Volume > Issue > Note List > A Question of Conviction

A Question of Conviction

The Catholic Church was once the great patroness of the arts. She commissioned artists who produced what have come to be regarded as some of the history’s greatest works of art. The great artists created works of timeless value for the human family and the glory of God.

Now, it seems, to be an artist one must be a rebel after a fashion. Art must be “challenging” to have “social value.” The sacred must be profaned — the crucifix dumped in a bottle of urine and the Virgin Mary covered in dung, for example. Controversy and irreverence rule in the milieu of modern art.

But when profane art appears on a Catholic campus, what is one to do?

When a black-and-white woodcut relief depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe as a stripper was included in an art display at the University of Dallas (UD), a Catholic institution, university president Francis Lazarus did nothing.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

The Voice of the Mother of God

To turn us away from sin and toward Christ: This is essentially our Lady's mission in this world.

The Great Catholic Science Textbook Debate

Any approach to teaching science must begin with certain attitudes and assumptions about the nature of the world around us.

What “Old Books” Have to Teach Us About Being Human in the 21st Century

Although we have more books available to us than at any time in history, fewer and fewer of us read great literature, distracted as we are by screens.