Bye Bye Art. A meditation on the loss of art, on life oriented to the transcendentals, on the rise of violence, on the politics of fear and the loss of freedom.

We've all noticed it. 'It' being the loss of live music, live theatre and dance. Choirs have become muted or made silent altogether. Symphony concerts are gone. Ballets and dance recitals have been crippled by physical distancing. When was the last time a theatrical production was due to open at a local theatre?

Why is it that the arts are suppressed with expediency when a society loses its mind to fear? The arts are among the first things to be jettisoned when a society descends into its lowest mode of existence. 

Need it be said that, during a time of great distress, the arts are exactly what human beings need in order to cope and maintain hope, to retain their sense of humanity? Deprive people of the opportunity to hear their stories shared and they forget soon enough who and what they are. Having no story, inventions creep in that exploit people's fears and render imaginations excitable about all the wrong kinds of fascinations. And, need it be said, that when music, etc., goes, the ability to laugh at ourselves goes with it.

A sure sign that a nation is in decline is when art is replaced with spectacle. Think blood sports. Some might object that said "sports" are a constructive substitution for more chaotic episodes of violence such as war. Blood sports, the logic goes, allow people to channel their violent tendencies into a contained experience. Sure, there's skill involved. The martial arts can be noble, practical, and honorable especially when used in defense of the vulnerable. Mastery of those physical arts requires great mental discipline. However, indulging extreme violence, choreographed violence, hardly enables human beings to grow in charity toward their fellow human beings. Only by some twisted logic does man gain order and peace by offering a bloodthirsty mob the opportunity to foam at the mouth and cheer at another man's or woman's destruction, or their mutual destruction. Rather than channeling or containing said violence, such spectacles merely rehearse and perfect violence. Warning to spectators: you become that which you consume.

Art reminds us who we are. Great art reminds us of our potential. Religious art points us in the direction of the divine. Christian art points us toward the living and true God.

By 'the arts' is necessarily meant the inclusion of the artists that create and perform art, especially musicians, actors and dancers. Let's speak about the performing arts. The visual and literary arts seem less affected by the restrictions primarily aimed at live performances. And, for the moment, let's not get hung up on the concept that mob protests are a form of performance art.

"The sovereignty and dignity of the republic are more important than life."

Christians suffer in solidarity with performing artists. The Church habitually plays host to choral and instrumental music. Churches employ organists, choral scholars (i.e., paid choristers) and music directors by the tens of thousands because the Mass is a home for beauty, truth and goodness. Perhaps the current crisis will remind artists that their true friend is not the state but churches and ecclesial communities who are bona fide patrons of the arts, with a long history of support. Along with benefactors who, by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to artists, arts societies, concert halls and theatres, churches and ecclesial communities support the arts that feed people's souls. To borrow a phrase - man does not live on bread alone!

The transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness are closely intertwined. Dubay (1999) observed that, “Truth beauty and goodness have their being together, by truth we are put in touch with reality which we find is good for us and beautiful to behold. In our knowing, loving and delighting the gift of reality appears to us as something infinitely and in-exhaustively valuable and fascinating.” In seeking to discuss one, the others are naturally and organically brought into the conversation. - Educating to Truth, Beauty and Goodness, October 17, 2016/in Academics Analysis and Commentary, Analysis and Commentary, K12 Curriculum Standards, Teacher Formation and Witness, by Dr. Dan Guernsey.

The true bread that alone can satisfy the deepest desires of men and women is the Bread of Heaven, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Art of the highest merit points people beyond themselves, to their Creator. Art invites us into the creative process. As mentioned, Christian art points us to the living God. Man cannot truly live - or live truly - without a healthy spiritual diet.

The Catholic Church teaches that God is Himself truth, goodness, and beauty, as indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Each transcends the limitations of place and time, and is rooted in being. The transcendentals are not contingent upon cultural diversity, religious doctrine, or personal ideologies, but are the objective properties of all that exists.

A society that has any hope of honouring inalienable rights cannot live without its soul, which is Christ and His Church. The devil knows this. What better way to unhinge people and render them susceptible to false promises of security than to deprive them of the nourishment and eternal security offered by the Holy Eucharist! Without the liberating Presence of Jesus to sustain us, we run the risk of contracting another disease far more dangerous than covid19. We risk being annihilated in a spiritual death that results from a slow rotting of the soul.

Of course, God is not bound to His sacraments. The Catechism puts it best:

CCC 1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are "reborn of water and the Spirit." God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments. 

