A Spiritual View of Art
OUT OF THE WASTELAND
Several summers ago I was in the Arizona desert. It was not the time of year to be there, temperatures rising every day to over 105F, sometimes over 110.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, the chief funding agency of the U.S. government for advanced studies in the humanities, had decided to hold an institute there on the ancient Greek poet Homer. The bureaucrats decided that discussing the Iliad and the Odyssey in the desert in the summer would be what they called in their announcement an “epic experience.” It was, and in a way that was unexpected.
Surprisingly, the people who live in the desert seemed to have a heightened aesthetic sense — not just the intellectuals and artists, but ordinary people, working people. I wondered why this was.
The beauty of the desert itself was not sufficient to account for it. Where I live in California is at least as beautiful — San Francisco Bay, California coastline, redwood forests, lovely valleys. But this beauty does not seem to produce the same effect on the people who live there, at least to the same degree.
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Good liturgy involves good taste, and, as Burke said, taste depends on rational judgment, emotional maturity, and education — that is to say, the virtues.
The Hebrew-ness of Catholicism is a critical element of it. When we excise Hebrew elements from our prayers, we sever roots that feed our religion.
It is high time the U.S. bishops together called us as a Church to a public act of repentance. I offer the following litany for such an occasion.