a novus ordo watch pictorial
essay
Expressions of the same faith?
The 12th Station of the Cross
The 12th Station of the Cross
Conflicting portrayals of Christ's Crucifixion and the subversion of Catholic sacred art
On
the left is a traditional Catholic representation of the Crucifixion painted
as part of set of Stations of the Cross; to the right, an avant-garde Novus
Ordo painting claiming to represent the same subject, which was also
commissioned as part of a set of "Stations." Greater contrast in the
artistic approaches taken in depicting the same subject can be scarcely be
imagined, but, despite the glaring differences, can they both somehow be
said to reflect the Catholic Faith? The Catholic credentials of the
former are evident and can be attested to by noting that Catholics, whether
they be from the First Century or the 21st Century, would immediately know
what is being represented and respond favorably how it's been rendered,
while the latter, unable to make such a claim and although admittedly a
"unique" version, is found prominently displayed on the website of an
ostensibly Catholic diocese and has in no way been censured by those
controlling the Vatican. Yet the question remains: Do they express the
same faith?
"By the cross with thee to stay¼"
In the
traditional painting, this central teaching of the Church is rendered
realistically, yet most reverently. By so doing a key element of sacred
art is realized: The composition contains both the ordinary and the ideal,
the temporal and the eternal. The skilled and devout artist, whose name
regrettably did not accompany this reproduction, takes the viewers to
Calvary and invites them to meditate on this great mystery of the Faith. The
characters of the Passion, both the good and the evil, are well defined and
even small details such as the attire, a solider with spear on horseback,
the titulum (or inscription) above Jesus' head and the turbulent sky are
wrought with painstaking detail—it
is clear that the artist wishes for there to be no mistaking the event being
depicted. At the same time, there is nothing banal or secular about
how it is conceptualized: Whatever compositional elements depict the world
are unmistakably made subordinate to those that are holy, thus there is a
kind of moral proportion to it, as well. Like stained glass, the painting is
the Gospel brought into the realm of the visual arts, the catechism captured
in oil and canvas.
More than that, however, the picture has its devotional side as it evokes a
real sympathy from its viewers for Christ and His Blessed Mother, who are
easily identifiable and painted in a very dignified fashion. The Savior,
lifted up upon the Cross, rightly stands out in the composition, His
suffering is evident, as is His immense love for us. It eloquently expresses
in brush strokes precisely the same truths
and sentiments conveyed by words of The Way of the Cross according to St.
Francis of Assisi:
Behold Jesus crucified! Behold His wounds, received for love of you! His whole appearance betokens love: His head is bent to kiss you; His arms are extended to embrace you; His Heart is open to receive you. O superabundance of love, Jesus, the Son of God, dies upon the cross, that man may live and be delivered from everlasting death!
Also poignant is the manner in which Mary is shown comforted by St. John,
who clutches her arm as if to steady her, and two holy women as a sword of
grief pierces her soul. Her complete union with her Son's
sufferings is
admirably presented—as if to say, there were two holocausts on Calvary, yet mystically
they are one and the same. The painting thus invites us to reflect on (and
even enter into spiritually) what Dom Guéranger writes about our Lady's
Dolors in The Liturgical Year: "A most sublime union is established
between the oblation of the Incarnate Word and that of Mary; the divine
blood and the tears of the Mother flow together and are mixed for the
redemption of the human race."
The other characters in the foreground are also depicted so as to move the
viewer to identify with them: St. Mary Magdalene, the penitent who once
tearfully washed our Lord's feet with her hair, now embraces the foot of the
Cross, her bowed head just below his feet once again, and an unidentified
disciple (St. Nicodemus, perhaps), serving as Everyman, prayerfully ponders
Christ's Sacrifice.
This, then, is a superb piece of religious art that ably assists
the observer both as an devotional object that invites reflection on the
Crucifixion from various facets and as a useful tool for conveying the
truths of the Faith. As in all great art there is a timeless quality about
it that touches those who see it today as much as when it was painted,
because it contains within it the three components classically understood to
be the aesthetic cornerstones of the Arts: the good, the true and the
beautiful. Most importantly, it uses the visual and mundane to convey the
invisible and transcendent. In short, it is a model for what all Catholic
sacred art ought to be.
