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August 4, 2005

Art as "a concrete catechesis"

ARS Secretary Jem Sullivan spoke with the weekly Catholic national newspaper Our Sunday Visitor last year:

... throughout 2,000 years of Christian history, sacred art ... has been used to instruct the faithful. Pope John Paul II ... writes, "In a sense, art is a kind of visual Gospel, a concrete mode of catechesis." I think what he's saying is that the truths of faith that we profess in the Creed every Sunday also take the form of the beautiful.

When we think of truth, we usually think of that which appeals to the intellect; we think of words, lines on a page or a catechism in written form. But the Holy Father is saying that the truths of the faith also take complementary forms of expression, and that is what sacred and religious art is all about.

Here's the interview.

Posted by webmaster at August 4, 2005 7:25 PM