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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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06/11/2009 15:53
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Appeal for a more authentic
Catholic sacred art



A number of prominent Italian Catholic artists and intellectuals have launched a multi-media campaign soliciting supporters for an appeal they have drawn up addressed to the Holy Father for "a return to authentically Catholic sacred art'.

The initiative comes as a prelude to Pope Benedict XVI's meeting with artists on Nov. 21.


The 15-page appeal may be downloaded on PDF from
www.box.net/shared/506119iz60

It is summarized in a letter that the original signatories have sent to Italian newspapers, translated below:



Dear Editor,

The initiative of an 'appeal' to the Holy Father for a return to an authentically Catholic sacred art comes from a group of theologians, philosophers, artists, architects and intellectuals. Moved by pure spiritual and cultural exigency, they decided to pool together their ideas for a heartfelt appeal to Pope Benedict XVI.

The appeal confronts the actual decadent state of the principal sacred arts, starting with the architectonic structures which should host these arts and favor their development.

Church architecture is not the only aspect but it is the natural vessel containing all the arts intended to promote the liturgy: from painting to sculpture, from mosaics to stained glass, from woodwork to metalwork, to the purest and most evanescent of sacred arts - music.

The conditions today of such arts can be observed completely independent of one's own beliefs and specific tastes. Unfortunately, the problem is in the hands of church sponsors who seem to have renounced their role of promoting Catholic sacred art worthy of the name, but instead relying on current fads and the personal idiosyncrasies of artists and architects.

That is why we are asking the Supreme Pontiff, without in anyway wishing to orient his thinking as inspired by the Holy Spirit, nor even to suggest single-minded ways for renewing Catholic sacred art.

Our intention is to bear witness to the Holy Father of the profound uneasiness felt in common by so many Catholic faithful - both lay and clerical - and lovers of beauty, which in art is the expression of divine Truth.

At the same time, the appeal identifies some fundamental premises for overcoming the present crisis and to correctly innovate sacred art and architecture, so that even in their continuity with modernity, they may be capable of undertaking a new course in full adherence to the bimillenary Magisterium of the Church.

The appeal has been signed initially by members of the promotional committee which includes the following:

- Leonardo Allodi (Professor of the sociology of cultural processes, University of Bologna)
- Paul Badde (Journalist, Die Welt)
- Stefano Borselli (Editor, Il Covile)
- Carlo Fabrizio Carli (Art critic)
- Stefano Chiappalone (Historian)
- Francesco Colafemmina (Classical philologist)
- Giannicola D’Amico (Musicologist and Conservatory professor)
- Pietro De Marco (Professor of the sociology of religions, University of Florence)
- Antonio Donadei (Professor of geometric disciplines in artistic instruction)
- Maria Teresita Ferrari (Painter and hagiographer)
- Giovanni Gandolfo Lambruschini (Editorial director, Maranatha.it)
- Paolo Gandolfo Lambruschini (Editorial director, Maranatha.it)
- Manuel Maria Grillo (Editor, Edizioni Settecolori)
- Steen Heidemann (Architect, art historian, and entrepreneur)
- Anna Maria Kummer (Professor of French)
- Michele Loconsole (Theologian and essayist)
- Ciro Lomonte (Architect)
- Martin Mosebach (Writer)
- Sandro Magister (Vatican correspondent, L’Espresso)
- Enrico Maria Radaelli (Professor of aesthetic philosophy)
- Marco Respinti (Journalist)
- Nikos A. Salingaros (Urbanist, architect adn mathematician)
- Alessandro Sansoni (Historian)
- Guido Santoro (Architect)
- Steven J. Schloeder (Architect)
- Maurizio Serio (Political scientist)
- Ulf Silfverling (Executive editor, Katolsk Observatör)
- Duncan Stroik (University of Notre Dame School of Architecture)
- Cecilia Tagliabue (French scholar)
- Gabriele Tagliaventi (Laboratory of Architectural Design and Building Technology, University of Ferrara)

In addition, we have created a website in four languages (Italian, Spanish, French and English)
www.appelloalpapa.blogspot.com/.
with German and Swedish soon to be added, where interested persons may sign the appeal.

