Martin Mosebach and Others Appeal to Benedict on Sacred Art and Music

From Sandro Magister's Chiesa site today.

An appeal to Benedict XVI "for the return to an authentically Catholic sacred art." The main signatory is the great German writer Martin Mosebach. And in the meantime, the meeting between the pope and artists in the Sistine Chapel is drawing near

by Sandro Magister

ROME, November 5, 2009 – A few days before the meeting announced for November 21 between the pope and artists in the Sistine Chapel, an appeal anticipating its principal motivation has already come to Benedict XVI's desk.

The appeal is "for the return to an authentically Catholic sacred art," and was signed not by artists, but by scholars and other figures who are passionately concerned, for various reasons, about the fate of Christian art. Two names stand out above all: Martin Mosebach, and Enrico Maria Radaelli.

Mosebach is an established German writer whom Joseph Ratzinger knows well. His latest book: "The heresy of the shapeless [Formlessness]. The Roman liturgy and its enemy" was published this year, including an Italian edition by Cantagalli. And it is a stunning apologia on behalf of great Christian art, and more than that, of the Catholic liturgy itself as art. With biting invective against the iconoclasm that reigns today within the Catholic Church itself.

Radaelli, a disciple of the great Catholic philosopher and philologist Romano Amerio, is a sophisticated scholar of theological aesthetics. His masterpiece is: "Ingresso alla bellezza [Entryway to beauty]," released in 2008, a magnificent introduction into the mystery of God through his "Imago," which is Christ. Beauty as the manifestation of the truth.

The appeal was born from seminars held in recent months in the library of the pontifical commission for the cultural heritage of the Church, hosted by the vice-president of this Vatican commission, Benedictine abbot Michael J. Zielinski. Active participants in the meetings included Fr. Nicola Bux and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, consultants for the office of papal liturgical celebrations. Fr. Lang is also an official at the congregation for divine worship. But no clergyman figures among the promoters of the appeal, not to mention any Vatican official. The signatories are laymen, of various competencies and professions.

After a brief introduction, the test unfolds in seven small chapters dedicated to the causes of the current fracture between the Church and art, to theological references, to the commission, to the artists, to the sacred space, to sacred music, to the liturgy.

And it ends with the appeal itself, which is formulated in this way:

"For all the reasons set out above, we are eager to receive from Your Holiness a fatherly listening and the merciful attention of the Vicar of Christ. We beseech you, Holy Father, to read in our heartfelt appeal our most pressing concern for the appalling conditions of contemporary sacred art and sacred architecture, as well as a modest and most humble request for your help so that sacred art and architecture can once again be truly Catholic. This so that the faithful can again enjoy the sense of wonder and rejoice once again at the presence of the beauty in God's House. This so that the Church can be once more regain her rightful place, in this era of irrational, mundane and malforming barbarism, as a true and attentive promoter and custodian of an art that is both new and truly "original": an art that today as always flowers in every age of progress, which reflowers from its ancient roots and eternal origin, faithful to the most intimate sense of Beauty that shines in the Truth of Christ."

The complete text with the list of signatories can be read, in multiple languages, on the website created for this purpose:

Appeal to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for an authentically Catholic sacred art

The following is a sample chapter:

VI. SACRED MUSIC AND LITURGICAL CHANT

Holy Father, the Church has today the opportunity to regain his "highly" role in the magisterium of music, mainly in the field of sacred music and liturgical chant, which must necessarily respond to the categories of "good" and "right" for their intimate connection, not just correspondence, with the liturgy itself (Paul VI, Address to the singers of the papal chapel, March 12th, 1964).

In the ancient history of Christianity the dialectical relationship between sacred music and secular music has produced many times the intervention of the Church to "clean up the building of the Roman liturgy" (a term explicitly used by many popes) from the secularist intrusions that the music itself lead in the temple and that, over the centuries and the gradual technical and musical development, have become increasingly severe and spill-over from the proper liturgical use, ending often in the assumption of roles of self-referencing or profane nature.

From the time of the Const. Ap. “Docta Sanctorum” issued by Pope John XXII (1324), the magisterium has always indicated the righteous ways of understanding music in the service of worship, gradually adopting new techniques compatible with the liturgy, but always and consistently pointing up to the present day (including the magisterium of Vatican II and the entire post Vatican II period) in the Gregorian chant, the primal root, the source of constant inspiration, the highest – because it’s simply the most noble – form of music that can perfectly embody the Catholic liturgical ideal also by virtue of its anonymity and its meta-historical true aesthetical, verbal and sensitive universality.

We cannot now definitely establish musical forms and styles a priori, but the
recovery of Gregorian chant, good polyphonic and organ music (even inspired by the Gregorian), – ancient, modern and contemporary – would certainly, after decades of absolute shock and “probability” in music, recall the liturgical "words" that the Catholic tradition in art and music has given us for centuries: they have worked – using a representative expression of Pope Paul VI in the Enc. "Mysterium Fidei" – as real "tiles of the Catholic Faith", which was always founded on sensible data, endowed with truth and beauty; and always devoid of sterile and mannered or archaeological intellectualism, to be avoided with care (as indicated by Pope Pius XII in Enc. “Mediator Dei” that introduced the liturgical reform of the late twentieth century.

Maybe in the arts devoted to the service of worship, music is the strongest, for that constant "catechetical" meaning which the magisterium has constantly recognized, and also the more delicate because, by its nature and unlike the other arts, requires a tertium medium between the author and the viewer, or the interpreter. For this reason the Catholic Church should take better care of the music than of other arts and should, as happened in the past, urge the education of both authors and interpreters: for sure today the effort is much more difficult than in Middle Age, Baroque period or in the XIX century, since the actual society is completely secularized. However today is needed a clear knowledge of the fundamentals so that the musicians – once endowed with the needed expertise – can recover the "sensus ecclesiæ" together with the "sensus fidei".