from a concerned reader over what he called “an unnecessary pot shot” regarding my post’s closing sentence. This reader felt I was insulting Louis by calling him crazy. I was not. I don’t know Louis at all so I can’t possibly make that claim. What I can call crazy is the theme of the blog post I linked to which, in essence (for those who did not read it) discussed how some are trying to justify suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia by arguing that human life is not inherently valuable. I stand by my statement – we ARE living in a crazy world. And unfortunately, it’s getting worse.
