This is what science is about, what makes it worthwhile - the discovery of beauty. This wonderful picture of Saturn from the Cassini space-probe, and the glorious vistas of deep space opened up by the Hubble telescope, are the kind of thing that get people interested in science as a career. Not to mention the unsolved puzzles. Why does one of Saturn’s moons look as though its two halves had been stuck together with glue? Why is another, a tiny ball of ice, venting like a volcano to create the E-ring? In Britain the long-running television programme ‘The Sky at Night’ is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. We congratulate and thank Sir Patrick Moore for all that he has done to awaken minds both young and old to the splendours and curiosities of space.

We know that the great breakthroughs of science are made with the aid of imagination; they involve creation as well as discovery. This suggests that the gulf between science and art can be bridged, but probably only if we give up the modern notion that beauty is merely subjective, existing not in the world but only in our minds (as if our minds were not also part of the world!)…

The purpose of art is surely not just to shock, to amaze, to entertain, or even to transform our perception, but to do all these things by revealing something to do with reality, to reveal something TRUE. Thus the gap can be bridged in both directions.

What then is the difference between science and art? Maybe art is searching for beauty and truth in the way things appear to us, even if it uses appearances to speak of something deeper. Science, on the other hand, searches for beauty and truth behind appearances, in the hidden order of causality.

The medieval concept of a ‘liberal arts’ education is interesting: grammar, logic and rhetoric (needed for communication and argument) were followed by the study of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy - not all of them ‘arts’ in the modern sense, but at that time the split that defines our culture had not yet taken place. The four disciplines of the quadrivium had at least one thing in common: a basis in number, in mathematics. Music was the expression of numerical harmonies in time, geometry the exploration of relationships in space, and so on. The assumption here was that by learning to understand these relationships, this harmony in the cosmos, our minds would be raised towards God, in whom we could find the unity from which they all derive, the ‘love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ Thus the quadrivium would prepare the ground in us for the contemplative sciences, philosophy and theology.

Perhaps we need to think in fresh ways about education in our time. Perhaps we need to rediscover the liberal arts.

In his Peace Day message for 2007, Pope Benedict XVI has called for an ‘integral Christian humanism‘. It is this humanism that we are seeking to nurture through our web-site and our work at ResSource and the Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture. It is also the vision of education that lies behind the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, with which we have recently entered a very exciting partnership. The College Press will publish our print journal, Second Spring, beginning with issue 8 (now at last in production), and plans for several collaborative educational projects are in train. The new College president, Dr Jeffrey O. Nelson, writes of this arrangement: ‘This is an ideal partnership, one aimed at furthering a new evangelization through the formation of young persons and the transformation of existing cultures in the great tradition of Christian humanism rightly understood: the cultivation of intelligence, conscience and grace.’

The different dimensions of this partnership will unfold over the coming months. In the meantime, we are making some overdue revisions and additions to our two web-sites.

Such was the popularity of this little book, the MASS ILLUSTRATED FOR CHILDREN by Susan Bateman, that we are reissuing it in a revised edition shortly, both in the UK and the US. Teachers, catechists and parents are finding it helpful as a way of introducing children to the central mysteries of the Catholic faith. You can find it in the Books section of this site. It will be followed by other titles in the coming years, as our company ResSource becomes a fully-fledged publisher at last!

By the way, the director of our educational arm, ResSource, the artist David Clayton, will be visiting Los Angeles and San Francisco to give some talks in April, and (with Stratford Caldecott) Washington DC in May. If anyone wants an interesting talk on art history or the philosophy of art, on sacred geometry, iconography or practical Renaissance drawing techniques, please contact us through the web-site.

On 22 December the Pope in an address to the Roman Curia made some comments on the importance of children. Here is an extract:

‘A child needs loving attention. This means that we must give children some of our time, the time of our life. But precisely this “raw material” of life — time — seems to be ever scarcer. The time we have available barely suffices for our own lives; how could we surrender it, give it to someone else? To have time and to give time - this is for us a very concrete way to learn to give oneself, to lose oneself in order to find oneself.

‘In addition to this problem comes the difficult calculation: what rules should we apply to ensure that the child follows the right path and in so doing, how should we respect his or her freedom? The problem has also become very difficult because we are no longer sure of the norms to transmit; because we no longer know what the correct use of freedom is, what is the correct way to live, what is morally correct and what instead is inadmissible.

