Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Imagine that a non-Catholic friend asked us to recommend a program of reading, in order to come to a deeper understanding of Catholicism. We would probably think first of listing some books of theology. But it might be equally illuminating for the person concerned to read, say, Dante's Divine Comedy, Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, or Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. Moreover, to take this approach further and move from literature to the arts, we might also suggest a visit to Chartres Cathedral, a viewing of Fra Angelico's paintings in San Marco, Florence, or Michelangelo's in the Sistine Chapel, and a listening to a Palestrina Mass or Berlioz's Te Deum, to mention only a few examples. The suggestions that I have just made point to the fact that, historically, there has been a close connection between Catholicism and the arts and literature. In this article I shall show something of the nature of this relationship, taking most (though not all) of my examples from the visual arts, and then seek to explain it, appealing to the sacramental principle, understood widely, that is that the invisible can be known through the visible, the internal and spiritual can be expressed through the perceptible, so that God can be glimpsed in the world through the signs and likenesses that He has created. I have found that many people who are put off by the Catholic Church's apparently authoritarian ... log in or subscribe to read full text