The Working Catholic: Bad Artists by Bill Droel

 

Sometimes a flawed individual creates captivating art—music, painting, a novel, a play. Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer (Knopf, 2023) is the latest consideration of how the public should ethically treat art that comes from a bad person. Her dilemma is more acute thanks to the courage of the Me Too movement.

            The following analogy relies on a dated incident. In early 2022 Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, now retired, outed a veteran pastor for baptizing people with the words, “We baptize you in the name of the Father…” Citing an August 2020 ruling from the Vatican, Olmsted said using the pronoun we instead of I baptize you makes the 100s of baptisms performed by that pastor “invalid.” The pastor apologized, pleaded ignorance and resigned from the parish. (He is now the pastor at another place.)

Back in the day everyone who took a graduate course in sacramental theology (admittedly a small crowd) learned the distinction between ex opera operantis and ex opera operato. Is it possible for a sacrament to take effect even though the conferring priest is a sinner or, in Dederer’s word, a monster? The Catholic answer is yes. The sacrament itself confers its own grace. There is a qualifying criterion for effectiveness: The celebrant and the recipient must have the right intention. Such seems to have been the case in Phoenix. The pastor admitted his error.

This blog does not intend to settle a technical/pastoral application of Catholic rules. Its purpose is to give guidance to those sensitive to the discrepancy between an artist’s moral character and the art. Generally, in my judgment, the work of art stands on its own merit (ex opera operato), presuming the artist and the viewer/listener/reader have the right intention.

Caution is advised when judging an artist’s intention. Did she or he state that their purpose in making the art was to spread their own sin? It’s possible, but unlikely. Did she or he repent from their sin subsequent to making the art? Being judgmental is not healthy.

There is another way to sort out the discrepancy between a bad person and his or her quality art. Some people use descriptions like Christian rock or Catholic novel. There is no such thing, really. All art that displays the truth (lower case t) is pleasing to God. The good morality of the artist is no guarantee that the art is worthy. In fact, so-called Christian music can be so insipid and a so-called Catholic novel can be so mediocre that neither qualifies as art. Try again, God will say. God wants art with all its teeth.

 

Droel serves the board of National Center for the Laity in Chicago.

Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia: the Joy of Creation

 

We recently went on vacation to Barcelona, Spain with our London family.  We stayed at a hotel in Sitges, just south of the city of Barcelona.  The main tourist attraction in Barcelona is the church of the Holy Family, Sagrada Familia.

 

The original construction of the church in 1882 was under the direction of Architect Francisco de Paula del Villar.  However in 1883 Antoni Gaudí (b. 1852) took over the project transforming it to his architectural design and engineering style. The church is not yet finished and is still under construction.  It survived the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Fascists and the religiously conservative regime of Francisco Franco.  Gaudí died on June 10, 1926.  The construction of the church passed into the hands of several different architects, holding to the same theme and design.  Gaudí’s design of the church is Catalan Modernist. 

Sagrada Familia is a welcoming and inspiring structure.  Churches of the past, Romanesque to Rococo, were refuges, protecting the faithful from devils in the struggle for redemption after the fall of Adam.  Sagrada Familia celebrates nature as joyful revelation in stone.  The struggle of life is not denied. The passion of the Sagrada Familia is recognized, but in the context of the joy of creation.  

Walking in the sanctuary worshipers experience an explosion of light, on one side the beams of dawn, the other side the brilliance of sunset.  

Standing in the plaza outside the church one sees the spires as a grove of trees, of different sizes and species.  

Sagrada Familia inspires us to save the sacred earth. 

“God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.” (Genesis 1:31)

Resources

Original Blessing, Matthew Fox, Bear and Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1983.

The Working Catholic: Social Doctrine Part Thirteen, Poverty by Bill Droel

  

It’s published in Wall St. Journal (4/30/23), so it must be true. It’s an essay about wages by Michael Lind. He begins with a quotation from Adam Smith (1723-1790), a theorist for modern capitalism. For capitalism to thrive, Smith says employees must get a family wage.

Family wage is a principle of Catholic social doctrine. A slogan from Unite Here, a union of hotel workers with headquarters in Manhattan, is a good paraphrase of our Catholic principle: “One Job Should Be Enough.” Our U.S. bishops described a family wage in their 1919 Program of Social Reconstruction. Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) has it in his 1931 encyclical Reconstructing the Social Order, as does Vatican II (1962-1965). St. John Paul II (1920-2005) also writes about it. The idea is that one wage earner should be paid at least enough to support a family, including its education needs, some funds for leisure plus for modest savings. The amount of that wage can differ by location and by the type of job. A family can have a second wage earner, but the family’s survival should not depend on that arrangement. St. John Paul II emphasizes that the measure of a society’s justice is its wage structure. All other compensations and social policies and management plans are accessories.

Lind says that our economy does not abide by the family wage principle but uses a model he calls low-wage/high-welfare. Many employees get inadequate pay but stay afloat through Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, housing vouchers and more. In other words, as Lind writes, “taxpayers pay to rescue workers whose work does not pay enough.”

Lower wages allow for lower costs which benefit some consumers. For example, middle-class and upper-class families are winners in the low-wage/high welfare economy when they hire housekeepers or landscapers. The losers are taxpayers and of course the underpaid.

Matthew Desmond in Poverty, By America (Crown, 2023) agrees. Poverty resists elimination despite charitable endeavors and social welfare because some people benefit from the poverty of others. “Poverty is an injury, a taking,” says Desmond. Normally, people are unaware of how their lifestyle depends on the perpetuation of poverty. However, Desmond’s book makes it plain, using many examples including our tolerance for insubstantial wages.

There’s a corollary to the principle of a just wage. Because an employee agrees to a sub-level wage the criteria for justice is not met. Adherence to this aspect of Catholic doctrine means, for example, that a pastor cannot morally pay a teacher less than a just wage because the teacher understands the job as a vocation. The standard is objective, not subjective. That standard does, however, take into account that a just wage in a small town, for example, might be lower than a comparable wage in Manhattan.

There is plenty of room for debate as to how to achieve just wages. Lind mentions collective bargaining, but he is not happy about a bargaining unit at one Starbucks and then a different unit at the next Starbucks. He suggests sector or multi-employer bargaining might be better. This idea is like the Catholic idea of an industry council plan. To be continued…

Written for Catholic Labor Network (www.catholiclabor.org); 5/3/23

For more on this topic get St. John Paul II’s Gospel of Work edited by Bill Droel (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $8.)