The Church and Art: The Power of the Image
Fr. Frank Sabatte, C.S.P.

(Fr. Sabatte has served in a variety of ministries on campuses and in parishes. Currently, he has begun a regional outreach to artists in New York. Himself a skilled artist who uses a variety of art media, Fr. Frank has begun reaching out to galleries, art school and young artists, hoping to more clearly relate faith and art.)

PART I

	Father Frank Sabatte, C.S.P.

In my bedroom in the house I grew up in was a picture in a white frame. It showed Jesus sitting on a bench in a garden surrounded by children who were examining his wounded hands. The earliest thoughts I can remember as I looked at the picture were that the man looked kind and that I would have liked to touch his hands too.

Fr. Sabatte with his painting-in-progress, The Adulteress (cf. John 8)
The picture was a reproduction of a painting by Harry Anderson titled "What Happened to Your Hands?". Today, Anderson is written off by most critics as "kitsch," an illustrator of pious religious scenes whose claim to fame was his bland but hugely popular "portrait" of Jesus.

But Harry Anderson may have done as much for my religious education as a degree from a Pontifical Institute; maybe more.

Early in its history, the Church recognized the power of images to stir and inform faith. The Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870 ACE) had this to say:

"Just as all men receive salvation from the syllables contained in the gospels, so also do all men, learned and ignorant alike, receive their share of that boon through the channel of the colored images placed under their eyes. For that which language says and preaches by means of syllables, that writing says and preaches by means of colors."¹

Probably most of us, when we think of the role of art and artists in the life of the Church, think immediately of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of Michelangelo or the Last Supper of Leonardo. Yet the Church, in its relationship to art over the centuries, has not been primarily concerned with creating works of great beauty which exist for themselves. French philosopher Etienne Gilson writes: "it is a fact that the end of religious image making is not to be beautiful in itself, but, rather, it is to fulfill successfully its religious function."² The "purpose of religious images," Gilson writes, " is to lead the soul to the model they represent."

The child, looking at the picture of the bearded man and the children, wanted to touch him too. Kitsch or not, Mr. Anderson's painting fulfilled a purpose greater than itself. Fulfilling a purpose greater than itself is why, throughout its history, the Church has not viewed art as an "extra," something nice to sooth us, but as an essential part of stirring and shaping faith.

Catholics are a people who meet God in the flesh. For Catholics, God is not far away but, as St Augustine said, "closer to us than we are to ourselves."³ We participate in the Being of God, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches.⁴ God walked with us in the flesh in Jesus. From the beginning the Church has affirmed the expression of this "in-flesh-ment" in images, recognizing that the images possess a power to bring the viewer deeper into Mystery. As Gilson, referring to Thomas Aquinas, says: "the movement of the mind toward the image is the same as the movement toward the thing which the image represents."⁵

This awareness of the power of images is clear to any serious artist. In my ministry to young artists, I visit them in their studios. I usually start by asking them about their work; but I never ask them "what does it mean" I ask them to tell me their "vision", what is driving them. They usually tell me that they don't know themselves why they are going in this direction (whether abstract or representational, it doesn't matter); it is as if they are being pulled along. The image is more than what the artist herself is consciously expressing. When I ask them if they have ever experienced a kind of "loss of consciousness" while they work, they know exactly what I mean. Artists enter a "timelessness" as they work, as they are "pulled along." Perhaps this is why in looking for its "image makers" the Church often looks to artists who seemingly may have no piety or religious faith (Delacroix, Eakins, for example) but who seem to be "hot-wired" to something more, to the Ground of Being, whether they are conscious of that connection or not.

1. quoted in Etienne Gilson "The Arts of the Beautiful" p. 164
2. ibid p. 171
3. Confessions X.7
4. Thomas Aquinas, "On Being and Essence", trans. Robert Miller
5. Gilson "The Arts of the Beautiful" p. 164

FORMAT FOR THE MEETING

1. Welcome and check in
2. Prayer from the Paulist Prayer Book
3. Reading from The Paulist Vocation, p. 297, paragraph 2.
4. General reflections on the passage from Fr. Hecker
5. Review of Questions raised below.
6. New Business
7. Individual Reports: Apostolic opportunities that have come my way. (Encourage members to share situations in which some of the Paulist vision and Fr. Hecker's charisms were exercised.)
8. Plans for the next meeting.
9. Closing Prayer (For vocations,.)

Questions for Discussion

1. What object of art has affected you the most?
2, What do you consider the most effective examples of faith and art?
3. What is the role of beauty in discovering God?

A Special Announcement:
On May 19, 2007 at 10:00 AM, the ordination of Bart Landry, C.S.P. will be held at St. Paul the Apostle in New York

Contact:
Frank DeSiano, CSP
Associate Coordinator
8611 Midland Parkway
Jamaica Estates, NY 11432
(718) 291-5995