Now and again, we muse here about that thing called "Christian culture, " particulary in regard to the changing face of Catholicism in formerly strongly Catholic European countries, as well as Quebec. Just trying to figure out what was going on, what happened, and what will happen.

Fr. Steele, a Holy Cross priest from Notre Dame, ran across an old piece I had penned on this, after one of our trips to Canada. This one. He wrote to me with some thoughts, and we’ve exchanged a couple of emails. In one of mine, I referred him to a Barbara Nicolosi post from 2004, after she visited Spain, in which she wrote:

This leads me to what became the central paradox I chewed over as we moved from gorgeous churches in El Escoriel to to Madrid to Barcelona.

Everywhere I go here in the States, I whine and complain that we need beauty in our churches. I see it as a necessary component to weathering life in a holy way "in this valley of tears." So, here’s the problem. Europe is chock-full of beauty in their churches, but they have mostly lost their faith.

So, what does that say about my theories about the urgent relationship between aestethical/liturgical beauty and faith? Maybe it is good that we Americans are surrounded by ugliness in our churches? Somebody help…

I know this is sort of a repeat up to this point – I blogged on this a few weeks ago, a discussion ensued in which, among other points, Robert Duncan of Spero News, who lives in Spain, took issue with the declaration that the Catholic faith is dead on arrival all over Europe.

So to continue the conversation, here’s the latest from Fr. Steele, after the jump. Interesting thoughts about the internal disposition necessary to experience something external as spiritual:

I am intrigued by your question on religion and art. Yes, for the believer with heart and mind open to the ethereal reality communicated by religious art, the moment of perception of the artist’s message is powerful and even joyful. Catholics, with our sacramental sensibility, are especially attuned to this experience–and seek it out. I am afraid, however, that what is communicated by the religious artist is often like a code. If one doesn’t already have a set of associations written on the heart, the artist’s work can pluck very different strings.

I have experienced this in a few ways. First, I am a neo-con(vert) in the true sense of the word. My soul has been rescued from the cynicism of my earlier socialist leanings, middle-class guilt and reconstructionist theology. As one an intuitive with an eye for the aesthetic, my first trip to Rome 17 years ago was a confusion of inner voices. At once moved by the Renaissance beauty of St. Peter’s and countless other gems of the faith and repulsed by its imperial aire built on the backs of the crushed underclass, I, for some years was swayed most by the latter spirit.

In getting to know a few secularized European friends, their hearts have become encrusted with so many layers of such deathly analytic that their spirits cannot breathe the sweet grace which they were made for. There is the familiar social analysis which was my lethal drug of choice, the constant presentation of the Church as only corrupt and wicked throughout history, the constant opposition of ancient and modern as if we have become a new species (consider European architecture for example), and the indoctrination of new generations into the cult of science (and therefore nihilism) as the new religion. With all this baggage expressly designed to alienate the European from his own cultural and spiritual foundations, it is any wonder that so much beauty in religious art is inaccessible to the viewer, listener, reader.

An experience a few years ago taught me this very concretely. I was on a panel at Notre Dame to discuss the movie "The Passion of the Christ" shortly after it was released. The place was packed with hundreds of students. The panel was composed of a Jesuit scripture scholar, a rabbi on the Theology faculty, a film specialist who was Jewish, and another Catholic theologian. I was asked to represent Campus Ministry, where I was working at the time.

The Jesuit opened with a talk on the complete absence of the ‘cult of the passion’ in the New Testament and the early Church. He dismissed the entire film as unbiblical, unhistorical medieval fabrication. The other Catholic theologian had little to say for not having actually seen the film. Especially interesting to me were the comments of the Jewish members of the panel. The film professor dismissed the film for being unoriginal. After all the story has been told and this telling didn’t give us anything new. He was confounded that anyone would want to see a man tortured for a few hours. What makes this one so special that people who oppose violence in the media would eagerly see this violence? The rabbi saw the popular retelling of the ancient story as dangerous in itself. Presenting the role of the Sanhedrin in Jesus execution would incite anti-Semitic feelings among Christians.

I stood alone with the common sense point of view shared by every student present that this was devotional art put to film–and that the human spirit hungers for the experience of devotion. I was the only one on the panel without a Ph.D. Not to be anti-intellectual, but the poor Jesuit was so immersed in his "scientific" approach to the scriptures that he was completely cut off from the first week of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, the foundation of Jesuit life and spirituality. Even his own novitiate prayer was masked by the layers of his scientism.

The Jewish faculty could only see what they were rehearsed to see and could only be blind to what they were trained to be blind to. A Jewish classmate of mine once described in one word her experience of going to mass in a beautiful grand old Catholic church, "bloodthirsty." Unaware of the apt double meaning of her answer, she had so identified Catholicism with the Holocaust that the crucifix and stations of the cross were an overwhelming confirmation in her mind of what she believed to be true even before she opened the door.

So, in conclusion to this absurdly long email, the re-evangelization of Europe as a culture (individuals are different) has to begin on the philosophical level. With all the most cynical assumptions at work in their collective mind, their spirits are shielded to the Way, the Truth and the Life.