We thank you for the attention that you may wish to give to our initiative.

Cordially in Domino Jesu,

The Promotional Committee



The website, launched on Nov. 4, Feast of St. Carlo Borromeo (seen in the illustration);




Sandro Magister, who is on the Promotional Committee for the appeal, gives more information on his regular articel on the Church for L'Espresso:


'Most Holy Father,
in this era of irrational barbarism...'


An appeal to Benedict XVI "for the return to an authentically Catholic sacred art."
The main signatory is the great German writer Martin Mosebach.
Meawhile, the meeting between Nov. 21 the Pope and artists in the Sistine Chapel is drawing near.






ROME, November 5, 2009 – A few days before the meeting announced for November 21 between the Pope and artists in the Sistine Chapel, an appeal anticipating its principal motivation has already come to Benedict XVI's desk.

The appeal is "for the return to an authentically Catholic sacred art," and was signed not by artists, but by scholars and other figures who are passionately concerned, for various reasons, about the fate of Christian art.

Among all: Nikos Salingaros, Steven J. Schloeder, Steen Heidemann, Duncan G. Stroik, Pietro De Marco, Martin Mosebach, Enrico Maria Radaelli.

Mosebach is an established German writer whom Joseph Ratzinger knows well. His latest book: The heresy of formlessness: The Roman liturgy and its enemy" was published this year, including an Italian edition by Cantagalli.

It is a stunning apologia on behalf of great Christian art, and more than that, of the Catholic liturgy itself as art. With biting invective against the iconoclasm that reigns today within the Catholic Church itself.

Radaelli, a disciple of the great Catholic philosopher and philologist Romano Amerio, is a sophisticated scholar of theological aesthetics. His masterpiece Ingresso alla bellezza [Entryway to beauty], released in 2008, is a magnificent introduction into the mystery of God through his Imago, Christ: Beauty as the manifestation of Truth.

The appeal was also born from seminars held in recent months in the library of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, hosted by its vice-president, Benedictine abbot Michael J. Zielinski.

Participants in the meetings included Fr. Nicola Bux and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, consultants for the office of papal liturgical celebrations. Fr. Lang is also an official at the Congregation for Divine Worship.

However, no clergyman or Vatican official figures among the promoters of the appeal, whose original signatories are all laymen of various competencies and professions.

After a brief introduction, the test unfolds in seven small chapters dedicated respectively to the causes of the current fracture between the Church and art, theological references, the commission, the artists, sacred space, sacred music, and the liturgy.

It ends with the appeal itself, which is formulated this way:

For all the reasons set out above, we are eager to receive from Your Holiness a fatherly listening and the merciful attention of the Vicar of Christ.

We beseech you, Holy Father, to read in our heartfelt appeal our most pressing concern for the appalling conditions of contemporary sacred art and sacred architecture, as well as a modest and most humble request for your help so that sacred art and architecture can once again be truly Catholic.

This, so that the faithful can again enjoy the sense of wonder and rejoice once again at the presence of the beauty in God's House.

This, so that the Church can be once more regain her rightful place, in this era of irrational, mundane and malforming barbarism, as a true and attentive promoter and custodian of an art that is both new and truly "original": an art that today as always flowers in every age of progress, which reflowers from its ancient roots and eternal origin, faithful to the most intimate sense of Beauty that shines in the Truth of Christ.



[Magister then gives the link to the website and the full text of the appeal].


Reconcilable differences:
The Church reaches out to modern arts

By Carol Glatz



VATICAN CITY, Nov. 6 (CNS) -- Once made in heaven, the marriage between art and the Church has long been on the skids.

"We are a bit like estranged relatives; there has been a divorce," said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Much of contemporary art walked away from art's traditional vocation of representing the intangible and the mysterious, as well as pointing the way toward the greater meaning of life and what is good and beautiful, he said during a Vatican press conference Nov. 5.

And the Church has spent the past century "very often contenting itself with imitating models from the past," rarely asking itself whether there were religious "styles that could be an expression of modern times," he added.