1258 The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.

Christians living under persecution - Ukrainians during the Soviet tyranny, Catholics in the People's Republic of China, Christians living in many African and Middle Eastern countries - understand well what it means to be deprived of the sacraments, for decades. God sustains people through extraordinary times. God sustains people when they are deprived of goodness, truth and beauty, by supplying the witness of martyrs who are living examples of art-enfleshed. That is, they are embodiments of the true, the good and the beautiful. Christ lives in the Christian martyr.

Catholicism has since its beginning treasured the arts as ways to "enflesh" the gift of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. Christianity is, after all, the religion of the Incarnation. The Catholic Faith is an embodied faith, not merely a heady enterprise consisting of nifty concepts. The Catholic Faith is about a real person - Jesus Christ - Who enters into the lives of all those who accept Him and His invitation to newness of life. Catholics' love for Jesus and our hope in His promise of everlasting life is manifest in a legacy of great art - music, iconography, stained glass, statuary, architecture, vestments, sacred vessels, etc. - that celebrates truth, goodness and beauty, all of which is intended to point people in the direction of God.

A society deprived of a spiritually nourishing diet will starve and succumb to base instincts. The devil knows that. A common strategy of the devil that manages to evade the criticism of clever socialist pundits is the creation of chaos to effect a state of flux in which an agenda that is anti-God - and therefore anti-human - can take the place of a humane agenda. It is no mere coincidence that socialism and the devil employ the same strategy of divide and manipulate to achieve their ends. In summary, the strategy goes like this:

1. take up a cause; manufacture injustice; mask or obscure the agenda: brand extremism as a form of just cause; conceal radical intentions so as to avoid alienating potential allies and drawing attention to actions
2. lead from behind: create consensus; foster a common identity by finding common ground; look for opportunities to rally and engage people who need involvement and a community in which they feel empowered; create disposable leaders (i.e., leaders who can take the fall or be pushed aside when their usefulness is ended)
3. create conflict: create scapegoats (the more the better. Conflict, like misery, loves company.); enable activists to recruit additional allies.
4. fear-mongering: fuel conflict, create additional opportunities to attack stability; massage participants into more extreme action by playing on their fears; exploit weaknesses; create a new norm (chaos); create mob rule; promote feelings, ignore facts.
5. marginalize opposition: deny the opposition from presenting or participating in a solution; remove obstacles to further growth of a movement by: name calling to demonize and undermine a threat to the agenda; own debates by labeling opponents "out of touch", racists, bigots, neo-colonialists, etc.
6. attack non-activists (anyone advocating for measured engagement) as complacent and therefore complicit with (manufactured) injustice.
7. let chaos reign; let chaos build; let the pot boil; step back and watch the fire burn and consume resources.
8. sell the solution: now that chaos is the new norm, people are willing to buy into any solution, even fake solutions, if sold as a way to achieve (return to) calm and security (relief from threat).
9. demonize and dispose of leaders who refuse to deescalate. Brand former allies as "part of the problem". Identify and evacuate threats by showing how former allies are now irrelevant.
10. be the messiah: people need a saviour; recruit new allies to sell the solution; keep enough chaos to remind people what they want to avoid.

Socialism is a lie invented by the Father of Lies to convince soft-headed fanatics that they can make paradise on earth. How has that worked for everybody so far?

Socialism is a puny rival of Christianity, just as Satan is an impotent rival of Jesus and His Church. Satan and Jesus are hardly equals. Satan is a fallen creature; Jesus is God.

For some who claim to be christians, socialism is the best political expression of Christian ideals. (Christianity is not a religion of ideals - it is the wisdom of God. It is reality!) Socialism merely borrows Christian terms in order to sound like something that it is not, in an attempt to conceal its true agenda. Socialism undermines inalienable rights which, in a free society and authentically exercised, allow men and women to freely encounter the good things through which God may draw the human spirit upwards toward Himself. If ideologies blind people to their God-given rights, they will only see what others want them to see: a world of indifference and misery.

Seventy-five or so years of Soviet communism and socialist propaganda and control are a testament to the evil that seeks to rob us of our dignity and well being. It seems that the world has yet to benefit from knowing its history and the consequences of buying into false religions like communism and its offspring socialism. Societies still cavort with the socialism lie and wonder why their communities are plagued by serious inertias, rent by deadly social ills: rampant and fatal drug abuse; addiction to pornography; human trafficking; abortion and euthanasia; suicide; and population implosion. So much for heaven on a socialist earth.

