The
Second Reading, where Paul agonised over his people’s inability to accept
Christ, reminds me of the role catechesis plays in the life of the Church. It
is safe to say that catechetics is mostly a matter of the head. As Saint Anselm
used to say, "Fidei quaerens intellectum". Faith, for
it to make sense, must investigate the contents of belief by means of reason in
order to acquire a deeper understanding of revelation. If for no other reason,
we have to educate the head so that the heart is not misled by superstitions.
The natural unity between head and heart, which in a world turned topsy-turvy
by sin, has been disrupted. Hence, knowing and loving must be regulated. The
head requires systematic training and academics will tell you that it is not
easy to sit and struggle with material at hand because our vitiated inclination
is readily distracted. The heart also needs coaching because of the damage
inflicted by sin, it is inclined to indolence or inertia. The naiveté we suffer
is to mistake that head and heart are in harmony meaning that what the head
knows, the heart will follow.
That
is not the case as experience will dictate. A good example is what you see in
children. They say they understand you but they do not always follow up with
what they understand.
We
are however, not dealing with children. For myriad reasons, people do leave the
Church or if not, they simply become marginalised. Superstition could be one
reason. They know little and frequently are incapable of articulating the
reason for their belief. In this situation, catechesis does have its job cut
out. We need to catechise. It is our first line of defence as Fulton Sheen
illustrates with this quote. "There are not a hundred people in
America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate
what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church--which is of course, quite
a different thing".
But,
there are people who leave even if they know. As mentioned earlier, the heart
does not always follow the head. St Paul himself confirms it in Romans 7:19--The
good things I want to do, I never do; the evil things which I do not want--that
is what I do. Whilst this may be a perennial human struggle, the point
is, when the heart has been bought over, the head will always lose out. It is
to this heart that catechesis must turn its attention.
The
truth is, we really do not know how to nourish the hearts. The better question
is what the heart would be mesmerised by.
The
short answer is beauty. We are adept at teaching truth and goodness but we do
not really know how to teach beauty. It is true that beauty is in the eye of
the beholder and therefore it is pretty much subjective. Whereas, truth and
goodness are different in the sense that they are more objective. But is it
really a case that truth and goodness are objective and beauty is not?
Consider
this. All of us want goodness. This is because we are made for the good as
nobody knowingly will choose the bad. The same too for truth because each one
of us wants to believe in the truth and nobody likes to be lied to. Finally, we
all desire to grasp beauty for no one here wants to embrace ugliness. A man
never goes out to marry an "ugly" woman.[1] Now, just because I want
something, it does not make it good and just because I believe in something, it
does not make it true and finally what I grasp as beautiful does not make it a
thing of beauty. This shows that beauty does have an objective reality to it.
Now,
if it has an objectivity to it, then catechesis can take place. For otherwise,
if it were just subjective, then we are all doomed to wander the wilderness of
fakes and imitations passing themselves off as beauty.
Now,
in the context of catechesis, where do we encounter beauty? Let us begin with
our liturgy. In itself it is a wonderful gift of beauty because it is the
memorial of the mystery of salvation (CCC1099), that is, if the Church is to be
believed. Unfortunately, some of us do not fully accept that. Rather, we have
come to believe that the liturgy in itself, even when carried out according to
the prescribed rite of the Church, is not enough to secure our salvation. In a
sense, we are driven by a Pelagian attempt to secure our own salvation—a
forgetfulness that beauty is salvific.
Secondly,
look at the state of our church building. The heart is not just mesmerised by
beauty. It is also inspired by beauty. But our idea of building beauty is
basically a hodge-podge of functionality. It is almost like dedicating a space
to the Lord and not having any other functions for it,
would rank as a sin against the “Return of Investment”—in other words,
beauty is wasteful, irrelevant or mostly extravagant. All space must be useful.
And in the absence of architectural beauty, we generally fill the void by
dragging the pub into the church—jazzing up the liturgy to make it more
“engaging” and less boring. Notice at the same time the same entertainment
criterion employed when we cut down on readings fearing that people will be
turned away by having one reading too many.
We
are so accustomed to the democratisation of beauty[2], meaning that anybody and
everybody has a right to his idea of beauty that to suggest pub music as
inappropriate would render one an elitist. The reality is, the world has become
so accustomed to devouring from the trash of mediocrity that it can no longer
stomach the sublimity of beauty and so denigrate the sublime as elitist. Just
watch the “Emoji movie”. The idea of beauty is so corrupted that nobody raises
an eyebrow that a piece of faeces is actually a character of the movie. We have
normalised ugliness.
Beauty
has a role in catechesis and is indispensable to the instruction of the faith.
In the context of catechesis, the Catechism speaks of beauty, in the context of
sacred art, as evoking and glorifying, both in faith and adoration, the
transcendent mystery of God. Beauty in sacred art draws man to adoration, to
prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Saviour, the Holy One and
Sanctifier” (cf. CCC 2502).
The
desire for beauty can be inculcated and whilst there exists a tension between
“objective” beauty and also “subjectivity”, we should not be quick to dissolve
it.[3] More importantly, the
desire for beauty is not fed by facts or information but rather it is
strengthened through living experiences.
Having
stripped the altar, is it a wonder why young people know so few saints? We are
busy with presenting facts and information of the faith forgetting that both
goodness and truth are clothed in the flesh and blood of saints. Many statues
inside a church are not an indication that we are idolatrous. Instead, they are
our friends in catechesis—as they reveal the beauty of the holiness acting in
their lives.
Indeed,
beauty is a big-picture undertaking. If we accept the premise that the human
spirit has a supernatural aspiration, then it makes sense that the human spirit
is more ready to sacrifice itself for an enterprise bigger than merely the
“self”. The big picture is provided by the tradition and the saints because
nobody would die for factoids or information. The saints, on the other hand,
provide concrete proofs of why a person would lay down his or her life the
person of Jesus Christ and His Church. Saints are our unbroken link to the
reticulum we call Tradition.
In
summary, catechesis is also a battle for the hearts and as such it is fought on
as much intellectual grounds as it is on emotional grounds. Emotion is
nourished by beauty. Unless we begin the rehabilitation of beauty from just
personal preferences to that which is of God, we cannot inspire and the faith
will remain cold concepts to be endured and not captivating convictions to be
embraced.
[1] Even if the woman is “ugly”, it is because the man sees
beauty in it. We search for beauty because it is “objective”.
[2] Beauty is a difficult notion to grasp because our taste is
based on preference, that is "what I like". St Thomas Aquinas
describes three qualities that objectively constitute beauty. He speaks of
proportion, integrity and clarity
[3] It is not as if the Church does not take into consideration
diversity. She does. In fact, Paul VI said, “Evangelisation loses much of
its force and effectiveness if it does not take into consideration the actual
people to whom it is addressed, if it does not use their language, signs and
symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it does not have
an impact on their concrete life”. At the same time, he also cautioned,
“Evangelisation risks losing its power and disappearing altogether if one
empties or adulterates its content under the pretext of translating it”
(Evangelii nuntiandi n63§3).
