We as Catholics encounter the world from a sort of unique perspective. I mean, yes Protestants do too and so do Atheists, but to generalize, theirs is an either/or mentality whereas the Catholic is a both/and approach. May people have said this. It’s nothing new. What I would like to say is that this perspective makes it incredibly difficult to deal with the things of the world. We are tempted, are we not, to remove ourselves from the world because of the rottenness that is present in so many areas. We are tempted to say “to hell with the world.” The problem is, if we say that, it might actually happen. We can not just remove ourselves from the world and let it go to hell. We can not just “watch the world burn”. In fact, we must to some extent engage the world. This is of course the whole point of this blog: To be in the world but not of the world. To engage without giving in to the temptations of the world. How does this engagement take place? I would like to look at three options.
The first is Sanctioning, although that might be a bit strong. Once we come out of our closed off world of piety and goodness, we can think, “Now that I’m here, I might as well see what’s up.” You go to parties (careful of course not to get drunk yourself, not to go to bed with anyone, you know the drill…), you go to the bar, you go God knows where, but carefully not doing anything wrong yourself. However, you are willing to see others do the very things you refuse to do. You yourself are pure, but you enjoy it when the ones you’re with go a little crazy. You may not do it yourself, but there’s no denying it’s fun, right? In this way, you Sanction the behavior without actually engaging the culture.
This of course is going to result in a couple things. One is that you develop a hypocritical attitude toward the behavior of your friends. You become judgmental not only of them but of yourself for not enjoying yourself. It is all around a not very good experience. To solve this, you might just join in the fun…just once won’t hurt right? Well, it might, but that’s not the point. You begin the engage the culture but have now entered into it and thrown in the towel. You have lightened up and finally said “yes”.
The second way of engaging the culture is Sanitizing it. One way of doing this is by seeing only G-rated films. You say “I refuse to give into this over-sexed, over-violent, over-profane culture of film.” Then you go on to be one of the only ones who watches these films. This is related to the Sanctioning, except that you actually engage the culture. In other words, you try your hardest to make the movie industry completely G-rated. This of course extends to your interactions with people. The only safe topics are God, Family, and Ice Cream. If your conversation turns to Football, mention how God loves football/God hates football for one reason or another. The next thing you know, you are having a conversation about the theology of football. Of course, this isn’t a bad thing, but if the mindset is that only when talking about God are we truly fulfilling our Christian duty, then it becomes forced. Believe me, I’ve seen it. I would also say that this is the same attitude that allows people to reject Harry Potter, the Easter Bunny and the Greek Myths.
The third option is the option of Sanctifying. Of course there are many ways this can be done, but I would like to mention the idea of the Evangelization of Beauty. We all see beauty in something, whether it’s twisted or not is another question. I think overall, the correct way to Sanctify the culture is to evangelize to people’s sense of beauty. This doesn’t mean you have to say “You enjoy that? You know, the reason is because you see an aspect of God in it because he is Beauty itself.” You merely have to recognize the good, true and beautiful in what someone sees as good, true and beautiful. Of course, there are actual disordered senses of beauty, but something disordered has an equivalent order. You need to be able to recognize that and go with it. You have to enjoy what others enjoy for what is good in it. You are not required to change your taste, of course, but being able to recognize the good and beautiful in an aspect of the culture and being able to talk about it is important for building friendships and spreading the gospel. In other words, we shouldn’t be afraid of rock music per se, or even pop music. We shouldn’t object outright to movies with cursing. We should put it all in context and understand where it goes right and where it goes wrong.
We must be able to frame the culture (sanctify) not hide our frame behind the culture (sanction) nor put our frame next to the culture and tell people to look at just a framed blank wall (sanitize).
Of course we don’t have to be able to do this for everything. Somethings are outside our competence. But for those that are in our competence, we can do all we can to sanctify through our understanding of beauty. This means that we must learn what beauty is.
I think we have a new program for higher education…
4 thoughts on “Evangelization of Beauty”
Nate,
Awesome post! Really, two thumbs up! I’m very happy to see so many posts on evangelization on beauty on this site! And glad to see your posts on here! Great points!
I agree with the notion of exploring, celebrating, enhancing, and creating beauty. Most of us aren’t artists, musicians or poets. What about reporting the “good news” of the beauty found in the lives of many unsung heroes among us, who give of themselves to their families, churches and communities day in and day out! Their lives shout louder than any symphony…God is good and acts through His people…
Exactly right, Donna. We must learn what beauty is and then find our own unique way of teaching it. Not all of us are artists, but all of us can be students of beauty.
One thing I’ve never got, though, is the tendency for Catholics to watch movies that have a lot of gratuitous graphic sex or violence because of “art.” Especially the sex part. I keep thinking especially of the actors and expecially actresses who are being exploited and degraded and I just CAN’T cooperate. So I don’t go there.
The violence, of course, is not “real,” but it seems to me that there is enough violence in our real world that we don’t need to be entertained by the exaggerated violence of movies. That is why I don’t like Mel Gibson movies (what I’ve seen of them), even the Passion of the Christ. I don’t see the point of given gratuity a pass.