THE APOLOGETICS OF BEAUTY

ANDREW GREELEY
-Beauty does not argue because it doesnt have to. Beauty is a form of apologetic because it is the most
powerful appeal of Catholicism both to its own membership and to many others.
-religion is based on right reason though faith transcends right reason.
-beauty is a dimension of an object, event, or person that under proper circumstances, may hint at the
transcendent and may even provide an opportunity for the transcendent briefly to break through our lives
and illumine them.
-generally, we begin with truth, beaten into the heads of our people and enforced with rules so that people
will be good (as we define good). We see beauty as an expensive option because it interferes with
goodness and may even lead to temptation.
-Catholic parishes dont really encourage artistic activities. Who needs beauty?
-Catholicism often seems a complex and intricate network of rules, a harsh legalism in which there is no
room for the beautiful.
-doctrine accuracy is not contradicting with the apologetics of beauty. The AOB can be a starting point to
appreciate the doctrine. The doctrine can also be the starting point to appreciate beauty (somehow like
Hellwigs 2 directions in which questions move).
-The dominant style of ministry is still authoritarian pragmatism it aims at shaping a largely spiritless
people into good catholics, authoritarian because it seeks to do so by imposing its rules on people. If
charged with neglect of beauty, it argues that it has neither the time nor the resources nor the
opportunities to do anything else.
-We constrain people to become virtuous. We decline to administer the sacraments to those whom we
believe to be unworthy (in direct violation of the canon law).
-In both the old and new manifestations of authoritarian pragmatism, we succumb to the temptation to
force the people to be virtuous. In our frantic attempts to make people better we have no time for beauty.
One does not ask whether a new church or painting or a story is beautiful. One asks whether it is
liturgically, politically, and doctrinally correct.
-Someone once argued that one can judge the depth of a spirituality by the beauty of the art it produces. If
based on that standard then contemporary American Catholic spirituality is worth very little.
-Contemporary Catholic theology, whether balthasarian (espoused beauty) or Rahnerian (doctrinal
accuracy), agrees that of the three transcendentals inherent in being (Truth, Goodness, and Beauty),
beauty is primary in that we encounter it first. As we ponder it, we see that it is good (Genesis, everything
that God created was good) and are attracted to the Goodness it represents. Bemused by the appeal of
Goodness, we discover that it contains truth, and we listen to the Truth we hear from it. This is not an
inevitable process nor one that involves logical deduction. It is an existential tendency that is built into the
structure of human condition.
-We live surrounded by Gods beauty. All are grace and grace is everywhere, often not noticed but still
there.
-Sometimes it is said that if God really wanted us to believe, he would speak to us. God shouts to us all the
time through the beauty that surrounds us. We can hardly go anywhere without being overwhelmed by
beauty except when we go to church. There is beauty in the sacraments, though we seemed determined to
minimize the beauty so that we can emphasize the rules with which we have surrounded the sacraments.
-Beauty serves goodness and truth not by indoctrinating nor by educating nor by imparting doctrinally
orthodox propositions. Beauty illumines, it does not teach.
-We should not abandon catechism nor the teaching of sound doctrine. We should insist instead that
religious education emphasize the beauty in the church and its sacraments and the beauty of sound
doctrine.
-Encounters with beauty open us up to their own alchemy, which gently guides us to goodness and truth.
There is no other way, because faith and ethics cannot be imposed form the outside. They can be embraced
only as a consequence of an act of love.
-The flaw of Au.Prag. is that it is determined to budget the Spirits time, to force her hand, to constrain her
to blow where we will, not where she will, to force epiphanies on demand. (remember that Spirits role is
to guide us and help us know God more clearly)