Category Archives: Roman Catholicism

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Seeing The Gospel in Gothic Architecture

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(This post is a vast revision of a previous article, recently rewritten for Sojourn Midtown’s move into our new St. Vincent’s Cathedral facility.)

Gothic architecture (and its revivals by default) was created for the specific purpose of corporate worship space. Originating in the rebuilding of the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis by Abbot Suger in the 12th Century, the style was meant to instill a sense of awe, of inward and outward meditation, and to convey spiritual truth in simultaneous experience. Here are a few key highlights of the Gothic-style church building that we can see in Sojourn Midtown’s new worship space, the former St. Vincent de Paul Church. Continue reading →

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The Shadows of Advent

We are entering what is known in our contemporary culture as the Christmas season. This is in many ways a misnomer, however. Ecclesiastically, the time known as Christmas begins Christmas Day and lasts the next twelve days. Christmas is the celebration of Christ’s coming, his first coming in Bethlehem a little over two thousand years ago, as well as his second coming (though this one tends to slip into the background). However the period leading up to Christmas, starting on the fourth Sunday prior and ending Christmas Eve, is called Advent. Advent anticipates Christmas, it commemorates the fact that God’s people were longingly awaiting their coming Messiah in spiritual darkness. We also await our Messiah… we await his return, whereupon he will expel the darkness (sin, death, and Satan) from this world once and for all. Continue reading →

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Sojourn, the Pope, and Artistic Excellence

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It seems fitting on the same day that Sojourn Music releases it’s latest album, a Christmas project called A Child is Born, that Peter Leithart shares this word from the late Pope John Paul II:

“Today, as yesterday, musicians, composers, liturgical chapel cantors, church organists and instrumentalists must feel the necessity of serious and rigorous professional training. They should be especially conscious of the fact that each of their creations or interpretations cannot escape the requirement of being a work that is inspired, appropriate and attentive to aesthetic dignity, transformed into a prayer of worship when, in the course of the liturgy, it expresses the mystery of faith in sound.” Continue reading →

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Glorious Gothic: Architecture, Theology, and Worship

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Recently I have had a couple of opportunities to wander through the Louisville structure built in the late 19th Century as St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. This great old Gothic Revival structure, out of regular use since the early 1990s, was recently purchased by my church, Sojourn, in hopes of renovating it and using it for our four midtown Sunday services and other functions. While being much battered and neglected by almost twenty years of disuse, there is a sense of awe that is inescapable when one enters the old sanctuary. Even though the paint is peeling and lacks it’s old leaden luster, though the altar is barren of its former somewhat Marian magnificence, one cannot help but feel like one is in the presence of something transcending our current world. And this was fully intentional.

Gothic architecture (and its revivals by default) was created for the specific purpose of corporate worship space. Originating in the rebuilding of the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis by Abbot Suger in the 12th Century, the style was meant to instill a sense of awe, of inward and outward meditation, and to convey spiritual truths… all in simultaneous experience. Let us journey together through a few key highlights of the Gothic church as I reflect, in turn, on how these are still represented in the broken battlements of the old St. Vincent’s Church.

Trinity

One does not have to journey inside St. Vincent’s to begin to experience the theological intentionality of the architecture. We instantly see the three doorways of the facade representing the divine Trinity, with this being made more explicit in the St. Vincent’s structure by the glass depiction of the a stylized Trinity symbol over the doorway. We also first see an element, though small now, that we will be overwhelmed with in the sanctuary, the stained glass window.

Boat

More explicit in medieval Gothic structures with their flying buttresses completing the shape of the entire building, the enormous Gothic arches (which come to a point, dissimilar from the rounded Roman-style arches typical of older basilicas) call to mind an overturned boat. One is to remember, when seeing this, three elements of spiritual history.  We remember Noah, whose family alone was called out and preserved in an ark in the first destruction of the world. We remember that several of Christ’s original apostles were fishermen, and that he told Simon Peter he would make them “fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). It has also been said that many a church meeting house in a new setting was begun by overturning the hull of a ship onto the land.