Prior to Vatican II the Church had certain strictures and expectations
regarding the way an artist would paint sacred scenes. As far back as the
Second Council of Nicaea in the 8th Century, the Church declared: "The
composition of the image is not the invention of the painters, but the
result of the legislation and approved tradition of the Church" In other
words, while not required to paint with a monotonous sameness, the Church
insisted that artists should approach their subjects with a certain holy
caution and obedience to the regulations handed down to them by Holy Mother
the Church. Writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Loius Gillet observes
concerning this necessary caution:
It would be impossible to define more clearly the importance of art in the life of the Church, and at the same time its subordinate position. Thence, obviously, results one of the chief characteristics of religious painting, its conservative instinct and its tendency to hieratic formalism. Art being regarded as didactic, necessarily partook of the severe nature of dogma. The slightest error bordered on heresy.¼
This is a very important point,
because it shows the Church's recognition that art conveys ideas and when
those ideas touch upon the Faith, it is the Church's responsibility to see
that no error enter into a composition.
One example of this was the Church's condemnation of paintings of the
Crucifixion or Descent from the Cross that depicted our Lady as having
fallen unconscious. This portrayal was referred to as "the swoon" and
artists who painted it were motivated out of the pious desire of showing the
Blessed Mother's complete union with her divine Son's Passion, much as was
discussed above. However the Church ruled against such depictions on the
grounds that, however well intentioned, it showed something untrue, citing
the Gospel of John: "When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the
disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold
thy son." (19:26; emphasis added) According the ruling, to show the swoon
was to show a weakness in our Lady that was not there and so, despite the
intent, it was feared such a depiction would not give the faithful an
accurate image of what would have been observed of her as she stood at the
foot of the Cross. So what the Church sought was a totally objective
presentation of the event and not one that while true in a mystical sense,
was not consistent with the physical scene at Calvary.
Post-Vatican II art, on the contrary, has always valued expressiveness and
novelty over any concerns for doctrinal accuracy as the other "Station"
discussed abundantly shows.
The Thing without a name
When one moves over to the other painting displayed here, the reaction is
likely neither to be awareness that a dogma of the Catholic Faith is
being depicted artistically nor a sense of reverent devotion, but rather a
perplexed "What on earth is that!?" take, followed by an eerie, "creeped
out" feeling. This is part of a set of "Stations" executed for the
French "diocese" of Belfort-Montbeliard by Polish artist Grazyna
Tarkowska. In the introduction to this work found on the "diocesan" website,
she writes that her goal was to create compositions that speak to modern
suffering humanity by linking it to the sufferings of Christ; that way it
better can "relate" to the Passion. To that end, each "Station" is
accompanied by a Gospel quotation, though a number of verses do not
correspond to the scene, in some cases not even coming from any of the
Passion narratives at all, so the viewer is left to intuit why and how said verse
is relevant to the Station, if at all. And this is appropriate for these
paintings, because nearly everything about them is subjective in
presentation, leaving the viewer to speculate upon what the artist is trying
to tell us.
Nowhere is this more evident that in simply trying to make a identification
of just who or what is being depicted. As seen in the example above, which
is consistent with almost all the other "Stations" in the set, Christ is not
depicted in a recognizable way, but merely as a vaguely humanoid form. There
are exceptions, such as the 10th "Station," where there is a human
represented, not Christ, mind you, but some unidentifiable androgyne
or, at the other extreme, in the 12th there is no longer a figure
recognizable as even humanoid, put merely a grayish lump of
something. (To view the entire set, visit the first link below.) So what
is the artist trying to say?
Well, Tradition in Action [TIA] in its feature of the Belfort
project states: "Our Lord Jesus Christ is presented as an Extra-
Terrestrial."
Is that true? Certainly it's a good surmise, since the "Jesus" that is
depicted in most of the set's "Stations" does have general features that
resemble the title character in the movie E.T. and many other recent
cinematic depictions of such creatures, which in turn are modeled after the
descriptions of extraterrestrials given by purported abductees, including
novelist Whitney Strieber, who wrote Communion (right) and other
books about "the Grays," supposedly based on his own close encounters with
these creatures.
Whether that was the artist's conscious intention or not is anyone's guess,
but that's all it is, a guess. We might even say, as good a guess as any.
