Again, Culture
Catholics, be
willing pagans to discuss –
Augustine
said, “All truth belongs to us.”
A reader of the ‘Comments’
questions again the value of non-Catholic culture when she attacks them for
praising Wagner (EC 9) and T.S. Eliot (EC 406, 411). For her, T.S. Eliot is to
be dismissed as a Protestant, while Wagner is a Jacobin devil in love with
Buddhism, whose music is loaded with gnostic impurity. Now both Eliot and
Wagner have their faults, grave faults when measured against the fullness of
Catholic truth, as the ‘Comments’ mentioned above pointed out. But in our sick
age they have their utility, which can be summed up in a few words, attributed
to St Augustine:
“All truth belongs to us
Christians.”
Eliot and Wagner both
belong to yesteryear’s “culture.” Culture we will define for our purposes here
as the stories, music and pictures that men of all ages need, to nourish their
minds and hearts. Thus defined, culture reflects and reveals, it teaches and
molds. It reflects, because it is the product of some writer, musician or
artist who had the talent to give expression to what was going on in the souls
of his contemporaries. If it was popular in its time, it revealed part of what
was going on in their souls, and if it has become a classic since, like Eliot
and Wagner, that is because it reflects and reveals part of what goes on in the
souls of men of all time. Thus Eliot from the very poverty of his Unitarian
upbringing was enabled to draw his daunting portrait of modern man, while
Wagner by a towering talent, aside from any buddhism or gnosticism, filled his
operas with a wealth of true human psychology that thousands of commentators
have not ceased to interpret since.
Culture also molds and
teaches, because the writer or musician or artist gives expression and form to
movements, until then formless, in the minds and hearts of his contemporaries.
Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Elvis
Presley and the Beatles had a huge influence on modern youth, for generations
to come. Picasso almost created modern art, and thereby fashioned to a large
extent how modern people visualize the world around them. These modern examples
of the huge influence of literature, music and the arts on human beings are
hardly rejoicing because modern man is so godless, and there is in him so little
of value to be reflected or expressed, but the huge influence cannot be denied.
In brief, culture is based
in, and issues from, men’s souls. And the Catholic Church is in the business of
saving men’s souls. So how could it neglect culture? Its own writers have
directed men’s thoughts, and its artists and musicians have filled its churches
with beauty to uplift men’s souls to God ever since the Church began. Of course
that is true for Catholic culture, somebody might object, but neither Eliot nor
Wagner were Catholics. Then of what use can they be to the Church?
In man there are three
things: grace, sin and nature. As coming from God, our basic nature can only be
good, but as flawed by original sin it is weak and inclines to evil. Nature is
like the battlefield of the war to eternity between grace and sin for the
possession of that nature. Grace lifts it up and heals that nature. Sin pulls
it down. Hence the never-ending war. Now Eliot and Wagner may have been lacking
in grace, but they were given by God to be masters of nature. The Church is
commander-in-chief on the side of saving souls. How could it fail to study the
battlefield, and to draw all possible profit from the masters of nature, to
know the souls of the time and to teach them?
Kyrie eleison.
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