Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

SIXTEEN THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA SEPTEMBER 28, 1940 Our Heritage of Catholic Culture By MRS. LEONARD BEECHER This is an attempt to discuss “Our Heritage of Catholic Culture’’ in the same simple terms as one speaks of a legacy of lands and goods, of jewels and coins. To strip it of all vague ness and to consider it as a product more or less concrete, something tan gible, something clearly recognizable as emanating from the CathdSr ac ceptance of the meaning of life. To understand what that accep tance is, it is necessary to reflect on the strange terms of our existence here. We come out of the shadow, we hurry across our little allotment ot time and space to a deeper shadow, a more engulfing silence. We make this journey in a body which at the end we drop like an outworn gar ment. We make it through an envi ronment indifferent to us, even ini mical. We journey over a small seg ment of an earth that cares nothing for us. that makes hideously short work of returning the mortal part of us to the dust out of which it was made. In every permanent expression that man has left of his thought since the very earliest records he has shown his concern with the puzzling discon certing mystery of his own existence, with the baffling presentiment of “all this unintelligible world.’’ The Catholic believes that mankind has not been left floundering in this bewildering darkness. He believes that a teacher has been sent, and that the answer to the riddle is on the first page of the Catechism. “Who made you? God made me — God the Creator of Heaven and Earth and of all things. God made me. Why did He make you? God made me to know Him and to love Him and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him for ever in Heaven.” The acceptance of that explanation is the distinguishing mark of the Catholic attitude, and Our Heritage of Culture has been bequeathed to us by a great cloud of witnesses to the truth and the beauty of this in terpretation of life. The concrete embodiment of this Heritage is not necessarily religious or of religion. It i» fruit grown in a ‘certain soil. It is a by-product of life itself, life oriented and motivated by a certain conviction, and, since self revelation is the price of self-expres sion, the Catholic Spirit speaks per force of itself and for itself. Joyce Kilmer says, “A Catholic is a Catholic not only when he prays: he is a Catholic in all the thoughts and actions of his life.” C(jrot paint ing the French landscape as if utter ing a prayer, as if devining the visi ble universe as the "Garment of the unseen God,” is in the true Catholij tradition. Joyce Kilmer. himself, singing of Trees and Delicatessen Shops and Jersey Roofs, has the *rue Catholic sense of the sacramental value of common things. The Catho lic spirit seems always to be saying, "We come from veiy far off.’’ It seems to be dimly remembering or to be envisaging some incredible standard of excellence found else where than in this incomplete and transitory life. If the term may be mode thus broadly inclusive, I will speak of Our Heritage of Culture as Catholic Art. There are endless attempts 10 de fine Art, and a dictum frequently en countered in Catholic writing is, “Art sees as God sees,” but Art is not God seeing. It is man seeing. Art belongs exclusively to man and no creature in Heaven or in earth has a gift com parable to it as the poet Schiller recognized when he cried. “Seraphs share with thee Knowledge, but Art, O man. is thine alone.” We are taught that through Reli gion God has manifested Himself to man. Art is man’s answer to God. At its highest it is a supreme act of Faith, an expression of the deepest emotion. It is an exercise of that part of us that is made in the image and likeness of God and we reach to heaven for a fitting word, daring to call the artist a creator. The Church has ever been a fertile soil for the Art product. The Catholic idea of life exalts the soul over the body. The emphasis is on the things of the mind and heart rather than upon the de tails and necessities of the physical life and this is expressed not only in the prayers and services of the Church but in the bewilderingly rich contribution to the human cult of the Beautiful. To use the words “Cath olic Art” is to open the floodgates to a tide of memories and implications. Just to name over the Fine Arts with the connotation of even a slight un derstanding of their history and de velopment is to acknowledge the importance of the Catholic idea as a fostering, a general, animating spirit. For example, Christian architecture is admittedly man’s great, cultural contribution to civilization .the su preme assertion of transeedent human capacity. The rich Christian mon uments scattered all over the civilized world are an eloquent, thrilling tri bute to the beauty and the fecundity of man’s creative faculty when in spired by a worthy ideal. Man ,a pilgrim and a stranger, reaches for what he can lay hands on in an unfriendly, resisting environ ment, and in his little moment of time he molds it, against its will into forms of perfection, altering, subduing, evoking an absolute beauty that in its turn testifies aloud to hi; spiritual significance, testifies as long as a fragment of the beauty remains Century after century these monu ments call aloud, “A man passed this way! An immortal spirit went by and left here his name — Yes, his name and address!” An ardent American boy wrote me one summer from Le Puv. wrote in the presence of the startling gran deur of the Church of St. Michael, which for nine hundred years has dominated the country side. He says. “The effect pf the Cathedral is of consummate symmetry. As a piece of architectural address I have never seen its equal. I am sure builders were never faced with a problem more difficult. The Cathedral sur mounts a steep and precipitous height of volcanic rock and they have used that hostile material for the Cathe dral itself, a rock difficult