So then, by emptying pews and depriving artists of the means by which to earn a living in service to the spiritual and psychological needs of human beings, governments are made allies of an inhuman agenda, an agenda that is undermining the health and well being of citizens who need art and religion to sustain them through adversity. Do not be surprised by the advent of additional contradictory actions by governments that torture people through irrational fear and intimidation in order to coerce them into compliance with sinister (life-sapping) programs.

Restrictions on certain kinds of behaviour to preserve health are understandable and necessary. Charity requires that we all do what we can to preserve the health and well being of others. We must be vigilant, however, from becoming allies of agendas that - down the road - lead to a costly loss of our ability to freely exercise our inalienable rights. When governments enact policies that undermine common sense instead of enabling it, we must question and, when necessary, defy those policies in order to protect us from demagoguery and policies which stunt and kill the human spirit.

The inhibition of the arts and the restrictions on church gatherings - while other services and venues far less manageable are given considerable latitude - is a canary in a coal mine, a sobering reminder that if we allow governments unchecked control of our right to free association in order to protect life, there must be an acknowledgement on the part of governments that they are required to publish and honour a plan by which citizens can return to normalcy. Anything less than a strong contract to ensure the normal and free exercise of our God-given rights is likely to result in government complacency that can be exploited to achieve a lengthy descent into societal instability and economic destruction.

Only in God and only fully through the Church that Jesus established can man discern and authentically live his inalienable rights, which include the free exercise of religion (to love God and neighbour as a public and personal act), the right to speak freely (so as to ennoble souls to discover the Truth), the right to associate freely (for the common good), and so forth. Governments can and do forget all that from time to time. Supreme courts, too, can fall far on the wrong side of truth and justice. If we do not challenge governments by offering peaceful, sustained witness to better ways to promote public safety and well being, we will likely run the risk of finding ourselves sliding down that slippery slope toward a society that bans religious gatherings and imprisons the artists that challenge the state about its persecution of innocent people, people of faith, a people who want the Truth and the beauty and goodness that issue from knowing that Truth.

Spiritual not religious? Somehow many people have bought into the lie that being spiritual, whatever that means, is preferable to being religious. No one is martyred because he or she is merely spiritual. Spiritual people are not a threat to dictators. Martyrs, at least in the Christian sense, are defined as religious people who die because they love and live for Jesus, because they uncompromisingly love and live for the truth, no matter the cost. Those who practice the Catholic faith are most dangerous of all - because the faithful can never share their beds with evil. Too many communities claiming to be Christian have surrendered their dignity to worldly doctrines, e.g., divorce and remarriage (adultery, bigamy), sexual license (sex before marriage) and sexual perversion.

Playwrights are 'disappeared' because they have the audacity to expose the evil actions of a dictator, because their work undermines his power to control what others think and do.

• A dictator uses police as tools to locate threats to his power and control.
• A socialist committee does the same, often employing ordinary citizens to spy on neighbours, spouses, children, teachers, coworkers, etc.

Artists and priests often create an underground of resistance, a trustworthy and resilient community to preserve communication and support for the good, the true and the beautiful, for justice, to provide a means by which they can affirm and influence others to work for truth and justice. They risk censure, imprisonment, torture and death.

Aleksandr Davydovich Drevin (1889 – 1938) was a Latvian Russian painter. [...] On 17 January 1938, during the Great Purge, as a part of the so-called "Latvian Operation", Drevin was arrested by the NKVD and executed on 26 February at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

When a government assumes the responsibility to think for people instead of with people, people should be concerned and express that concern. When a society allows the arts and artists to be silenced, its material and religious artists - think of Christians as icons of the true, the good and the beautiful - to be deprived of association, those same societies can soon expect depression, despair and psychological death to increase like a cancer metastasizing and overcoming its host.

Democratic elected governments, if they are truly democratic, must be oriented to the security and well being of their citizens, to the protection and preservation of life. However, policies that rob people of the opportunity to nurture the transcendent in their lives will ultimately rob people of their physical lives, too. So, it should come as no surprise that social scientists are now warning of another pandemic, a suicide pandemic (QJM/Oxford Academic: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates):

Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has profound psychological and social effects. The psychological sequelae of the pandemic will probably persist for months and years to come. Studies indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with distress, anxiety, fear of contagion, depression and insomnia in the general population and among healthcare professionals. Social isolation, anxiety, fear of contagion, uncertainty, chronic stress and economic difficulties may lead to the development or exacerbation of depressive, anxiety, substance use and other psychiatric disorders in vulnerable populations including individuals with pre-existing psychiatric disorders and people who reside in high COVID-19 prevalence areas. Stress-related psychiatric conditions including mood and substance use disorders are associated with suicidal behavior. COVID-19 survivors may also be at elevated suicide risk. The COVID-19 crisis may increase suicide rates during and after the pandemic. Mental health consequences of the COVID-19 crisis including suicidal behavior are likely to be present for a long time and peak later than the actual pandemic. To reduce suicides during the COVID-19 crisis, it is imperative to decrease stress, anxiety, fears and loneliness in the general population. There should be traditional and social media campaigns to promote mental health and reduce distress. Active outreach is necessary, especially for people with a history of psychiatric disorders, COVID-19 survivors and older adults. Research studies are needed of how mental health consequences can be mitigated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Did anyone notice that the World Health Organization revised its language and started promoting 'physical distancing' instead of 'social distancing' once it was made clear by social scientists that people are being adversely affected by the use of a dangerous neologism? (Dr. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove WHO transcript: time index 00:19:31):

MK: If I can just add, you may have heard us use the phrase physical distancing instead of social distancing and one of the things to highlight in what Mike was saying about keeping the physical distance from people so that we can prevent the virus from transferring to one another; that's absolutely essential. But it doesn't mean that socially we have to disconnect from our loved ones, from our family. 

Technology right now has advanced so greatly that we can keep connected in many ways without actually physically being in the same room or physically being in the same space with people so as the DG highlighted in his speech a lot about this is - we say social distancing. We're changing to say physical distance and that's on purpose because we want people to still remain connected. 

So find ways to do that, find ways through the internet and through different social media to remain connected.

Words and phrases can give life, and can bring death. For an example of the latter - social distancing.

The Church offers words of eternal life, and by doing so offers words to sustain hope in this life. Which is to say, the Catholic Faith offers people in this life - this side of heaven - wisdom to support life, and encouragement that effects resilience and fosters calm even while madness surrounds.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. - 2 Corinthians 4:7-15

There is a reason the Church is always on the front lines of any healthcare crisis - the Catholic Church invented hospitals to care for the sick and dying because we love all souls, as our Saviour Jesus teaches us to do. The example of Saint Teresa of Calcutta comes to mind.

I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus. - Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta

We do not abandon people to despair as secular death-wards do by promoting euthanasia. The Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the Western World. The Church is the origin of public hospitals. Many ancient cultures had medical practices, often mixed with superstition. Said practices were reserved for royalty and the wealthy. Pagans in ancient times tossed their children and physically handicapped family members off cliffs. Disciples of one prominent religion still throw people off buildings or bury women up to their necks and stone them. Healthcare for the poor, hospice for the dying, shelter for widows and orphans, refuges for refugees - those were invented by the Catholic Church. Entire religious orders were founded to serve and, during times of persecution, to protect hospitals. By pioneering medical care for all, the Catholic Church has put into practice the words of Jesus Christ. 

 

We must promote the arts to sustain people through the present crisis. If we do not creatively assert the gifts of beauty and goodness, people will lose their souls to despair, drugs and death.

Catholics have an obligation to insist on access to the Holy Eucharist. We may have to provide "underground" access in ways that protect people from harm to their physical health, in ways that also protect clergy and others from imprisonment for protecting the right to communal religious association. If we do not take seriously that right, we cannot expect others less informed and less considerate to work for a just and balanced solution amidst the current and developing crisis. If we do not take seriously our vocation as Christians, we may - by our inaction and lack of respectful resistance to short-sighted policies - allow a bad situation to develop into a much worse situation.

Further Reading

• https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/07/an-angry-nation
• https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/07/free-speech-prevails-at-princeton
• https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/covid-19-and-the-limits-of-obedience
• https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/07/24/on-statues-and-proper-respect-for-our-forerunners/
• https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/07/05/the-impious-public-square/
• https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/07/29/dorothy-day-precarity-and-the-universal-call-to-holiness/
• https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2942 Why the Catholic Church Cannot Accept Socialism
• https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/faith-and-character/faith-and-character/the-fabric-of-a-society-without-a-soul.html
• https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/philosophy/on-critics-and-bullies.html
• https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/spiritual-life/coronavirus-stalks-in-the-darkness-but-do-not-be-afraid.html
• https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-survey-95-artists-lost-income-covid-19
• https://hyperallergic.com/546913/coronavirus-daily-report/