Who knows? We won't quibble with TIA on the point, but will simply point out
that there are other ways of seeing it, as well. "Station" 12 could
represent, for example: a phantom, a decaying or dissected corpse, a
terribly emaciated person, a voodoo doll or some other caricature of a human
being, a partial X-ray, a genetically modified human-animal "hybrid" of some
sort, someone being vaporized in a nuclear blast, a zombie or some other
"undead" monster, a demonic manifestation, etc. One might accurately say
that it's as much a thing as it is a clearly identifiable human being
(much less a clearly identifiable Jesus Christ).
The point here isn't to debate what it most looks like, but only to show
that in its very ambiguity it is far removed from the idea of true sacred
art, for unless a viewer was told the subject matter beforehand, the
Crucifixion of our Lord would be the last thing that would cross the
mind. When an artist has veered so far from simply presenting a
straightforward representation of the event that the finished product
becomes inscrutable, then that artwork must be regarded as a failure to
communicate, regardless the technical prowess with which it is done. Seen
from another angle the painting is, strictly speaking, the artistic
expression of theological Modernism insofar as it does not view the
Crucifixion in the sense that the Church views it, but by the artist's own
admission, in a way that can be appreciated by modern viewers, as
though traditional paintings rendered according to the dictates of Catholic
theology are somehow incapable of meeting that demand. And that
is the essence of Modernism.
Eliminating the Passion by obscuring Christ
Even if one takes the artist at her word that the painting depicts a
scene from the life of Christ, there isn't enough going on around the figure
to make it clear what scene from His life: the Annunciation (of a
Space Baby?), Satan telling our Lord to worship him, Jesus walking on the
water, a demon being cast out, the Transfiguration, Lazarus emerging from
the tomb, the risen Christ telling the Apostles to fear not, etc. It can
mean anything or nothing, so vague the manner in which it is rendered. Could
"Station" 12 somehow show Christ on the Cross? Yes, but only in some highly
abstracted manner, where, aside from what could be a Cross and what
could be a halo, there is no point of reference to establish this as
Christ at Calvary, nothing to show that this is a real event fixed
historically in a real place and time with other people involved in the
drama, just an ill-defined figure suspended in some metaphysical vacuum.
But, to play the devil's advocate a bit more, proponents of the "Stations"
might argue that those viewing the paintings already know what the
subject is, so this allows for some artistic freedom. Of course, there's a
line separating freedom and license that this artist not only crossed, but
took a flying leap over! The argument falls flat because it actually
concedes the deficiencies of the work. "Okay, now I get it," is not
an acceptable reaction to sacred art. Any reasonably devout Catholic looking
at the above painting with the understanding that it's supposed to represent
the Crucifixion would reject it on the spot as being too freakish and
ambiguous to properly express the Passion in an intelligible way. (We easily
can imagine the quick response of a small child raised in the Faith when
confronted with this picture: "No it's not, that's not Jesus.")
Again, as noted above, good religious art always must clearly and faithfully
covey the truths of the Catholic Faith, yet on this count the Belfort
"Stations" fail miserably.
Yet as much as it is worthless at the catechetical level, it's deficiencies
as devotional art are, if anything, far more egregious. Whereas the
traditional Station shown above lovingly draws the viewer to meditation the
death of the Savior in a spiritually edifying way, Belfort's "post-Christian"
version does nothing of the sort, but rather repels with its nightmarish
imagery. What sentiments of holy compassion can we have for something that
we can't even identify as human, much less as the God-Man?
Ironically, the artist's stated goal—to make Stations that are relevant for
modern people so they more readily can identify with our Lord's
Passion—is
not achieved in her version, but
in the traditional one. And this is because, since the Gospel is a
divine message meant for people in all times and all places until the
Judgment, it can never grow old and is therefore not in need of
"improvement" by avant-garde innovations. The nouveau "Stations"
obscure the message and alienate the viewer from Christ, while the
traditional Stations illuminates it and attracts them to Him.
Two visions, two religions
Up to this point the essay has shown that in no way can the "Stations"
rendered by Grazyna Tarkowska be considered valid expressions of Catholic
art, either from the didactic or devotional standpoint. They can,
nevertheless, be considered as effectively advancing a faith, just not the
Catholic Faith.