to cut, im possible'to carve and work. Forced to do without detail tljey had to make beauty by line, geometrically. It had to be inherent in the structure. What detail there is in the color of the rocks themselves, red, and white, and black, patterned in radiating lines. The whole is a work that praises God subtly and in the best possible man ner by turning to His use the brain He gave to man. The Cathedral rep resents the triumph of man over his environment. You almost feel that the builders chose the stone and the site because it was the most difficult thing they could think of doing. There is no resignation about the Church. It is a triumph of the most difficult sort, an homage in action, not in prostration,” I suppose you might call this Catholic Action. The Cathedral of Chartres is admit ted to be the consummate example of the art of building. It rouses emotions of a different kind, emotions of an ever-changing sort We might try to estimate it as a many-volumned history of the Catholic Centuries: or as the soul’s aspiring it as a treas ure house of inestimable value, con taining as it does the most beautiful glass in the w orld in designs of flaw less taste and suitability. Everywhere there is an exuberance of artistry, graceful pillars blossoming with fadeless flowers and leafage. the aisles and porches filled with an im posing gallery of sculptured portraits evidently modelled from life and telling us of the manner of men who lived then in the firmness, grandeur, and refinement of their wonderful countenances. Everywhere, every where, there is something for the mind. It is a lofty human utterance, an eloquent comment on the funda mental conception of life out of which it grew. It is an assertion of human dignity, of its high manifest destiny, of the prayerfulness, its healthfulr.ess of mind. In the history and in the product, too, of painting is the same eloquent assertion of the fecundity of the Faith, when it takes over and sancti fies all that properly belongs in the life of man. From the pictures which the world reveres, take away the Catholic contribution, take away the pictures that v/ere made for churches or out of a religious impulse and see what you have left. The same is true of Sculpture. It is an admission of insensibility and ig norance not to know the names of Giotto, Donatello, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ghiberti, Verro- chio, Della Robbia, and many others who left in marble, granite, bronze, wood, silver, gold, terra - cotta, elo quent and deathless beauty as they strove to fittingly celebrate the Christian story. Baptismal fonts, sculptured images, delicately wrought ivory Crucifixes, polished bronze figures, intricately beautiful iron screens and jewelled Chalices, illuminated and hand em bellished Missals and Books of the Hours, priceless tapestries, laces, vestments — what an endless wealth of beauty has been produced when the Church encouraged Art, when it gave no* only a worthy personal ideal but also an appreciative mar ket and a living wage, so that the worker was free to fill his life with the incomparable joy of making something beautiful. How .these con ceptions have gone to work in the world even when they have been wrested from the protected spaces of the old Mother Church! Not long ago there was put up at auction in New York an exquisitely wrought bronze Thurible, supposed to have been made under the direc tion and perhaps with the assistance of Leonardo da Vinci. Many competed for it and the price mounted until it was knocked down for $S1.000 The Boys’ Catholic High School, Augusta THOMAS H. BRITTINGHAM Plumbing and Healing Contractor 919 TWELFTH STREET AUGUSTA GEORGIA In the building which for more than half a century w as St. Mary’s Convent, and St Mary's Academy, conduct ed by the Sisters of Mercy, the Marist Brothers opened last year a Catholic High School for boys. With the start of its second year, this month, a sophomore class has bee n added. Brother Nicholas is the principal, and the faculty includes “Brother Hildebert, Brother Paul, anl B rother Richard Aloysius. long - dead creator of that consumate grace was not thinking of fabulously rich Americans coveting its posses- esion. He was trying to make some thing worthy of the Sanctuary where God Himself dwelt, and in spite of all its w.anderings and vicissitudes the beautiful Thurible still speaks for itself. It is a lamp of incense. It must forever remind us of the Sanc tuary. The Ascola Cope may be the trea sure of the Morgan collection but that is not what it says to us as we look at it. The finest piece of needlework work in the world was not wrought to be exchanged for any or for all of Morgan's gold. It is someone’s wish to fittingly partake in the sublime happenings at the altar. The illuminated, emblazoned, jew el - like pages of old books were not designed for the showcases or the safes of later-day custodians. The makers wanted to make a page beau tiful enough to carry the soul-shak ing words of the Liturgy. Passing on to the other phases of Art we find the very first page in the history of Music concerned with the influence of the patronage of the Church. It is pointed opt that music in modern times is an evolutiop of the musical modes which the Church developed and employed in its cere monial exercises: that the impressive Masses are the greatest works of the most outstanding musical geniuses that the world had ever known; that even Opera is but a development of the Orotorio. Realizing the immense wealth of poetic - inspiration in the deep thoughts and feelings caused by the Catholic interpretation of the soul’s manifest destiny, Francis Thompson mourns that poetry, the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church, the min ister to the mind as the Church is to the soul, should have been allowed ever so slightly to follow the feet of a pagan seducer. The Christian idea, organized into what we know as the Church with its Feasts and Liturgies, its Legends and Traditions, is of poetry all