Embracing truth through beauty

No one would design an Italian restaurant to look like a library, an auto parts store, or something so vague that visitors would be hard-pressed to venture a guess as to what its actual purpose was.

Strangely enough, however, in the “business” of salvation, some Catholic churches built or renovated in recent decades arguably have been designed to look like things they are not, and thereby do not accurately convey the Catholic faith and a sense of the sacred.
 
Denis McNamara sees these examples as missed opportunities to draw souls into the abundant life of the Triune God. An architectural historian trained at Yale and the University of Virginia, McNamara had been the associate director of the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois before becoming the director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS, in 2019. Although the move has meant inhabiting a vastly different region, the concept of beauty remains fundamentally the same — not only for McNamara, but for people of every era.

Objective beauty

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, meaning that attractive splendor is essentially subjective. But objective standards such as symmetry, proportionality, and color coordination are keys to what the great majority of people from across cultures describes as beautiful. McNamara argues that beauty runs even deeper — namely, the revelation of the truth of a thing as understood in the mind of God.

“In classical aesthetics, beauty is called the ‘splendor’ or ‘attractive power’ of the truth,” McNamara stated. For centuries, beauty has been seen as that aspect of the truth that makes it delightful to behold. This delight is what makes love possible.
 
“In Aquinas’ notion of beauty, one of its effects is that it moves our wills toward the goodness of the beautiful thing we encounter, and ‘the movement of the will toward the good’ is one of the classic definitions of love,” McNamara explained. “Therefore, beauty inspires us not only to know the truth, but to love the good associated with it.”

In all things liturgical, we are presented opportunities to encounter the truth and the goodness of heaven. “If these things don’t appear heavenly — or even worse, if they don’t appear at all — then we miss the chance to encounter, know, and love them on a profound level,” he said.

Liturgical space
 
The popularity in some quarters of hanging loudspeakers in the sanctuary makes it seem like technology itself should be exalted rather than the message that can be conveyed through it.

McNamara thinks other items should be the objects of feature. Even when Christ Himself is not explicitly present, as when a saint is depicted, He is implicitly there because every saint is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ. All genuinely Christian iconography has Christ as its center.

The life of Christ, McNamara believes, must not be presented as mere data, but as a series of priceless treasures.

“If we don’t present the gospel as delightful — whether in sculpture, painting, architecture, music, books, spoken evangelization, or any number of other things—its importance won’t be perceived by others,” he said.

He also suggested a kind of syllogism: “beauty is to truth as delicious is to food.” In a recipe, when the right ingredients are both present and arranged properly, the reality of the meal shines forth clearly and deliciously. In a similar way, a mosaic might contain good pieces but be uninspiring to view in its entirety, yet the same pieces, coordinated correctly, make the mosaic engaging.
 
McNamara noted that several 20th-century theologians — including Pope Benedict XVI — have argued that Catholics should lead with beauty, because beauty is that aspect of the truth that we find attractive.
 
“Leading with goodness sounds like telling people how to live, which the modern world does not like. Leading with truth can seem like forcing people to believe something against their wills,” he explained.
 
“But beauty is something people are drawn to because they readily perceive it as good — like an atheist visiting 
a beautiful cathedral. They are attracted to the beauty first, and then they may be inspired to ask what is true about it.”

TRENT BEATTIE is a contributing writer for Legatus magazine.