The faith exhibited in the Belfort "Stations" is clearly one far removed
from the one Christ founded upon St. Peter, though this counterfeit seeks to
mimic the true Faith in some ways, as its leaders unlawfully occupy the
seats of power in Catholic Church, much as the Arian heretics controlled
nearly all bishoprics in Christendom at the time of St. Athanasian over a
millennium ago.
It seeks to mimic the Faith in some ways, but not all ways, as sometimes the
serpent's tail can be seen protruding out beneath the vestments and at other
times the artifice is cast almost completely away. Such is the case with
these "Stations," which misappropriate the name of a real Catholic devotion
and pervert its meaning. This notion of Christ as a visitor
from beyond (in the science fiction sense) is manifest in a somewhat
different version in the pantheistic "Cosmic Christ" that was
promoted by the late Jesuit of France, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (left,
a New Age painting entitled "Cosmic Christ," in which our Lord is shown not
as a Divine Person, but a demonic-looking energy grid). Teilhard was condemned by the Holy Office in 1946 by no
less a personage than Fr. Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, only to be protected by the notorious then-Papal
Nunico of France, Bp. Angelo Roncalli (aka John XXIII).
Teilhard
denied or held false opinions about a number of dogmas and other fundamental
Catholic teachings, such as
original sin and the existence of Adam and Eve, and also taught such errors
as that there should be a "synthesis" of the Christian God and the "Marxist
God," that the is no difference between spirit and matter, that God evolves along
with the universe, that humanity will form an evolutionary group
consciousness through "Cosmic Christ" that leads all into a nebulous "Omega
Point" and that it was his intention to establish a new "improved
Christianity." ) In 1950 a number of Teilhard's errors were condemned by
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Humani Generis, but he nevertheless
is considered to have been a major influence at Vatican II.
This New Age "Christ" has gained much popularity in
certain quarters of the Novus Ordo church, such as the "diocese" of Belfort-Montbeliard.
Though technically "condemned" by the conciliar church, New Age
pseudo-mysticism, which also includes the attempt to blend traditions of
false Eastern religions, flourishes in it and has even influenced much of the
thinking of those who ostensibly oppose it. One need only look at the influx
of such things as Enneagrams (a geometric figure—according
to one occultist, derived from a secret society emblem—used
for "personality readings"), "Catholic" Zen, Goddess worship, poisonous
books such as the apostate Benedictine Dom Bede Griffiths' Cosmic
Revelation: The Hindu Way to God, (Griffiths described the Hindu temple
as a "sacrament"), John Paul II's promotion of Buddhism (he called it “a
religion of salvation”), etc. (It should be kept in mind that there are
different currents of thought within the New Age movement that sometimes
contradict one another, but the one constant is this: All of them lead to
apostasy.)
"Combatants in a war of ideas"
Many
other examples of the New Age in Novus Ordo art can be shown (see virtually
any month of our archives for instances of it), but we'll cited but one
other, critiqued in the Adoremus
Bulletin, which seems particularly fitting to the present discussion.
There it mentions the defense given in the church bulletin for a
bizarre processional cross that had replaced the traditional one—unlike the
latter, the new cross had no corpus, but instead a large hole in its
center):
"[A] bulletin insert, written by liturgical designer John Buscemi (described on one site as an "ex-priest"—NOW), explained the new cross-with-a-hole as a complex theological and psychological statement rooted in the doctrines of Swiss psychiatrist and aficionado of Eastern religions, Carl Jung. The hole in the cross represented a "birth canal" through which the "community" is "birthed."
Irene Colligan Groot, the woman who wrote this for Adoremus Bulletin, said she then researched the writings of Jung, the 20th century Swiss psychiatrist who is a hero of New Agers, and found a relevant passage in his introduction to the Buddhist occult work, Tibetan Book of the Dead;, which naturally had nothing whatsoever to do with Christ. (Her complete article can be found on one of links below.) She goes on to write that a friend of hers felt she was being obsessing overly much about this Christ-less, "holey" cross, but she countered:
I disagree. Take the crucifix, for example. Layfolks like me are combatants in a war of ideas. Our battleground is one of words and symbols of which the crucifix is pre-eminent. The crucifix defines a world of objective reality; the fact that God took on human form, lived among us for 33 years and died at a real place on the map. We think like Flannery O'Connor who said, "Jesus is a fact"!
