Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Clown suits. . .

As long as I am making admissions, I will confess to at one point participating in the making of a tie-dyed chasuble.  It looked positively 1970s!  Oh, well.  I grew out of it and own and have worn a host of tastefully designed vestments.  I should have loaned a few to Notre Dame clergy at the opening extravaganza of that renewed building.  Instead they wore clown suits.  Some have presumed Masonic leanings and others have their theories but I think it is mostly bad taste and the foolish idea that vestments (like buildings) are a canvas for the inventive to play out their weird ideas.  

Even worse than the design are the colors.  Are they merely primary colors or are they supposed to remind us of the rainbow and all that this symbol now means?  It is art brought low, down to a very low common denominator.  The crayola box of 8.  It would seem that France learned the lesson early on -- don't mess with Notre Dame (at least on the exterior).  I only wish the Roman Catholic Church had learned the same lesson.  The interior became a fanciful exposition of our vain attempts to be relevant and the whole thing is embarrassing.  The altar, the pulpit/ambo, the sacred vessels, and the vestments represent the triumph of fancy over faith, of test over taste, and of a blank canvas over history.  Notre Dame is like the door you open from the outside only to be sure you opened the wrong door based on what is on the inside.  At best it is whimsy over stature but at worst it is chaos.  Art serves not beauty but the Word, not with what we could do but what we should, and not with as trial but as representation of the eternal.  

The designer did not try to hide his efforts.  The problem is that nobody was bold enough to admit what now everyone is thinking.  Clown suits.  Such things not only demean and make mockery of those who wear them, they also demean and mock the seriousness of the faith of the ages.  God gives us His best and we return the favor by offering Him whimsy and goofiness.  In art and music, architecture and design, vessels and vestments, we need to remember that these are not canvases for our own self-expression but offered to God and used for His purpose within the Divine Service. 
 


1 comment:

John Flanagan said...

Even in the matter of Christian art and ritual expression, fallen mankind cannot help but soothe vanity and pride, thinking wrongly that somehow these things alone are pleasing to God. Apart from a sincere heart and mind directed to the Lord, such embellishments are tinkling chimes. A faithful and humble spirit towards God means to strive to attract people to Jesus and the Gospel, not to ourselves. Somehow, the message of Jesus was lost once the church was established long ago.