‘The modern spirit has lost its bearings, and this lack of bearings prevents us from being indicators of the right way to others. Indeed, the problem goes even deeper. Contemporary man is insecure about the future. Is it permissible to send someone into this uncertain future? In short, is it a good thing to be a person? This deep lack of self assurance — plus the wish to have one’s whole life for oneself — is perhaps the deepest reason why the risk of having children appears to many to be almost unsustainable.

‘In fact, we can transmit life in a responsible way only if we are able to pass on something more than mere biological life, and that is, a meaning that prevails even in the crises of history to come and a certainty in the hope that is stronger than the clouds that obscure the future.

‘Unless we learn anew the foundations of life - unless we discover in a new way the certainty of faith — it will be less and less possible for us to entrust to others the gift of life and the task of an unknown future.

‘Connected with that, finally, is also the problem of definitive decisions: can man bind himself for ever? Can he say a “yes” for his whole life? Yes, he can. He was created for this. In this very way human freedom is brought about and thus the sacred context of marriage is also created and enlarged, becoming a family and building the future.

‘At this point, I cannot be silent about my concern about the legislation for de facto couples. Many of these couples have chosen this way because — at least for the time being — they do not feel able to accept the legally ordered and binding coexistence of marriage. Thus, they prefer to remain in the simple de facto state. When new forms of legislation are created which relativize marriage, the renouncement of the definitive bond obtains, as it were, also a juridical seal.

‘In this case, deciding for those who are already finding it far from easy becomes even more difficult. Then there is in addition, for the other type of couple, the relativization of the difference between the sexes.

‘The union of a man and a woman is being put on a par with the pairing of two people of the same sex, and tacitly confirms those fallacious theories that remove from the human person all the importance of masculinity and femininity, as though it were a question of the purely biological factor.

‘Such theories hold that man — that is, his intellect and his desire — would decide autonomously what he is or what he is not. In this, corporeity is scorned, with the consequence that the human being, in seeking to be emancipated from his body — from the “biological sphere” — ends by destroying himself.

‘If we tell ourselves that the Church ought not to interfere in such matters, we cannot but answer: are we not concerned with the human being? Do not believers, by virtue of the great culture of their faith, have the right to make a pronouncement on all this? Is it not their — our — duty to raise our voices to defend the human being, that creature who, precisely in the inseparable unity of body and spirit, is the image of God?”‘

[Picture credit: Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Titian (Longleat Estate).]

We would like to wish all our readers a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why. - G.K. Chesterton

Pope Benedict recently spoke on the meaning of Christmas:

“Why did God become man?” St. Irenaeus writes: “The word has become the dispenser of the Father’s glory for the usefulness of men…. The glory of God is the living man — ‘vivens homo’ — and the life of man consists in the vision of God” (”Adv. Haer,” IV, 20.5.7).

God’s glory is manifested, therefore, in the salvation of man, whom God has so loved “who gave him,” as John’s Gospel affirms, “his only Son so that he who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). So love is the ultimate reason for Christ’s incarnation.

Eloquent in this respect is the reflection of the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wrote: God “is not, in the first place, absolute power, but absolute love whose sovereignty is not manifested in keeping for himself what belongs to him, but in its abandonment” (”Mysterium Paschale” 1,14).

I can’t resist adding these wonderful remarks by Pope Benedict to university students on 14 December:

Christmas is appropriately emphasized by the many gifts that people give to one another in these days. But it is important that the principal Gift of which all other gifts are a symbol not be forgotten. Christmas is the day on which God gave himself to humanity, and in the Eucharist this gift of his becomes, so to speak, perfect….
The Eucharistic mystery is the privileged point of convergence between the various contexts of Christian life, including that of intellectual research.
Encountered in the liturgy and contemplated in adoration, Jesus in the Eucharist is like a “prism” through which one can penetrate further into reality, in the ascetic and mystical, the intellectual and speculative, as well as the historical and moral perspectives.
In the Eucharist, Christ is really present and Holy Mass is a living memorial of his Pasch. The Blessed Sacrament is the qualitative centre of the cosmos and of history. Therefore, it constitutes an inexhaustible source of thought and action for anyone who sets out to seek the truth and desires to cooperate with it.
It is, so to speak, a “concentrate” of truth and love. It not only illumines human knowledge, but also and above all human action and human life, in accordance with “the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), as St Paul said, in the daily task of acting as Jesus himself did.
Dear friends, let us enter into the mystery of Christmas, now approaching, through the “door” of the Eucharist; in the grotto of Bethlehem let us adore the Lord himself who, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, desired to make himself our spiritual food to transform the world from within, starting with the human heart.

