At Crisis there is a good piece by Joseph Pearce (who has written about Shakespeare and Tolkien and Literary Converts is a must read) about “The Resurrection of Beauty”, specifically in sacred liturgical worship and in the architecture, etc., that holds it. He waxes eloquent about St. Joseph’s in Detroit, which is marvelous, in an Archdiocese which has felt the pastoral jackboot of traditional suppression.
There are two bits I’ll share, and then you can read the rest there.
First, note what he says G.K. Chesterton said about Gothic architecture. Very clever.
However, Pearce opens his essay with a quote from Joseph Ratzinger…
If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection?
—Cardinal Ratzinger
This question, asked by the future Pope Benedict XVI, is purely rhetorical. The answer is that the Church cannot continue to transform and humanize the world if she dispenses with the beauty of the liturgy. “Without this,” Cardinal Ratzinger continued, “the world will become the first circle of hell.” Restoring the beauty of the liturgy is, therefore, saving the world from Hell itself.
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How many times have written on this blog…
Save The Liturgy, Save The World
