Book notes: Liturgy and the Arts

Last night I finished reading Albert Rouet's Liturgy and the Arts (translated by Paul Philibert). Besides describing the relation between the two, it gave me some insight into the struggle I've seen in many artists' relationship to the church. Liturgy needs art, contains and uses art; our Lord is the true Lord of the Dance, after all. In fact, Rouet spends an entire chapter on the struggle that the church has historically had with dance (pp.123-151). Religious piety often has a suspicion of the arts--unless "properly restrained." Meanwhile, the artist values freedom of expression and is often suspicious of the constraints of liturgical or "religious-pious" expectations. "The artist is free to inovate, but not the celebrant" (p. 32).

But if the liturgy attempts to function without art and new innovation:
"A scrupulous obedience to rubrics will lead to a ritual materialism...legalistically perfect and humanly deadly, because their performance leaves no place for the present--this particular people, these human circumstances, this moment of time" (p. 11).
"We might make fun of some popular liturgical songs, but are they not a reflection of present day sensibilities?" (p. 10).
"Each celebration calls for preparation, and even requires some new composition, or else it will fall into categories of mere habit, boredom, and finally insignificance" (p. 2).

On the other hand,
"Music for the Church, whether by Rossini or by a rock group, only becomes liturgical by taking a certain distance from secular music" (p. 41).
& vs. the common comparison of liturgical worship to theater:
"Theater moves from the stage to the outside, toward spectators, whereas liturgical action comes from the outside (like a procession) to move progressively closer and closer to mystery" (p. 44).

It is within the desire for grace that we find "a convergence between the arts and liturgy" (p. 38). "If the arts...express a transcendence of the human and an attraction toward the infinite, liurgy brings to humanity a healing of its deformities and gives it the image of a splendor glimpsed" (p. 40). "The liturgical act goes 'from God's people to God's more deeply rooted people'" (p. 5).

Re: the frequent struggle with time limitations imposed on our celebrations--
"Liturgy does not go along with horizontal time. It follows the depths of time; it looks for the intensity of time" (p.63). "Busy people...[often] waste time because they don't enter deeply into the things that they do" (p. 79). "The real liturgical problem is not whether or not to do away with [clergy robes], to reduce the sermon to twelve minutes, or to finish Mass within fifty-five minutes...The real problem is how to dwell within time so as to make it exist for us as strong time. The pastor has to look for a rhythm of celebration that establishes a good usage of time" (p. 80).


Rouet is presenting a kind of theological thought process, and doesn't often give specifics. In one chapter he writes on how liturgy with art tries to help us with orientation. This was the first time I noticed that the word "orient-ation" means to "find east," or where the sun rises - the great daily natural symbol for resurrection. The art of our spaces can help us to spiritually move toward that opening that lies somewhere "just beyond" or over the altar. That's why such areas around and over the altar are often surrounded by empty space and height, a silent prayer for God to come and fill it. Other traditional sacred spaces include places where a spring flows, or once flowed, a natural symbol for the source of life, a good place for a baptistery or font.


Speaking of the font, Rouet does offer these two concrete opinions regarding the placement of font and altar:
"How can we make it clear that baptism belongs to a Christian's entrance into the life of the Church if the baptistery is found at the foot of the altar? It belongs at the place where one enters the church building!" (p. 45).
"We should be able to move about [the altar], to rest in meditation near it, to make a circle around it" (p. 44).

I think this summarizes many of the elements Rouet says are needed for beautiful, meaningful, deep liturgical celebrations:
"Liturgy is harmonization of gestures and words bound up in silence--gestures, words, and silence--shape liturgical time. Time within liturgy is not only a dramatic action, it is prayer" (p. 72).

I enjoyed the translator's bold statement: "Arts are not for ornamentation, but for evocation...to map out the location of God's presence and to detonate the sacramental potential of the world" (p.ix).