Religious art expresses truths about Catholic faith
That is why the Church has used visual aids to teach members for centuries, scholar says

By Ann Carey

Jem Sullivan, who holds a doctoral degree in catechetics, teaches "Christian Art at the Service of Catechesis and Evangelization" on the pontifical faculty of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. She also is a trained docent at the National Gallery of Art, where she leads public tours of the gallery's medieval and Renaissance collections.

Our Sunday Visitor asked Sullivan to discuss the role of sacred art in the Catholic church building.

Our Sunday Visitor: You say that sacred art serves both aesthetic and didactic functions. What do you mean?

Jem Sullivan: On the one hand, sacred art has an aesthetic function in the decoration or ornamentation of a church.

But throughout 2,000 years of Christian history, sacred art also has been used to instruct the faithful. Pope John Paul II says this rather beautifully in his Letter to Artists when he 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. That's how the churches, the cathedrals, the mosaics, the stained glass, sculpture and painting can teach us something about the truths that we live by and have been baptized into.

OSV: So, that is why Gothic cathedrals were called "the catechism in stone"?

Sullivan: Exactly. In the Middle Ages, the average person did not have access to education. But the illiterate person would go into the cathedral and, in a sense, "read" the walls of the cathedral. In what they saw, they were coming to some understanding of their faith, of the biblical stories.

Pope St. Gregory the Great was one of the first to point to this didactic and catechetical function of art. That's why, for instance, when we look at a Gothic cathedral, we see the entire history of salvation translated into visual form. All this was meant to be a visual Gospel instructing people in the faith.

And, of course, the priest then had this ready-made visual aid for his preaching. So, here the word and the image come together in this concrete catechesis that was really appealing to the whole human person.

OSV: What do you mean when you say sacred art is a visible sign of some invisible reality?

Sullivan: The Catechism section on the sacraments says, "Liturgical catechesis aims to initiate people into the mystery of Christ by proceeding from the visible to the invisible, from the sign to the thing signified, from the 'sacraments' to the 'mysteries.'"

The sacraments, instituted by Christ, are the privileged means by which we move from the visible sign to the invisible reality through the ministry of the Church.

This is why Pope John Paul II has said, "Art can serve as a pre-sacrament." Through the visible, art leads us to being more open to the real presence of Christ in the sacraments.

OSV: Would the average Catholic today recognize and appreciate this function of sacred art?

Sullivan: Part of the problem today is that when people think of art, they think of experts and tend to believe that the average person out there really cannot appreciate or understand art.

By contrast, in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, it was the opposite. There was no "culture of the expert" when it came to Christian art. In fact, great works of sacred and religious art were created for, and sometimes by, ordinary people.

So, it's an interesting shift today, when we tend to have an elitist view of art. In fact, Christian art is for the person in the pew, so that is all the more reason I think we need to recover that view.

OSV: Do you think the movement to minimize sacred art in our churches has had a detrimental effect on catechesis?

Sullivan: One of the ironies of the past 40 years is this: As American culture becomes increasingly focused on the visual image through television, the Internet, and advertising, our churches are being stripped of images. That leave the average person with one less sensory expression of the truths of the faith.

Of course, in the sacraments and in the word of God, in the preaching and teaching, the people still encounter the truths of the faith, but this one extra element is gone. Meanwhile, our culture is putting out its messages in visual form, and this puts the Church at a disadvantage. Wouldn't it be great if the Church once again uses beauty as a means of preaching the Gospel?

OSV: Do you think the people in the pews are aware of this diminishing of the visual?

Sullivan: I think that Catholics intuitively sense something is missing. Our faith is incarnational, and it has a content. We have doctrine; we have teachings; we have a catechism. That is what is so wonderful about Catholicism.

And the Catholic artistic imagination is steeped in a 2,000-year tradition in which we have always looked for ways to incarnate the truths of faith in artistic forms. Take for example some of the beautiful ethnic churches that had the ornate altars and beautiful stained glass and mosaics. And then all of this is taken away and replaced with blank walls.

OSV: Why do you think some liturgists and church designers don't recognize and value this role of sacred art?

Sullivan: While their intentions may be good, perhaps they don't take into account the catechetical consequences of the stripping of the churches.

Ann Carey is a senior correspondent for Our Sunday Visitor.