Light

Abbot Suger was adamant  that with grand, glorious windows “the whole [church] would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most sacred windows, pervading the interior beauty.” This was in high contrast to the often small ceiling windows of older Roman basilicas than often seemed dark, even in midday. No, there must be light, and so tall, great stained-glass windows stretched down the sides of the old cathedrals, filling them with enormous light.  A highlight of these were the circular rose windows, normally on the facade of the building, though occasionally above the altar as well. Those visiting St. Vincent’s will note that the rose windows there are, in a strikingly dissimilar place, in the ends of the short transepts, crossing the building horizontally instead of their usual place at the vertical ends of the church. Notable is that only a few small windows in St. Vincent’s have significant representational images, a fitting contrast to the often vivid depictions of saints and Bible scenes, now that it is being taken over by a Reformed Protestant church. When one first enters st. Vincent’s, one is in the narthex largely absent of light, then taken into the sanctuary filled with it. Ex tenebris lux… out from darkness, light… the old abbot had it right again.

Transcendence

There are various other elements of the church I could point out.  The high vaulted ceilings were created both to induce the feeling of singing to the heavens and to create the ambient echo gothic cathedrals are known for. The altarpiece situated in the middle of the apse (the semi-circular “stage” area at the front of the sanctuary) was to put Christ very literally at the center of all things.  The transept horizontal wings crossing the center nave  creates a Roman cross out of the whole building. These and more could all be exposited, but this is a blog post.  There are others who have handled this much better in a host of art history books. For me, it is simple to say that I am glad of the rich spiritual history that gothic architecture has imparted in its structures, and that my Christian family is now the beneficiaries of a facility in that great tradition.

Sources used:
Helen Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (Harcourt College Publishers) and class notes from Prof. Curtis Chapman (Reinhardt College) and Dr. Steve Halla (SBTS).

(Illustration: a detail of one of the old St. Vincent de Paul’s smaller stained glass windows)

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The Devil in Film: The Rite (2011)

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We are about to embark on two new series here at Image of Truth. The first, “The Devil in Film,” will explore the portrayal of Satan throughout notable films in which he or his demonic minions are central to the plot. Essentially, with a few exceptions, these will be analyses of the most notable possession/exorcism films of the film era, as this is the most common and potent way Satan is portrayed on screen. We will also later launch into “Jesus in Film,” hopefully in time for Easter, in which we will look at the foremost films on the life of Christ. We will start our series “The Devil in Film” with the latest incarnation, 2011′s most notable supernatural drama so far, The Rite.

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The Rite starts off with the preparation of a dead body in a funeral parlor and instantly gives the audience member a warning of what the film could be: a gore-fest of things we really don’t want to see, with perhaps an exorcism simply as the vehicle for which these gruesome items occur. Thankfully, this macabre beginning turns out to be misleading, and the film becomes one of the smartest and most theologically thought-provoking horror films (if one can call it a horror film) in several years. The film follows the story of a mortician’s son named Michael (Colin O’Donoghue). Somewhat distant from his father (Rutger Hauer), Michael enters Catholic seminary. Although a skeptic who questions the Catholic faith, he hopes to, at the very least, achieve a free degree from the process, then drop out before full ordination as a priest.

Three years later, we see Michael being ordained as a deacon and putting in his resignation to his advisor, Father Matthew (Toby Jones). After an accident, where Father Matthew witnesses Michael gives the last rites to a pleading, dying woman, Matthew is convinced that Michael should be a priest and convinces him to take an exorcism course in Rome. During the course, the teacher, Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds), notes Michael’s skepticism and sends him to observe a well-seasoned exorcist, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins). Meanwhile, Michael comes into contact with another listener in the class, Angeline (Alice Braga), a reporter investigating the resurgence of exorcisms in the Catholic Church. As Michael’s doubt and faith are equally tested by his experiences in Rome, his ultimate fate may lie in the balance.

