Closing Address of VII
  • francis
    Posts: 10,818
    Why do I get depressed when I read this?

    ____________

    CLOSING OF THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

    ADDRESS OF POPE PAUL VI
    TO ARTISTS

    8 December 1965



    We now address you, artists, who are taken up with beauty and work for it: poets and literary men, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, men devoted to the theater and the cinema. To all of you, the Church of the council declares to you through our voice: if you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends.

    The Church has long since joined in alliance with you. You have built and adorned her temples, celebrated her dogmas, enriched her liturgy. You have aided her in translating her divine message in the language of forms and figures, making the invisible world palpable. Today, as yesterday, the Church needs you and turns to you. She tells you through our voice: Do not allow an alliance as fruitful as this to be broken. Do not refuse to put your talents at the service of divine truth. Do not close your mind to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

    This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the wear and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration. And all of this is through your hands. May these hands be pure and disinterested. Remember that you are the guardians of beauty in the world. May that suffice to free you from tastes which are passing and have no genuine value, to free you from the search after strange or unbecoming expressions. Be always and everywhere worthy of your ideals and you will be worthy of the Church which, by our voice, addresses to you today her message of friendship, salvation, grace and benediction.
  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    Remember that you are the guardians of beauty in the world. May that suffice to free you from tastes which are passing and have no genuine value, to free you from the search after strange or unbecoming expressions.


    Because of that.

    But that's a club you don't belong to.

    Be always and everywhere worthy of your ideals and you will be worthy of the Church which, by our voice, addresses to you today her message of friendship, salvation, grace and benediction.


    'tsall good.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,818
    or this:

    2503 For this reason bishops, personally or through delegates, should see to the promotion of sacred art, old and new, in all its forms and, with the same religious care, remove from the liturgy and from places of worship everything which is not in conformity with the truth of faith and the authentic beauty of sacred art.297
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    The priests have failed, we have not. Even today priests with an understanding of this are shunted off to inner city parishes, saying EF Mass at a time when few normal people would attend (well, you have to admit there are some abnormal people that show up along with the normals).

    Life will not be good again until Latin Masses are mainstreamed and you'll be amazed at how many people will show up for 10:30 Mass in Latin because it's at 10:30, they get out in time for lunch and it's the Mass....no matter what the idiot bishops think.
    Thanked by 1Jenny
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,394
    "idiot bishops" is not ad hominem?
    Thanked by 1Andrew Motyka
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Oh, no: it's invective; that's different.

    An ad hominem would be: "we should denounce policy XYZ of the bishops because they're idiots": arguing against the man instead of arguing the merits of a question.

    Always happy to clarify things. :-)
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    The priests have failed, we have not.


    "God, I thank Thee than I am not as other men, unmusical, uncultured, philistines, or even as these priests."
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    MT -
    Your reference to the publican and the pharisee is clever, not altogether inapt, but not altogether apt. Holy Father Paul Vl, as quoted above, gave clear approbation and admonition to a calibre of musicians whom (I would posit) he thought were the modern heirs of the masters of past ages. Clearly, most priests and most bishops (and most people) thought themselves above following the express will of the council and of every pope after it. Instead they have sought and encouraged music of the lowest conceivable order for the highest of human-divine events. While the Church of England enjoys anthems and masses in both English and Latin by modern composers of the highest rank, carrying on the torch from Perotin to Britten to today, the Catholic church is pleased to wallow in the works of men and women whom I shant name - we all know who they are, and our publishers know them far too well. We have all been cheated. And taking note of it is not pharisaical. (But thanks for the reminder, lest we do indeed become self-righteous in our zeal for the Lord's house.)
    Thanked by 3francis CHGiffen ghmus7
  • francis
    Posts: 10,818
    Noel is saying in words what I am feeling in heart. Not toward any particular Bishop, mind you, but of the essence of what MJO is saying.
  • Andrew Motyka
    Posts: 946

    Here's a routine reminder: Be academic not acerbic.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,092
    Andrew: as CS Lewis noted: "The Devil always sends errors into the world in pairs:pairs of opposites. He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one."
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • Andrew Motyka
    Posts: 946
    Sure. In what way have I fallen into the opposite category error of calling bishops idiots?

    EDIT: Reading comprehension fail. I get what you're saying.
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