Though you don’t directly pose the question as to whether exposure to great Catholic art leads to conversion, the question is implicit and probably unanswerable. I ask that question every year when the Tallis Scholars make their annual appearance to a packed St. Paul Church in Cambridge, MA. Does hearing Catholic repertoire sung so well in an impressive Catholic worship space inspire the hearer to take the step toward inquiring about the faith?

You might think I would automatically answer “yes” since many decades ago, when working at a Catholic hospital, my own religious quest was strengthened upon hearing Sisters of Mercy nuns chanting the Hours. But alas, I don’t think aesthetic sensitivity is a frequent contributing factor. Surely surveys of Catholic converts asking what led them to take the plunge exist. (I’m sure a RCIA specialist like Rita Ferrone would have the answer at her fingertips.) I suspect such answers are as varied as the number of candidates.

There are related issues of equal importance to musicians. Years ago Yuko Hayashi, then head of the organ department at the New England Conservatory of Music, said to a group of students that even a listener with no music education instinctively apprehends when music is of special merit. I was convinced then she was correct it but now must add a qualifier. Listeners, let’s say parishioners, may indeed instinctively know that the music they are hearing at Mass is of good quality, but they won’t necessarily demand that said excellence be retained if it suddenly disappears. (I’ve seen too many excellent church music programs take a nose dive without the expected parishioner push back.)

Like all interesting questions, there is no simple answer.

The arts in worship, particularly the art and science of music, are the radiances of the truths expressed in rite, creed, and liturgical act. They are the created emanations of truth in this created world. As such, they are analogous to the uncreated light which is the glory of God in the world to come, and in his heaven as it is now and has been forever.

Some, both believers and unbelievers, see nothing but the art, the emanation. Others have a deep faith which is nourished and made deeper by these artful emanations, which, all of them, are as icons in stone, language, painting, or sound, revealing ever so little of veiled realities and speaking with unmatched eloquence of the visible and knowable realities that are specific to our present realm of being. All true art bespeaks of a reality beyond itself.

The arts are miracles. Their very existence is miraculous. As such, they will lead truly intuitive souls into communion with those things they tell of, of which they are the vesture, a mere symbol. We must always be on guard, then, that we do not mistake the clothing for the hidden reality; or, equally perilous: think that there is no hidden reality.

There are likely a multitude of experiences like Chonak relates above of himself: people who witness Christian worship and conclude either that it is so much hocus pocus, or that there is something profound behind it to be reckoned with. Whether a person is of the former or the later persuasion we cannot always know. But this much is certain: artlessness, the absence of artistry, is in and of itself a signifer - of that which is nothing.