And what she writes here is key.
It does matter how our Lord is represented very much, because it
reflects what we think about Him. A cross with a hole in the place of Christ's body is
a
symbolic negation of the Faith: a Christianity without Christ and a denial
of the Incarnation. Likewise, the Jesus as alien from outer space or cosmic
matrix, the
Christa "crucifix" depicting a woman on the Cross, the "gay" Jesus and
countless other blasphemies palmed off as the latest word in religious art,
all attempt to deconstruct the Faith through parodies of traditional iconography.
How Christ, His Blessed Mother and the saints are depicted has a direct
relationship to the beliefs of the faithful, not unlike the relationship of
liturgy and belief, which is why the enemies of the Church deemed it crucial
to replace good Catholic art with either heretical counterfeits or at the
very least with insipid ones inspired by the worst popular culture has to
offer, often in conjunction with liturgical changes.
Using art as a weapon
Nearly
one hundred years ago, a group of cultural revolutionaries banded together
in Switzerland and started a movement called Dada, which held as its goal
the use of art to destroy art. What we're seeing in the Belfort "Stations"
and other such abominations is the using of art to destroy faith or more
precisely, the Faith. The parallels don't stop there. Basic tenets
observed by both the Dadaists and avant-garde religious artists include the
belief that their compositions should: 1. Be thrown together as randomly as
possible, thus eschewing traditional compositional components such as order,
proportion and balance or if such elements are observed, find a way to
disrupt by the addition of some incongruous feature; be used to attack
traditional beliefs and mores; 2. Be as obscure as possible, leaving
everything to the subjective interpretation of the viewer, and 3. Be
offensive, irreverent and outrageous, rather than inspiring, sincere and
uplifting. Hence, the "Christa" crucifix emerges as a linear descendant of
Dadaist Marcel Duchamp's infamous version of the Mona Lisa, in which
he added a mustache and goatee. Many similar examples can be seen where
religious imagery is being perverted in a Dadaist fashion (some in
unspeakably vile ways), often, of course, by the open enemies of God, since
it allows them a free shot at the Catholic Church on the grounds of freedom
of speech.
One
such instance was the 1999 film, Dogma, a comedy which featured
foul-mouthed entertainer George Carlin as the liberal Cardinal Ignatius
Glick. As part of his "Catholicism WOW!" marketing campaign to change the
public image of the Catholic Church from a "passé, archaic institution" to
one that's laid-back, fun and energetic, Glick announces that the time has
come to ditch the crucifix, as it is a "scary" and "depressing" symbol. And
what going to replace it? Enter Buddy Christ (photo right), a winking,
grinning, "hip" caricature of the Sacred Heart, whose pose has been likened
to a drug dealer greeting an familiar customer. Few things could be imagined
any more offensive to Catholics than Buddy Christ, yet this same impious
image appeared on the cover of the November 23, 2001 of Commonweal, a
"progressive" Novus Ordo magazine, not as part of a protest decrying
it as an grave insult to our Lord, but as a positive lead-in to the feature
article, "Young American Catholics : Who are they & what do they want?" by
James T. Fisher.
And that's as if to say, here's how the youth view Jesus today. The funny
thing though is that that's probably correct to a large extent, for we live
in a time when the idea of a Buddy Christ is not a far cry from what is
being taught in the Novus Ordo as part of the "new springtime" for the
Church. This is trivializing the sacred through the arts. If they can get
people to laugh at Jesus through images like Buddy Christ, which now is
being marketed as a dashboard statue, then He isn't taken seriously anymore.
No longer will he be viewed by these people as the He Who will mete out
God's justice on the Judgment Day, but as J.C. the "cool dude" who winks at
their sins as he parties on with them.
In ages past, enemies of the Church smashed and burned sacred images as an
attack on the Faith, but today the attack is more insidious because those
who despise her connived to destroy her not through an outward assault, but
through the malicious manipulation of those images. This has come about by
enemies infiltrating and commandeering of her positions of power in
order to gradually remove all traditional Catholic doctrines and replace
them with heresies. The ultimate goal is outright apostasy, a
goal that has made considerable strides since the closing of Vatican II. And
one of the methods used is this Dada-like subversion of the visual arts,
music and furnishing of churches.
