Language fails

[fpb]

This is an icon of "dancing saints" at the entrance of the Episcopalian Parish church of St.Gregory of Nyssa (a great Doctor of the Church, who is turning in his grave):


The "saints" in question are Sojourner Truth, Bartolome de Las Casas, Miriam, Origen , Malcolm X, Queen Elizabeth I, Iqbal Masih, and... get this... St. Teresa of Avila.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Church can draw his or her own conclusions. Anyone who is puzzled, ask me. At present, I would rather not say anything more, except that things like this make satire helpless and redundant.

Comments

[camillofan.livejournal.com]

So much could be said... but I just want to know who decided that, when saints dance, they make a kick-line?

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Funny that's kinda what I was thinking too.

If I'd seen this out of context, I would have thought is was modern art work intent on mocking the Church in some way.
And it such in inappropriate use of iconic artwork. I think that's where the feeling of mockery comes from. Not only are saints line dancing, iconicly drawn saints are line dancing.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Since when are Muslims and persecutors of the Church to be drawn as saints? If you can actually bring yourself to believe that Elizabeth I should be seen as a saint, you should be coherent and rule Bartolome' de las Casas and Teresa of Avila out - they were leading members of that Spanish Catholic Church whose members her man Drake used to plunder and flay alive. And if you take the Muslim religion at all seriously, then you would not insult Malcolm X (who hated Christianity) and Iqbal Masih by placing them in an icon when their religion is iconoclastic. As for placing Origen and Moses' sister Miriam - but not Moses... The mind just reels. The whole thing has a sickening arbitrary feeling, as of a drunkard toying with sacred things.

Re: joins in the mind-reeling

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I take that as a compliment. There ARE Christians - Origen was the greatest Christian teacher of his time (third century AD), though some of his teachings were later condemned; Bartolome' de las Casas was the Apostle of the Indies; St.Teresa of Avila is actually a Doctor of the Church; and Sojourner Truth was one in her own way, which is what we would call Evangelical today. But you have a point about colour and equal number of men and women.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You see, the arbitrariness extends to every aspect of the selection except the male/female thing. Sojourner Truth was a great voice in the struggle against slavery, and Bartolome' de las Casas was important because he was the first (he actually sailed in one of Christopher Columbus' expeditions) to argue against the enslavement of American natives and in favour of recognzing them as fully human (at the time it was possible to argue that these people had come from a different ancestor than Adam and were therefore not subject to the protection of human and divine law. His success in getting the Pope and the Emperor Charles V to agree to this proposition was of great significance in future history. But what has the great Teresa ever said to entitle her to a place in this carnival of the Politically Correct? And what about Miriam, whose chief claim to fame is a song of triumph over the destruction of the Egyptian army? And Origen?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Probably because he was Egyptian. Nice and non-white, wouldn't you say?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Possibly his auto-castration? Or the way he isn't a saint, though most other Christian thinkers of his stature have been canonized? I was quite happy with the list as far as him, and that was my thought, oh, how nice, someone actually giving Origen some recognition after all this time -- then my head exploded at the next three names.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Pardon me, that was not overwhelmingly well thought. NOT "all Christian thinkers of Origen's stature" have been canonized - I might list, for instance, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, William of Ockham, Luther, Calvin, all the way down to Heidegger - who insisted that he was "a Christian theologian". As for auto-castration, you do not seriously intend to tell me for a minute that the Episcopal Church of all churches honours the violent destruction of sexuality?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I said "most" not "all".

And I was thinking that they might have seen him as an "alternate sexuality", if you see what I mean, however horrible that seems.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Sorry - that was rather stupidly hostile. Blame the heatwave that is making fat people like me suffer.

As for your "alternative" suggestion... OW! But it is so crazy it's almost plausible.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

But as for the line dancing, I find it less puzzling than you and camillofan. The liturgical use of dance is one of the Big Ideas of modernists in the churches. There is no Christian precedent for it (except for a small and very local tradition in the Ethiopian Church). The artist was faced with the problem of trying to make it look both iconic and reverent. A group dance inevitably would look less irreverent than a solo, and would touch another modernist hot button - "gathering", "togetherness", "community". Modernist ecclesiology is pointed entirely towards the church as people coming together, more or less to the exclusion of the presence of God. On the whole, the image as such is fairly easy to understand. After all, what kind of dance would you suggest, if you were mad enough to accept a commission of this kind?

[camillofan.livejournal.com]

I think I'd go for something that didn't suggest the Rockettes...

But that, as you've outlined, seems the least of the problems with this, um, icon. It was just the one that jumped out at me first.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It has, actually, which is why pretty nearly every modernist church and organization is losing members. But those who are left, as in the Episcopal Church, become more and more obstinate and extreme. Funnily enough, Pope Benedict, who once said to great scandal that it would be better for the Church to be smaller but firmer in its faith, is attracting converts, whereas it is the modernist churches, so convinced that they were opening up to the world, that are haemorraging members and developping their own philosophy of better being few but faithful.

[lyssiae.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth I?!?!

In which case I think Mary Tudor gets an equal chance at sainthood....

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Better. Because Mary Tudor was seriously religious. Her sister had about as much faith as Frederick of Prussia, used the Church purely as an instrument, and was a vulgarian and a two-faced traitor into the bargain.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, a former Episcopalian (now Orthodox) from this very parish was referring to this recently on orthodoxy.

[thepreciouss.livejournal.com]

I've actually been to this church. I sang there with my choir.

It's really really really really bizarre. I didn't understand the "saint" thing, either. There is a rather shocking depiction of "Saint" Lady Godiva, too.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Interesting, because the tale of Lady Godiva (Godgifu) is nothing but an edifying (yes) legend, in which the upright lady sacrificed her modesty rather than let her husband plunder her people with excessive taxation. It never happened. Godgifu was a real person, and by all accounts a good one, but she never did what she is famous for. So the end story of a Protestant church that began by denouncing Catholic credulity and Catholic miracle tales and spent most of its history repeating the same criticisms is to celebrate and actually iconize a story that the Catholic Church never accepted at all. Sometimes I feel that we Catholics have a permanent subscription to the Laughing Last And Best Club.

[ettecum.livejournal.com]

malcolm x? funny you should write this- i just finished writing a letter to my former anglican bishop (i started investigating catholicism when jpii died) about the election of shori. sad stuff, it made me cry.