A progress report on Second Spring

These are the projected contents for issue 8 of Second Spring, which was due out by the end of 2006:

Two Benedicts and the Renewal of Catholic Culture - Carol Zaleski
The Art of Proclamation - Robert Barron
Art of the Spheres – David Clayton
Angels in the Architecture – Stratford Caldecott
Thomas on Beauty – David W. Fagerberg
The Distinctive Agnosticism of Charles Darwin – John Hedley Brooke
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Kenneth Asch
Implementing the Reform of the Reform in Parishes – Shawn Tribe
Plus Poem, Bookwatch, Reports, Last Things

The need to develop a programme of short courses and other events under our new umbrella organization, ResSource, has caused some delays in the editing and production of the new Second Spring, but we hope to send issue 8 early in 2007. Thanks for your patience. I hope to make an announcement shortly about improved publication arrangements for Second Spring that will take effect in 2007.

At the beginning of another year, thanks for your interest and support.

[Picture credit: Icon of the Nativity by Solrunn Nes.]

Have you ever felt that your Sunday service in church leaves something to be desired?

Would you like to deepen your awareness of the world-shattering Event that is taking place on the altar and in our lives?

On Thursday, 31 August 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave some beautiful words of advice to priests who had come to him at Castel Gandolfo:
“I have no claim to be, as it were, an ‘oracle’ that could respond adequately to every question … Day after day, the Pope too must know and recognize ‘infirmitatem suam,’ his shortcomings. He must recognize that only in collaboration with everyone, in dialogue, in common cooperation, in faith as ‘cooperatores veritatis” – of the Truth that is a Person, Jesus – can we carry out our service together, each one doing his share…

“… Today, we heard in the Gospel the parable of the faithful servant (Matthew 24:42-51). This servant, the Lord tells us, gives food to the others at the proper time. He does not do everything at once but is a wise and prudent servant who knows what needs to be done in a specific situation. He does so humbly, and is also sure of his master’s trust.

“So it is that we must likewise do our utmost to be wise and prudent and to trust in the goodness of our ‘Master,’ the Lord, for in the end it is he himself who must take the helm of his Church. We fit into her with our small gift and do the best we can, especially those things that are always necessary: celebrating the sacraments, preaching the Word, giving signs of our charity and our love.

“… I would say further that the Church gives us, imposes upon us – but always like a good Mother – the obligation to make free time for God with the two practices that constitute a part of our duties: the celebration of holy Mass and the recitation of the breviary … These two realities – holy Mass truly celebrated in conversation with God and the Liturgy of the Hours – are areas of freedom, of inner life, an enrichment which the Church bestows upon us. In them … we do not only find the Church of all the ages but also the Lord himself, who speaks to us and awaits our answer. We thus learn to pray by immersing ourselves in the prayer of all times, and we also encounter the people…

“… We seek to drink from this source so that it may become a source within us. And we can respond better to the thirst of people today if we have within us the ‘living water,’ the divine reality, the reality of the Lord Jesus made flesh. Thus, we can respond better to the needs of our people.

“… The liturgy developed in the course of two millennia and even after the Reformation was not something worked out by simply a few liturgists. It has always remained a continuation of this ongoing growth of worship and proclamation.

“Thus, to be well in tune, it is very important to understand this structure that developed over time and to enter with our ‘mens’ into the ‘vox’ of the Church. To the extent that we have interiorized this structure, comprehended this structure, assimilated the words of the liturgy, we can enter into this inner consonance and thus not only speak to God as individuals, but enter into the ‘we’ of the Church, which is praying. And we thus transform our ‘I’ in this way, by entering into the ‘we’ of the Church, enriching and enlarging this ‘I,’ praying with the Church, with the words of the Church, truly being in conversation with God.

“In other words, the ‘ars celebrandi‘ is not intended as an invitation to some sort of theatre or show, but to an interiority that makes itself felt and becomes acceptable and evident to the people taking part. Only if they see that this is not an exterior or spectacular ‘ars‘ – we are not actors! – but the expression of the journey of our heart that attracts their hearts too, will the liturgy become beautiful, will it become the communion with the Lord of all who are present.”