The gates of Hell can never prevail against the Church in the long run we
know, but
that doesn't mean some battles wont be lost along the way that will inflict
serious harm to souls. Such is the history of the Church. Certainly, the
Church has been laid low by this Modernist infestation, very
low indeed. And by the "wreckovation" of churches the infiltrators have
adversely effected the faith of countless millions of Catholics worldwide. (Wreckovation:
a neologism popularized
by author Michael Rose, which combines the words wreck +
renovation to signify the gutting of once-Catholic churches of any
furnishing that gave those church a uniquely Catholic character, while
either leaving the interior barren and uninviting or else bringing in cheap,
tasteless, artificial replacements.)
Re-educating for ruin
Wreckovation is a very apt term in the present discussion, because it
connotes something more than it seems on the surface. When a place is
renovated, it is repaired and refurnished to change its condition and
appearance for the better. Now, when a church is wreckovated, the changes
are supposed to be for the better; like a renovated house, they're supposed
to give the church a fresh, renewed look and feel, because the
wreckovation is seen to be part of the bigger "renewal" (that is,
subversion) of a belief system that
starts with doing violence to the liturgical life of Catholics. The
wreckovating of a church over the decades since Vatican II typically has
included as stages in the process: the replacing of the altar (often
dumpster-bound) with a table; the disappearance of the tabernacle once
resting prominently on the now-discarded altar into a side chapel; the
removal of beautiful statues of the saints and, in their places, tacky
(often burlap) banners with juvenile-looking artwork and inane slogans; the
dignified, artistically decorated pre-conciliar chasubles were tossed aside
in favor of tawdry, even at times clownish-looking outfits; Plainchant,
polyphony and solid Catholic hymns were silenced by pop and folk music
featuring unorthodox lyrics, and crucifixes were replaced barren
crosses or a risen Christ who bore no marks of His Passion. In newly-built
built churches the rebels could have their way from the very inception, of
course, which has led to some genuine abominations. (Photo left: A casual
T-shirt "Mass" takes place at the Jesuit Youth House Goiania, Brazil as the
"bishop" observes from the background. Note that while there is a quilt-like
banner, there is no evidence of a crucifix, candles, statues or anything
else that would distinguish this as Catholic. Of course, that's as it should
be, because it isn't Catholic, yet still it falsely adverstises
itself as such to the detriment of souls.)
Everything was done to cheapen the appearance of the church, but
wreckovation worked hand-in-glove with its destructive cousin, liturgical
revolution, to do more than a mere makeover, for this had to do with winning
minds and hearts to a new religion. Every step in the wreckovation process
had a corresponding one in the changes of worship. For example, removal of
our Lord from the sanctuary (out of sight, out of mind) and
another destructive act, the elimination of the altar rail (no more reverent
kneeling to receive), were accompanied by lay "Eucharistic ministers" and
communion in hand, all of which combined to reduce significantly belief in
the Real Presence. And for all the avant-garde, Dadaesque or just plain bad
art that's forced out the venerable furnishings in these wreckovations, such
as the "holey" cross and the Jesus as ET, there is one crucial thing to
remember: It's not just about substituting the cheap and the ugly for true
Catholic art, as bad as that is, but about using these substitutions to
ruin Catholics by changing how they perceive the essentials of the Faith
to the point where they gradually lose it altogether. That's what
this is all about.
It's a wearing down process. At the initial change, Catholics may protest
and resist it for a time, but if there isn't a strong inner resolve, the
resistance breaks down and the voices of disapproval subside. In time, those
changes become almost commonplace to the Catholic and the subversives
perceive that eroding process now can be taken to the next phase, only this
time with more daring changes. It's like the fabled frog in the pot that
will allow itself to be cooked to death if the temperature is gradually
increased beneath it. This is how it is that many older people in the Novus
Ordo church who grew up before the Vatican II have lost their faith, because
all of these changes have had corresponding changes in doctrine, so that
once they compromised a little the first time, the easier it was to give in
more and more come the next rounds of "re-education." By the time they're
able to remain in a church where processions are led by a cross with a hole
in it rather than a corpus, they've passed over into a new false religion,
whether they realize it or not. In its way, the subversion of religious art
is nearly as ruinous of a person's profession as a Catholic as is the
subversion of the liturgy. Indeed, to broadly paraphrase Martin Luther:
Wreckovate their art and you will wreckovate their faith.
