Beauty in the Power of the Holders

By David G Bonagura, Jr. But first a note from Robert Royal: Beauty comes to us in many forms, among them, in my (clearly unbiased) view, via TCT. Time grows short, donations still are too. We need a final push this week. It's about the existence of The Catholic Thing. What more can I say? Now for today's column... What do you suppose was the favorite site in Rome for the majority of a group of twenty-six college-bound students visiting for the first time? St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums? The Colosseum and the Forum? The Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps? It was the Jesuit Church of the Gesù, the high point of Baroque church architecture. Its golden opulence; its eye-popping "Triumph of the Name of Jesus" fresco ceiling that draws viewers up to Heaven; its magnificent dome; its extravagant twin side altars dedicated to St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier. It's like nothing late Gen Z American Catholics have ever seen – in person, on screen, or even generated by AI. These students encountered real beauty for the first time and were overwhelmed by it, so much so that subsequent site visits, as fabulous as they all were, did not supersede the Gesù as the favorite. They were not just impressed; they had an existential experience. "Art moves us because it is beautiful," wrote Sir Roger Scruton, "and it is beautiful in part because it means something." Catholics often remark that beauty should take the lead in evangelizing a culture that is impoverished by the mundane, the functional, and the ugly. Yet we have difficulty translating this talk into practice. We should not have to travel to Rome to experience beauty in architecture, painting, sculpting, décor, or, for that matter, in music or in the Mass. We know only too well that, immediately following Vatican II, Church leaders, clerical and lay, made a conscious choice to reject the beautiful and impose the ugly. In the false name of renewal, beautiful churches were destroyed so widely – stained-glass windows and high altars were removed, gold tabernacles were replaced and pushed to the margins, marble was covered with wainscoting – that the term "wreckovation" was coined to describe the phenomenon. The same remove-and-replace process destroyed liturgical music and undermined the celebration of the Mass. The last two decades have seen something of a revival, as a few pastors have raised money to restore splendor to their churches and to their liturgies. But even though some Church leaders now acknowledge the failures of the post-conciliar wreckovation movement, most Catholics still encounter only the ugly and the banal in their local parishes. Why is this? I submit two interrelated reasons. First, Catholic leaders of the Boomer generation, even if dissatisfied with the status quo, largely cannot shake the prejudice they imbibed or inherited – ironically, from many pastors of an earlier generation who implemented the stripping of the altars – against pre-Conciliar expressions of beauty. This explains their dismissal of or apathy toward the Traditional Latin Mass, Gregorian Chant, high altars, and ornate liturgical accoutrement. They will not allow these things in their parishes, therefore, or only grant them in limited quantities – an Agnus Dei or Salve Regina or Tantum Ergo at benediction, but that's all. This leads us to the second reason. Our experiences of beauty (or ugliness) within religious contexts typically are filtered through sources of authority. They choose the designs of churches, the decorations, the music, the vestments – and they tell us what is beautiful, or what we should think to be beautiful. In their defense, the Boomers are not unique in their prejudice against an earlier artistic expression: one generation often reacts against the tastes of its immediate elders: the 18th century Neoclassical movement summarily rejected the ostentation of the Baroque and Rococo; Cubist painters rejected the whimsical moments captured by their Impres...