After a successful Summer School devoted to Shakespeare under the umbrella of our new company ResSource, along with our first practical art classes and a course on Theology of the Body, we are beginning to plan a whole series of events for next year. Please keep an eye on our sister web-site (RESSOURCE) and also the ‘EVENTS and conversation’ pages, both accessible from the left of the screen, for details over the next few months.

Cardinal Renato Martino recently gave a helpful summary of the Pope’s first encyclical, which is proving to be foundational in this pontificate. He wrote: ‘Truth draws men together because it frees them from individual opinions. Love draws men together because it makes them overcome individual egoisms. The announcement of Christianity is that Truth is Love. Therefore Christianity is the religion of the communion and the unity of human kind … Benedict XVI writes: “God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation – the Logos, primordial reason – is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love” (No. 10).’

He goes on: ‘The metaphysical Principle looked upon man and loved him. God is truth, thus our world and our life have meaning. Christian truth, however, does not just give life an architectonic, abstract meaning. Christian truth, also and foremost, gives life an existential meaning, a vital experience of meaning. God is truth that comes toward us, that speaks to us, that meets us. He is truth as an event of love. Otherwise life would reflect an abstract, and therefore insipid, truth and love would be blind and reduced to mere passion…

‘Loving the world and man, God entrusts the world and man to humanity itself, not as a collection of “things” but as a gift and a duty, as a task to accomplish together. When he puts us in our own hands as a duty to ourselves, God asks us to help him in the fulfillment of creation and salvation at every level: spiritual and eternal, human and historical … In Jesus, the incarnated God unites with each man and “we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving” (No. 13). The incarnation of God in Jesus is not just “giving,” but “self-giving.” Christ draws us to him by giving himself. Since then the only way to unite is through self-giving. The marriage between God and Israel, as the marriage between Christ and the Church and the marriage between man and woman, has a strong social dimension. We can truly say that society is built on love.

‘”Love of God and love of neighbor,” says the Holy Father, are connected: “If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be ‘devout’ and to perform my ‘religious duties,’ then my relationship with God will also grow arid” (No. 18).

These three instances of charity that are illustrated by the encyclical – creation as an act of love, marriage and fidelity as a social fact, the love of God and the love of neighbor bound by an unbreakable bond – are the theological foundation of the prodigious unifying force of the Christian faith and of its tension to break all the barriers that separate men from one another. In this sense charity founds the community and urges the realization of justice.’ See Zenit 2006-08-26 for the full text.

[Picture credit: Icon of the Transfiguration is borrowed from from www.virtualmuseum.ca.]

As I write this we are in in the middle of our busy summer schedule – art classes, Shakespeare Summer School, and (in a few weeks’ time) the Tolkien conference at Exeter College. Come September, we will sit down and work out a programme for next year. I want to take this opportunity to mention a couple of important changes on this web-site. Regular readers will notice that place of the ‘EVENTS’ section on the left-hand menu, which used to advertise conferences and lectures, has been replaced by a link to our sister site, RESSOURCE. That is because most of our activities are now organized through that organization. The heading below that, called ‘EVENTS and conversation’, which leads to our online discussion forums, now contains a section for NOTICES where you can look up the latest scheduling information for our forthcoming events, and even advertise events of your own. The advantage of doing it this way is that the Ezboard site lends itself to instant updates, so we don’t have to bother our web-master with every little change in schedule. Please sign up for a free account in this section, so that you can join in the conversation as well as read other people’s contributions. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

The commercial success of The Da Vinci Code nonsense may indicate that a great many people want to believe the Church is covering up a big secret. Well, it is, but it is not the secret that many would like it to be: that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalen, proving that the call to celibacy was based on a lie. The fact is, human beings can do without sexual intercourse, whatever Freud may have said, and many are called to live that way. Nevertheless, Eros is rooted in human nature, as the Pope points out in ‘Deus Caritas Est‘, and this means that celibacy and singleness can only ‘work’ if Eros is transformed rather than repressed. The body has to be integrated with the soul, and Eros with Agape. That applies within marriage as well.

The transformation of Eros can be a long struggle, but it is how we become more human, in order – in the end – to become more than human, to be divinized. ‘God became man so that man could become God.’ And though we will certainly die, the process of death is like the planting of a seed. One day a new body will be given to us that resembles the body Jesus revealed to the disciples after his resurrection. ‘It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Cor. 15: 40, 44). Jesus conquered death, and in the Eucharist he gives us himself, including his resurrected body, in a way that nourishes that eternal life in us. That is one of the secrets that the Church carries within herself, and it is a lot more interesting than anything Dan Brown came up with.