And there is no relief in sight. These outrages have gone on over a period
of better than forty years and been welcomed, accepted or at least
grudgingly tolerated to one extent or another by the vast majority Novus
Ordo "Catholics." Those who do protest them are a small group of
neo-conservatives who write for organs such as The Wanderer and whine
about how these are "abuses" or "misinterpretations" of Vatican ll. It's
always the fault of someone in power who conveniently doesn't have Rome
for a mailing address, in fact they're quite certain that the "Holy Father"
would smack down the offenders if only he knew or was able. Occasionally
along these lines they might even organize a petition drive to show him that
there's a problem, yet the problem always persists "somehow." All of this is
just so much preaching to the choir that never amounts to anything, but
permits them catharsis until the next scandal.
But the reality is quite a different matter. Despite the fact that such
sacrilegious "sacred art" is present throughout Christendom and has been for
decades, the conciliar "popes" have done nothing to stop it. We are talking,
after all, about compositions so offensive to God that prior popes would
have summarily ordered them cast out of churches and the artists along
with them. Until there has been a restoration of the Catholic Church—by
restoration is simply meant the removal of her enemies from operating the
machinery of the Church where they have able to do so much harm, and
obviously not per impossible that Church as a divine institution
needs restoration—we
are essentially reduced to educating people on the matter, while praying
that the scales be removed from their eyes. There can be no doubt whatsoever
that the continuing existence of the Belfort "Stations" travesty in a
purportedly Catholic diocese is as clear an indicator as any that a
Modernist occupation force is well-entrenched both there and in the
Vatican. It is, alas only one of many and their name is Legion. More than
ever we must carry out the plea of the holy mystic and stigmatist Venerable
Anne Catherine Emmerich, who stated: "The faithful must pray above all
for the Church of Darkness to leave Rome."
Sources:
French 'Catholic Diocese' presents Jesus Christ as extra-terrestrial
Religious Painting
The Anatomy of Sacred Art: Parts I and II
(This conservative Novus
Ordo article written by a very gifted artist, Anthony Visco, is mostly sound,
including a section on "How Modernism Broke the Covenant." And he certainly
practices what he preaches when it comes to art, as can be seen in his own
fine version of the
12th
Station (wrestling cherubs aside, but we quibble—LOL).
In our humble opinion Mr Visco goes of the track in places, though, such as
where the he writes about how "in the sixties when the secular art form, the
'pop,' the 'folk,' and the avant-garde styles were adopted and mingled with
a most misinterpreted version of the Vatican II message encouraging the use
of contemporary art and music in liturgy." Would that he was right, would
that we were only talking about abuses arising from misunderstanding of a
decree or constitution from a council. But that's to live in a land of
pretend, where only a few rouge, out-of-control "priests" and
"bishops" mess
things up for the rest of us. Yet the reality is that this supposedly
"misinterpreted version" has a lot of life left in it; now, after more than
40 years, like the Energizer Bunny, this big "misunderstanding" keeps
going and going and going.¼
And what totally sinks the misinterpretation
article is that the very bishops who signed off on the relevant Vatican II
document concerning art are the very ones who went back to their dioceses
and started wreaking havoc. They didn't misunderstand anything; they were
the ones who debated it at the council sessions and knew exactly what
they were doing as they implemented it in their diocese, thus setting the
brushfires around the Catholic world that in a short time would grow into
great conflagrations. Ditto the post-Vatican II "popes" who have the final
say in determining the proper sense in which to interpret the council and
who have consistently permitted, facilitated and, in some cases,
initiated the most grievous artistic "abuses," while doing virtually nothing
to stop any of them. In any case, we do like to see people like Mr Visco and
Mrs Groot, whose is also cited, stand up for traditional Catholic art and
pray that they will come to see that there is more to the picture than mere
local "abuses." (This subject will be covered in an upcoming Novus Ordo
Watch report.)
Official Novus Ordo high praise for New Age heretic
Teilhard
Humani Generis
Matter matters
Places for Iconoclasm
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