In an effort to "renew friendship and dialogue between the church and artists and to spark new opportunities for collaboration," he said, Pope Benedict XVI will be meeting more than 250 artists from around the world Nov. 21 inside one of the world's most stunning artistic treasures: the Sistine Chapel.

The Church's attempts to heal this rift with the world of modern arts span back to Pope Paul VI, who said the troubled relationship between the church and artists was based on misunderstandings and past restrictions on expression that had been removed.

Pope Paul loved art and saw an urgent need to encourage contemporary artists to reclaim their spiritual mission.

He held a landmark meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel in 1964 and told them they were precious to the Church for their "preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible -- or better still, moving -- the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of the ineffable, of God."

The Pope set up a collection of paintings, sculptures and graphic art to show how modern culture could still convey religious concepts. He inaugurated the Vatican's Collection of Modern Religious Art in 1973, which contains works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Edvard Munch.

Pope John Paul II, an accomplished actor, poet and playwright long before becoming a priest, eagerly continued Pope Paul's rapprochement.

He issued a papal letter to artists in 1999 in an effort to "consolidate a more constructive partnership between art and the church."

He sought to exalt artistic endeavors and urged artists and entertainers to steer clear of "empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity" or easy profit.

Artistic gatherings and events have been a common occurrence at the Vatican.

In the decades of Pope John Paul's pontificate, it was not unusual to see all sorts of popular art forms employed. In 2004, for example, Polish break dancers spun on their heads on the marble floors of the Vatican's sumptuous Clementine Hall to the Pope's apparent delight while music blared from a boombox.

Pope John Paul met with countless stars from the entertainment industry, and reminded them of their responsibility to be positive role models, "capable of inspiring trust, optimism and hope."

While Pope Benedict XVI is an avid pianist and has spoken numerous times about the importance of beauty and art, he tends to shy away from raucous encounters.

In fact, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 1998 that he had been skeptical of the idea of Pope John Paul sharing the stage in 1997 with a group of rock and pop stars that included Bob Dylan.

"They had a message that was completely different from the one the Pope was committed to," then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. He said he wondered whether "it was really right to let these types of 'prophets' intervene."

While it is not clear who made the decision, the Vatican discontinued its annual Christmas concert under Pope Benedict's watch after a 13-year run. [It was a pop concert, nothing more, and did not pretend to be anything but - so I don't know why it is being mentioned here in the same breath as sacred art - or at least, spiritually uplifting art - which is the art that is meant in the context of the Church reaching out to contemporary artists.]

The concert series, which featured well-known international stars each year, had been marred by a controversy in 2003 when the U.S. pop singer Lauryn Hill stunned the audience in 2003 by asking Church leaders to "repent" and speaking of the pain of those abused by priests. It was feared other artists might use their opportunity on a Vatican stage to promote their own personal agendas.

Instead Pope Benedict eagerly attends many of the classical concerts held in his honor.

He will even be featured on a new CD singing and reciting Marian hymns and prayers. The CD, called "Alma Mater," will be released worldwide Nov. 30 by Geffen Records. A similar CD of Pope John Paul reciting the rosary in Latin became an instant hit in 1994.

Pope Benedict has said the Church's ancient treasure of liturgical music should not be frozen in time, but should evolve with appropriate modern-day adaptations.

What is important is that it represents "holiness, true art and universality" and stirs the hearts of its listeners, letting them experience "the same intimacy of the life of God," he told staff and students of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in 2007.

Pope Benedict has said art needs to help people see that authentic truth, beauty and goodness are always intertwined and needs to allow "the beauty of the love of God" to shine through.

The human spirit longs for authentic -- not superficial and fleeting -- beauty that is "in full harmony with the truth and goodness," he has said.

Archbishop Ravasi expanded on that notion at the Nov. 5 press conference when he said art has always had an ethical and transformative role.

He said the world needs artistic expression that lifts people above and beyond "the dust of our own existence and helps us live better."
{And Ms Glatz, one certainly cannot say that of pop concerts, even if they happen to be held at the Vatican!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/11/2009 11:56]
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