com pact. It is altogether and gloriously true that ever since his day Dante has been called the greatest poet and his poetry mankind's greatest achieve ment. The subject is just Cath olic Christianity. Modern Drama is an erring child but it too had a Holy Mother. Mod ern Drama began in the Church and may God grant that under the influ ence of that great organization where all men are equal, the Drama, the most democratic and intimate of the Arts, may hold a truer mirror up to nature, may show us life relieved of the accidents of the commonplace and vulgar made incarnate through the magic of speech. These claims may seem overweight ed but history concedes every one of them. These are tangible bequests but it is not even in these concrete evidences, precious as they are, that Our Heritage is best embodied. After all, the wisdom and hope and insight of the Faith is best conveyed to us in the personal lives that it has moulded. Life was what our Blessed Savior was always talking about. He came to bring us life—a more abund ant life. Above all, Arts is the fine Art of Living. Life is the origin of Art and it is as much greater than the Arts as God is greater than any of His works. Our greatest heritage is in the spiritual distinction, the abundance and power of the lives of our Saints and Sages, idealized in holy tradition. Formally sanctioning the celebra tion of the 650th Anniversary of Dan te our Holy Father wrote to the Bishop of Ravenna “Dante Aligherius noster est.” Yes, Dante is ours and Raphael is ours, and Fra Angelico is ours, and Francis of Assisi is ours— Blessed St. Francis who taught us that the most beautiful poetry of all is the life that is a poem—‘Every body’s St. Francis.’ the Tittle poor man,’ shining with gladness, more alive, more vivid by far today than scores of us who actually plod be tween the daylight and the dark. Yes, St. Francis is ours. And St. Thomas of Aquinas is ours, and Thomas a Kempis. whose little book has been a lamp foe the feet of so many thou- New York Times Urges Watch on Klan and Bund NEW YORK — An editorial in The New York Times said that the joint meeting of the Ku Klux Klan and the German - American Bund at Camp Nordland, N. J., seemed "a mingling of kindred souls,” and urged that the two organizations and others like them “be kept under close and constant surveillance.” “The Klan’s incitements to racial and religious hatreds furnish a help ful background for the Bund’s cam paign for Hitlerism,” the editorial as serted. “The effect of these activities, singly or in combination, to the de gree that they succeed, is to weaken our democracy and impede prepara tion for the national defense. “This country is now engaged in readying itself to defend its territories and its interests against an enemy who may never attack us if we are fully prepared but whose identity is known. Any organization which op enly supports that possible enemy, as the Bund does directly and as Klan members did indirectly by their presence at Nordland on Sunday, ought to be kept under close and constant surveillance.” sands. Why is it, asks George Eliot, that this small, old fashioned book that you can buy any day for a six- pense at a bookstall, why is it that it works miracles to this very day, turn ing bitter waters into sweetness, while expensive sermons and treat ises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before? This book prized by the ages, printed more times than any book except the Bible, is in our heritage, as well as the articulate and inarticulate emanations from count less noble lives. “Whose echoes roll from, soul to soul and grow forever and forever.” How rn.ny there are! For three hundred years the Bol- landists have been working on an ex haustive ‘Lives of the Saints.’ There will be countless volumes for the material is collossal and will require two hundred and fifty million words —what a company” of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues!” And we may think of this company as of our family. We are taught to think that they want to help us, that we may have friends and patrons there. They have gone before us in the Faith and if we have the will we may ‘time in’ with them and so receive a wealth of example, of refreshment and regeneration, for are we not taught to say “I believe in the Com munion of Saints?” Author of Notre Dame “Victory March” Dead (Special to The Bulletin) NOTRE DAME, Ind. — Interment of the Rev. Michael J. Shea, author of the University of Notre Dame’s “Vic tory March” took place here in tha little community cemetery on the campus of the school whose spirit he helped to immortalize. A graduate of Notre Dame in tha class of 1904, Father Shea was a life long supporter of his alma mater and more than a year ago requested per mission for burial in the cemetery plot reserved for members of the Congre gation of Holy Cross. Father Shea died at the age of 55 in the rectory of St. Augustine's Church, Ossining, New York, as tha result of a heart attack. Prior to as suming the pastorate of St. Augus tine’s in 1938, he had been for many years a professor of philosophy and dogmatic theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York. In commenting on the passing of one of the university’s outstanding alumni, Rev. J. Hugh O’Donnell. C. S. C., president, expressed the deep sorrow of the priest’s many admirers and added that “the spirit of .Father Shea as known to friends of Notre Dame in the ‘Victory March’ will al ways serve as an inspiration to both students and alumni.” The funeral mass for Father Shea was celebrated at Ossining, and was followed by a service in Sacred Heart Church on the campus here. Most Rev. John F. O'Hara, C. S. C., D. D., former president of Notre Dame and now supervising bishop of the Army and Navy diocese, presided. Best Wishes JOHN W. BURKE GOAL COMPANY QUALITY COAL AND COKE 1423 Reynolds St. Telephone 2-7848 Augusta, Ga. Best Wishes Goodrich Silvertown Stores OF THE B. F. GOODRICH COMPANY 815 ELLIS ST. AUGUSTA, GA. BEN WILBANKS, Mgr.