Responding to Some Questions

Actor Jim Caviezel meets Pope John Paul II

I was surprised that my last post got the reactions it did from some of you (mostly positive).  Let me put things in perspective, if I get 15 or 20 hits in a day I'm popping the champagne cork.  We're not talking about emails out the wazoo, here;  there aren't any servers in danger of crashing.  But three responses is something, when you consider the small pool of readers.

Anyway, some of you thought I was being self critical, and all I can say is sure I was.  But I wasn't trying to knock myself.  The point was to be constructive and to help everyone know what I'm trying to accomplish.  And in a way I was thinking out loud a bit, trying to figure out for myself what direction the blog should move in.  When I started this back in January it was going to be a place to write out my weekly Lectio Divina of the Sunday readings.  Then I was going to examine the Theology of the Body of JPII (TOB), along with publishing my weekly letters from the parish bulletin.  Then I threw in a couple of posts about movies I saw and music I liked (these got a good response) and the Don Bosco Relics (also good responses), and both the Lectio and TOB got lost in the fog.  So what I've settled on is this theme of culture and faith and how they interact.

My friend Corrine asked if God isn't everywhere, including the arts.  And the simple answer is yes He is.  But since about the time of the Protestant Reformation there is an increasing hostility between the two thing; faith and the arts.  The reasons are complex, and my intention in pointing this out is not to get into all sorts of Protestant bashing, because to an extent many Catholics hold the same attitude.  Not only is there a gap between faith and the arts, but also the growing belief that science and faith are opposed to each other, or that belief in God is opposed to reason.  Very dangerous stuff, and I hope to be a voice that shows that this isn't true.

On a deeper level I'm trying, in a small way, to heed the call of John Paul II, that the Church is to be a leaven that transformes society, and the arts in particular.  He was an actor, play write and poet in his younger days, and became a part of an underground theater group during the Nazi occupation.  The Nazi's were trying to "Germanize" Poland by destroying the Catholic Church in that country and their national cultural identity.  They saw that the two things were linked and needed to be suppressed. The young Karol Wojtyła saw his work as an artist and as a devout Catholic as a form of resistance to his nation's occupiers.

I don't know if I'm a part of any resistance, but I do believe that we need to reclaim the arts, if you will.  I know Christians who believe that art, culture, and I mean culture in the broad sense to include ethnic diversity, is somehow a barrier to living the faith.  This is not farther from the truth.  These things are a part of our humanity, and our humanity is a gift from God.  God speaks to us through these things, but they need to be purified and refined, as we ourselves do, to discern good from bad; what is worthy and noble from what is base and ultimately dehumanizing.  It is on these matters that I hope to shed some light.

Lastly, there was concern that I was too graphic in my review of the The Social Network, particularly concerning the more "blue" aspects of the movie. I'm just trying to calls 'em like a sees 'em.  But I'll try to be more sensitive in the future.