How are beauty and the gospel message connected? ****************************************************************************************** * ****************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************** * "The task of nowadays is to grasp the rich traditions and beautiful things we have from in their deepest sense, and find a way how to use them." ****************************************************************************************** *========================================================================================= * Norbert Schmidt, Centre for Theology and Arts, interviewed by Radek Tichý *========================================================================================= Norbert, at our faculty you are the director of the Centre for Theology and Arts (ctu-uk.c forward to your comments on the exhortation by Pope Francis contemplating about the connec passing on the faith and the “way of beauty”. Pope says that every local church is to supp art of the past and search for new symbols, “new tissue where the word can be embodied and this “including the unconventional modalities of beauty which can have little importance f propagator but are very attractive for others” (EG 167). How are beauty and the gospel mes If we are to talk about using art to spread the gospel, I have timid feelings in this resp understand, and I have to say that wrongly, Pope’s call as an effort for some kind of prop creating a suitable illustration of the doctrine of the church, it probably won’t work at We might get to some art therapy or parish festival art, but we will not get to the core o the actual via pulchritudinis, as it is spoken about by Pope Francis. Could you go into more detail?  What is art? A useless activity! Artists close themselves off somewhere like monks, like p they work on something which most people do not like and do not understand at first. But a those who don’t give up their search. A great opportunity for the church is to accompany t a continuous dialogue. Pope John Paul II said that the church needed art to get a better u people nowadays. Art is mainly a multivocal existential stimulus in space which brings a c content topic in it but does not have to resonate. But this is the right place for opening insight and there might even be the connection with the gospel you are asking about. When Pope Francis’s call, it helps me to realise that on the one hand we have here a huge herit Art, but on the other hand nowadays, as many times before, we are at some kind of point ze about the basics, like Christians long time ago somewhere in catacombs, and we rediscover once again.   Is it possible to give examples of art schools in the past that presented the Christian me way and were not just a product of their time?   Every style reflects its time to a certain degree. You can see the political and economic period in it. First of all, however, it reflects the self-understanding of Christians and it keeps developing. Therefore, it is tricky to glorify a style and transfer it to our tim we understand the principle of inculturation of the gospel, the necessity of its embodimen time and culture, we can differentiate the important from the unimportant retrospectively. not to discard rich traditions and beautiful things we gained from our predecessors. We mu in their deepest sense and find a way how to use them nowadays. It does not mean musealisa buildings and objects or their copying when creating new things. When reconstructing Baroq we cannot make a free-standing pseudo-Baroque students’ canteen which takes up the formal surroundings but conceptually and ideologically is not connected with the interior or the liturgy. In such cases, the form and content become separated and for perceptive people th unplausible. It becomes a kind of museum or an island for modernity refugees. Even nowaday without inculturation.   How should the Church approach current art?  First of all, it is important to get to know current artists. There is nothing such as THE art. There are concrete works of art and concrete artists. Then it is important to recogni qualities and the aims of the individual artists. And you can be sure that big topics (suc of existence, doubting and desire for something perfect, fascination with love and fear of not disappeared from the contemporary art. Here we have a big field of mutual inspiration. dialog and trust can give birth to something which survives centuries and finds its place liturgical space. For example, I am quite sceptic about the situation when a tender is mad building, one offer is selected and built exactly according to the design on paper. None o constructions have been made in the whole twenty centuries of Christian history.   What is the right way then?  An architectonic competition is used by the contractor to find a creator. Then there shoul search and argumentation. For this, the contracting party, it means the Church, needs adeq at the same intellectual level and experience that have known in the long term what their they address, trust, oppose, or even argue with in order their work would go through fire required purity and genuineness. All this needs time. The Church is responsible for making construction would not show any hasty decisions.   What role can and should be played in it by Catholic Theological Faculty where we learn to and the Church and where the history of art is also studied?  One thing is the necessity of a scientific and competent recognition of the past. It is gr is taught by real first-class specialists at the faculty. The second thing is an attempt f with the contemporary authors. For that we have the Centre for Theology and Arts. In 2007 with lectures by foreign guests and various debates. Then we commenced our “laboratory res examples of the contemporary art incorporated in the sacral area. I think that this is the the university environment: provision of a space for patient examination of current issues the theoretical background and building contacts with abroad. I see the Centre for Theolog kind of laboratory which searches for and tests what is and what is not inspiring. I canno our interventions in St Salvator Church and now also in other places would have been imple the academic support provided by Catholic Theological Faculty, which naturally requires cr consistency typical for monks and long-term observation. Thus, I believe, we can provide a information, experience and insight in the concrete current attempts, for example to novic If a priest in church administration wants to search for new ways of beauty referring to G he do? He should learn to like his church, in the first place. He should understand it. He should strengths and weaknesses. The way of improvement is not through radical elimination of see functional things or adding new works hastily. The way to a longer-lasting change with an parish spirituality is a way of thinking everything through slowly and consistently. A rec my foreign friends not to do big things straightaway have proved useful. We should start w small and temporary but with the maximum care as if it were a new church building construc We do not have to change the world but open new ways in a thought-out way. The text was first published in DOXA, vol. 1, no. 2, May 2015 [ URL "https://www.ktf.cuni. version1-doxa_02_15web.pdf"] , pp. 20 - 11.