One tires, anyway, of the posturing one encounters among artists who like to presume that anything religious is somehow intellectually and aesthetically unsound, or indicative of a past that is no longer relevant. Most of these ‘artists’ are not in fact artists at all, but involve themselves in the art industry, or scene, only because it is thought to be open and accepting of people who consider themselves ‘creative’, though really it is open and accepting only to a certain kind of political and social philosophy (an increasingly ‘leftist’ one).

Because failed works of art (or attempts at art that do not obtain to the level of art) cannot be predicted according to content, subject, or the preoccupations of the artist. Meaning, you will find ‘bad’ art across the spectrum of ontologies or perspectives that might be formulated and held by anyone involved in the production of art.

Of course, much religious ‘art’ is sentimental, poorly realized, and banal. But these same qualities are to be found, to no lesser extent, in artworks that are not religious, or that are decidedly irreligious.

((Though I admit that both Rothko and Twombly would more likely refer to the ideation in their work, if they referred to it at all, as ‘mythic’ than as ‘religious’)).

(Think of the work of Andy Warhol, on the one hand, and that of Cy Twombly or Mark Rothko on the other).

By which I mean that religious art is the highest form of art, and perhaps is art in its most genuine or profound form, even if, in many such artworks, the religious material wears the trappings of ‘pop culture’ (or some other symbology) so dexterously that it might seem not to be religious at all; or even if that same material is diffuse and abstracted, and not brought out of the latency in which the artist conceives of it, and works with it.

Although, in my estimation, any work of art that achieves sublimity is involved, on some level, with religious ideas.

In other words, there’s no reason why an artwork that is either implicitly or explicitly religious shouldn’t achieve the same sublimity, or effect the same transport in its audience, that a work which is absent of religious ‘ideation’ might do.

All of which is to say that, while some individuals might be only fleetingly affected by art (religious or not) because of their temperament, personality, and the construction of their sensitivities, art in general is a kind of communication that is capable of moving almost any individual, to an extent, and some individuals to such an extent that they feel themselves to be fundamentally changed by it.

For my own part, whatever piety I might have (not much, to be sure) is owing not only to the conventional development of my faith (by means of a parochial education, and whichever natural and supernatural graces I was fortunate enough to meet with, or be met by), but also to the fact that I’ve been exposed to a breadth of art, religious as well as non-religious, for as long as I can remember.

That such a soul may not have been on friendly terms with religion, and in fact might have felt hostile toward it (or felt that it was hostile toward them), speaks not only to the potential of religious art to relate to people in the circumstances they are in, but also to the need for such art to exist.

In fact, it is not inconceivable that such works (which are not ‘realistic’, per se, but are nonetheless concerned with truth as a principle) have contributed to the approach of a soul to the fullness of reality that Christianity regards itself as promulgating, or to have assisted in the salvific work that is already underway within that given soul, or in some step in that soul’s conversion.

That this sculpture might not be precisely ‘realistic’ does not diminish the fact that it communicates a spiritual truth. One of the great intellectual failings of contemporary Western ‘liberalism’ is the inability to distinguish between so-called ‘realism’, as a genre or an aesthetic, and truth as an unceasing principle.

Who would argue that Michelangelo’s sculpture of Our Lady cradling the dead body of Jesus (known as the Pietà) is not a great work of art? That it isn’t capable of moving certain audiences in a way that a theoretical knowledge of the death of Jesus may not have been able to move them? That such a movement, if granted, pertains only to the intellect of the audience, or the emotions, and not also to the soul? And that the direction of that movement isn’t toward sublimity, and an expansion of the capacity for virtue?

And, of course, Catholicism itself (as differentiated from Protestantism) has a deep and rich and gorgeous tradition of portraying, in art, religious figures, and Scriptural episodes, for the purpose of devotion.

I’m not suggesting, incidentally, that artistic depictions of Christ (or of any person or event from Scripture) should not be attempted. To the contrary, I am convinced that art has the power to communicate truth in a way that can transform an audience for the better, and that this power is not limited to subjects that are ‘secular’ (rather than religious).

So that now, unfairly or not, any depiction of Christ that is not clearly rooted in the most pedantic historical ‘realism’ can be cast, by those who are hostile to the Church, as merely ‘Colonialist’ (or ‘Colonialist’ to the exclusion of anything else), and thus injurious and malicious.

When I say “deleterious phenomena”, I’m thinking mainly of those phenomena that are now attributed to ‘Colonialism’, which of late has become a catch-all for any development or trend that can be linked, however disingenuously, to the more oppressive attitudes and practices of some of the Western European powers that participated, centuries ago, in the Age of Exploration.

There is, of course, a reason for (and perhaps even a tradition of) familiarizing the appearance of Christ, in art, so as to bring about, in an audience, a feeling of nearness to Him, and to thus create an avenue for evangelism in a specific population. But it’s possible that the rationale behind this tendency was conceived in an age so radically different from the age we live in now that it did not foresee certain ills that would eventually appear because of deleterious phenomena with which it would be associated.

How often has a westernized depiction of Christ (that is, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed version of Him, or even a version that is not as Semitic as it could be) caused, understandably, a feeling of distance or alienation among those who see that they share no traits with that depiction, and who recognize that the historical Jesus would have looked quite different than that depiction does, even if they themselves are unable to say, precisely, how he would have looked?