I cannot tell how surprisingly impressed I was with this film. The central themes of this piece are faith and doubt.  In fact, the film could be considered to be faith-based to a fault, if the viewer is not affiliated with some sort of faith background.  It has been noted elsewhere that Catholic reviewers liked the film much better than film reviewers as a whole.  The film rawly confronts growing up with a religious attachment, yet facing the struggle to root one’s self in the actual core of that faith. The Rite deals passionately with the reality of doubt and even living with faith and doubt constantly coinciding. The film rightly exposes the devil’s tactic of playing on the disbelief of humans, rather than exposing himself in broad daylight, and his use of our unbelief in his attempt to bring us down. The Protestant viewer is likely to disagree with the film’s depiction of Christian believers becoming possessed (however, some of those same might also regard the the portrayed Catholics as unbelievers, so we’ll just leave this one be for the moment). This is expected from the point of view of the film, and enlivens a bit of the post-viewing discussion as a whole.

The scenes of exorcism are much subtler on a whole (with perhaps a couple of exceptions at the climax), and therefore actually more believable. Combined with exceptional visuals of Rome and some great supporting performances by the likes of the always reliable Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, and Rutger Hauer (three vastly underrated actors), the lead performances are well played. Even Anthony Hopkins, who is always enjoyable but also always tends to chew the scenery in eccentric portrays, is wonderfully understated as the old hermit exorcist. The moods of the film really capture the moodiness of a European horror and the ancient-world refinery one would expect of a film on Catholicism set in Rome.

In the end, the whole of the film travels new ground in the the subgenre of exorcism film and provides provoking thoughts and questions into the struggle between faith, doubt, and the realities of the spirit world.

The Rite (2010), 113 min.
Production: New Line Cinema, Contrafilm, Fletcher & Company
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Alice Braga, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Rutger Hauer
Director: Mikael Håfström
Screenwriters: Mike Baglio and Michael Petroni
Producers: Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson
Executive producers: Richard Brener, Merideth Finn, Robert Bernacchi
Director of photography: Ben Davis
Production designer: Andrew Laws
Editor: David Rosenbloom
Costume designer: Carlo Poggioli
Music: Alex Heffes

(Illustration: still from The Rite)

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Explore the Vatican

Perhaps there is no place that is more of a treasure-trove of Western Christian art than the Vatican City.  The works of great Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo adorn the chapels and haunt the recesses of the Vatican so that the entirety of the Roman Catholic compound is a work to behold.  Now, thanks to the Vatican Museum, you can tour virtual renderings of several areas of the Vatican online, such as the Sistine Chapel and Pauline Chapel, allowing you to see the extent of their extensive frescos and sculptures.  Amidst all this, you are accompanied by some beautiful music to set the mood.

(There is also a very impressive guided tour of the Vatican Necropolis, the very bowels of St. Peter’s Basilica, featuring the original tomb of St. Peter.)

HT: BLP, AP

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Beautiful Clarity

“For a Christian rhetoric, perspicuity is the foundation of all the canons of style. Clarity of thought must always be the preacher’s aim. Clarity is the basic beauty of eloquent oratory and the driving power that persuades one’s listeners. The beauty of teaching is making clear the truth, for it is in the truth itself, rather than in the words about truth, in which beauty is found. The truth itself, Augustine tells us, when presented in simplicity, gives pleasure because it is the truth. This is one of Augustine’s best insights. Here, a thousand years before the Protestant Reformation, one easily detects the guiding principle of Protestant plain style. Here is the foundation of the Protestant understanding of beauty.”
– Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 2

HT: Douglas Wilson

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Ridiculing the Enemy

“What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us…
The gargoyles that were placed on the churches of old had the same meaning. They symbolized the Church ridiculing the enemy. They stick out their tongues and make faces at those who would assault the Church. Gargoyles are not demonic; they are believers ridiculing the defeated demonic army.”
– James B. Jordan, “Concerning Halloween”