The huge response to our recent study day on the Theology of the Body (20 May) indicates a growing awareness of the importance of the insights of John Paul II on the nature of human embodiment and sexuality. There is a code written into the human body. It seems an intriguing coincidence that the Church has deciphered that code just as scientists begin to decipher the genetic one inscribed within our DNA. The temptation is to reduce everything to biochemistry. What the Church offers is a wisdom-reading of biology that takes account of the other levels of the human person.

If you want to think more or know more about all this, scroll down the page, explore the menu, subscribe to Second Spring, read the articles stored on this web-site, join our online discussion pages, or attend the courses we will be offering through our new venture, ResSource. We promise plenty of excitement, without a single murderous monk in sight!

As reported last month, the new company Ressource has been set up, to expand our educational work. It will develop hand in glove with the journal Second Spring, where the ideas inspiring and shaping our endeavours will be developed, explored, and presented. Apart from the Shakespeare Summer School at St Benet’s, one of the first ventures of the new business is a series of practical art classes in Oxford, teaching both Western naturalistic techniques of drawing and painting, and Eastern Iconography. Later we will add further classes in pattern art and sacred geometry. You will find all this described in detail under Ressource School of Art, and a couple of articles by David Clayton provide valuable background reading. They are available online in our Articles section, including an important new one called ‘Art of the Spheres‘. The art school is linked to the Maryvale Institute’s course, ‘Art, Beauty, and Inspiration‘.

Art, of course, is only part of what Ressource is about, but it is a good place to begin, because of the immediate interest it evokes. The Pontifical Council for Culture recently dedicated its Plenary Assembly in Rome to the ‘Way of Beauty’. As Pope Benedict has said, ‘Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.’ (This is taken from the article, ‘The Feeling of Things, The Contemplation of Beauty‘, also on our web site).

This month sees a major expansion of our activities. Not only is Second Spring (the print journal) being relaunched with our long-delayed seventh issue, but we are starting a company (ResSource) to develop further educational initiatives over the coming years, including a new art school in Oxford. Cardinal Cahal B. Daly wrote one of the warmly appreciative letters we have received in the last few days. “I wrote to you earlier to express my admiration of an early number of the journal and my sense of the great good which it has the potential to do. My admiration for the journal has not lessened, nor has the quality of its content. I think that the time is now ripe for a journal of faith and culture such as yours and I wish it God’s blessing and every success.” We invite you to comment on the new issue either by letter or in the online community pages, where articles can be discussed at length, and ideas for future issues proposed.

ResSource is directed by David Clayton, Stratford Caldecott, and Léonie Caldecott. Over the next few years we hope to offer a range of educational courses, summer schools, conferences and cultural pilgrimages in different parts of Europe, including England, Spain, Italy and France - beginning with the Shakespeare summer school at St Benet’s Hall in Oxford this summer. David Clayton’s particular project is the creation of a new kind of art school, the inspiration for which was described in his article, The Way of Beauty, in issue Four of Second Spring. Practical classes in Oxford will teach techniques of painting and drawing that have been shamefully neglected by many contemporary art schools, and ways of seeing and contemplating that are essential both to naturalistic art and to Iconography. David has trained in sight-size drawing in Florence and will be teaching this technique, while distinguished iconographers in the Byzantine and Russian tradition will be offering tuition in their own style. There will also be lectures, seminars, and excursions designed to help more people understand the spiritual and cultural importance of the visual arts in the history of Europe – and the relationship of beauty to goodness and truth.

This will not happen all at once, but over the next year or two. As we grow, we will be looking for potential students, as well as organizations and colleges that may want to join our growing association and help to shape the courses that will be offered. If any of this interests you, please don’t hesitate to write to us. We remain in close contact, also, with the G.K. Chesterton Institute, and still hope to find a permanent home for the Chesterton Library after the end of our current lease in 2008.

A new book by Stratford Caldecott is published shortly by Crossroad and distributed by Alban Books in the UK. Called The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God (details are on the website) it is the first of a projected three books that attempt to open up the Catholic tradition in a fresh way, reaching out beyond the existing Catholic community to people whose interest is primarily in spirituality and mysticism, and who may be coming to the Christian tradition from completely outside it. The last chapter contains a proposal for the development of new approaches to catechesis, reviving the ancient practices of mystagogy. (That is the goal, too, of a new series being offered by CTS called Deeper Christianity.)