Catholic and Loving it!

The other day I blogged the words of St John of Damascus who wrote...

I may not have many books, nor much time to read, but, strangled with thoughts, as if with thorns, I come into the common surgery of the soul, the church; the luster of the painting draws me to vision and delights my sight like a meadow and imperceptibly introduces my soul to the glory of God.

I said that it's a good job he didn't live around here because in my view, there is a clear and definite link between the lack of beauty in our Churches and the lack of people. Fr Massie responded to ask "In that case, why aren't most Anglican churches bursting at the seams?"

It's a reasonable question, so I gave him an unreasonable answer and then thought better of it and decided I should probably write this blog entry...

The words of St John of Damascus put me in mind of a passage from GK Chesterton in which he discusses the difficulty most people have in understanding the rational compared with the ease with which they understand the mystical...

...to judge of the aims of a thing like the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist can see whether General Booth’s housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people.

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For example, it would take me a very long time to explain to my two year old daughter that it is a very difficult thing to build a huge Cathedral because it requires many people to spend a lot of time planning, understanding physics and architecture, carving stone and so on. At the end when I told her that such things exist she would probably yawn and as me to let her watch a Pingu DVD. She would not be terribly impressed.

But when we went to Beverley and walked around the corner and the great Minster loomed in the sky above her, two towering pillars of golden sandstone in the crisp autumn sun, she stopped in her tracks and said "wow".

Forgive me if I bold my own paragraph but this is important...

Despite the fact that the modernist liberal church prides itself on having broken free of the tedious dry dogma of the past it has in fact achieved the very opposite. It is now in fact, almost impossible to wander in off the street in the middle of a Catholic Mass and say, with all the wisdom of a two year old, "wow".

In order to have a sense of wonder at the Mass now we must go the intellectual route, it is all they have left us. St John of Damascus was without many books but before we can see anything special about the elderly gentleman with the bread and wine we must read many books, listen to talks, go on courses and study our Bible. You will point out that most people don't do that sort of thing, I will point out that most people are not saying "wow" to the Mass.

Trying to get young people to be impressed at the Mass is like trying to get them to be impressed at the technology inside a laptop computer. The fact that entire libraries of information can be stored in a space the size of a pen lid is hardly impressive because it just works. We have done something similar with the Eucharist, we have placed it inside a plastic case and made it a simple matter of pushing a button.

Our liturgy is as impressive to the untrained eye as a beige box with a whirring fan and a small group of excited nerds crowded around it crowing about how much RAM it has.

If the Church is ever to grow beyond a small band of nerdy bookish people it is vital that we re-learn how to speak the language of the soul. We need to make it clear at first sight that this is a thing that is special, holy, important and impressive. It is not enough for the computer scientists to understand that the modern microchip is a marvel of engineering, it is not enough for the theologians to be impressed at the symbolism in the way they have laid the chairs out in a half circle...

This is why things like art and incense, vestments and kneeling are so important, because you don't need to be a technical person to understand.

I am reminded of the time we went with young people to visit the Church with the frescoes in Pickering and more than one of them said "why isn't our Church like that?" Any healthy person can see that a 20ft high painting of St George slaying the dragon must be right. It takes a special kind of madness to think a clever abstract painting that has to be explained is preferable.

So when I say there is a link between the lack of beauty in our churches and the lack of people - this is what I am getting at. We have removed the things that are obviously good and right and left something that only those who are already "in" (or willing to make the effort) can begin to look at and say "this is important", "this means something".

Not long ago on this blog I bemoaned the lack of incense on Christmas day and somebody said in the comments...

Whatever happens in your parish and however discouraged you may be remember the incense is a symbol but Our Lord in the Eucharist is real, despite the faith of the priest confector.

I know that and you know that but unless the signs and symbols and trappings scream out "this is the most important thing in the world" it is unlikely that the bloke down the road who didn't learn to read properly at school and now sits at home all day playing on his PS3 is ever going to work it out.