Because, beginning at the very latest in the fifth century (with Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo), the position of the Church with regard to the so-called conflict between science and religion can be articulated like this (from Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram): “In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.”

If the Church had acted then (in response to Copernicus, and his notion of a heliocentric solar system) in accordance with her actual principles, there would have been no scandal, no embarrassing historical mistake that her detractors could continue to so disproportionately insist on.

With regard to other kinds of ‘progress’ (in the disciplines of knowledge, for instance, across epistemologies), the Church is not, as certain elements in our society would have us believe, repressive and tyrannical, even if one can point to instances wherein those who represent the Church have made errors in judgment concerning the question of how advances in knowledge ought to be taught, or expressed. I’m thinking of the well-known cases of Copernicus and Galileo (both of whom were Catholic, and who did not regard themselves as lapsed, or contrarian, even when their orthodoxy was questioned, and their reputations impugned).

In other words, a respect for the dignity of the individual, not only in his spiritual trajectory but also in his material condition, is at the core of the Church’s social teaching. And is evidenced by the fact that the Catholic Church, wherever in the world she is present, is involved in charitable endeavors. Which is, in action, what ‘progressives’ are forever saying they want to effectuate with policy and legislation.

And throughout the Gospels, suffusing their very fabric, is the notion that we should love the poor, care for the sick, attend to the unwanted, and not turn a blind eye to those who society would forget.

Which isn’t to say that the faithful do not care about ‘progress’ per se. The social doctrine of the Church, which is articulated by her magesterium, and helps define her mission, is based on an imitation of Christ, as we see Him in the Gospels, and his commandment to “Love one another.”

They would pay no attention to the speaker of Ecclesiastes, who says, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity…there is nothing new under the sun.” Because in that wisdom they would find no validation of their delusion that ‘progress’ is real, that the contributions they are making to society will, over time, show themselves to be ‘new’, or ‘special’, that their accomplishments will last longer, or be greater, than those of previous generations, and that, if they wish to find meaning in their lives, they need not seek it anywhere but through the exercise of their will, for their own self-determined ends.

That the very notion of ‘progress’ (in the cosmic sense of that word) might have no basis in reality would never occur to these people, because their thinking on the subject has never advanced beyond the most elementary or sophomoric conceptions of it, the horizons that are nearest and dearest to them personally, or politically. They think that ‘discoveries’ in science, for instance, or rearrangements of the social strata, indicate that we, as a race, can get closer and closer to a fathoming of all that is, or to ‘filling in’ all the blanks of knowledge that might exist, or to completing some vast celestial database of information, or ethics, that is definitely finite, and thus the measure of what will one day transform us into fully realized creatures, if not gods. They cannot imagine the possibility that all moments are one moment, that there is only the now, and that the single thing necessary for us to discover, during our lifetime, is our own spiritual inheritance, which is what Christ meant when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you.”

Of course, many people today, at least in the West, will object so quickly to the notion that a human activity might be described as ‘disordered’ that one could be forgiven for thinking that such people’s reasoning had become automated. In many cases it has become automated, insofar as the people in question no longer think original thoughts, but repeat, in their minds (before they even give voice to that which they are repeating), the thoughts they have been conditioned to think by their peers and by the media and by their political party. True, some of these people are more convinced of the reality of what they are repeating than are others, but the criteria on which such people base their convictions is narrow. At best, that criteria is a replica of a purely rationalist philosophy whose adherents, in their hubris, always tell themselves represents ‘progress’.

It is through such ‘becoming’ (or, if you like, ‘unbecoming’) that we sin, and it is through avoiding it that we do not sin. Though we must remember that sin does not arise out of a particular array of activities, tendencies, or preoccupations, but from a certain kind of relation — that is, a disordered relation. Meaning, any given one of us is as susceptible to sin as any other. Because any relation involving a human is susceptible to disorder, due to the very nature of the human.

So that when I say that she separated herself from that which was common, or vulgar, I do not mean that she regarded herself as superior to anything in creation, but that she did not forget or ignore the fact that all things in creation, including human beings, are ordered to each other according to their function, or design, and that to undermine that order (or, if you like, relation) by disregarding it, and inventing one’s own paradigm, for the purpose of satisfying one’s own will, and increasing one’s own pleasure, is to mar one’s dignity, and thereby to ‘become’ common.

The manger, for instance, could not have seemed to her ‘lowly’ unless she regarded its utility as shameful, or embarrassing, which could have been true only if she wished to perpetuate a certain image of herself, in which case she would not have been chosen as the Theotokos (or God-bearer), because the very role of that person was to deliver to the world the incarnate divinity who would make no distinctions between ‘lowly’ and ‘lofty’, or who, to be more exact, would reveal the meaninglessness and falsity of such categories by upending them, and by finding his glorification in what was meant to be his humiliation (death by crucifixion).

She did not, in brief, regard that which was ‘lowly’ as repugnant, or beneath her. She likely would not even have had much occasion to use the term ‘lowly’, in thought or in speech, for that would have required of her the habit of relegating the things of reality into the artificial and self-involved mental categories by which one becomes conscious of one’s personal preferences (and protective of them), and of which only the proud and the worldly have need.

Which doesn’t mean she would’ve avoided situations where the discomforts of life seem to be imposed on us, or that she would’ve had contempt for, say, the baser functions of the human body, which of course are necessary to survival, and as such are ‘good’. She is, after all, the woman who, when the time came to deliver her infant, in a town that wasn’t her own, did not object to making, for that infant, a crib out of a manger (where animals feed), because there wasn’t room at the inn where she and her husband had sought lodging.

She would’ve been femininely regal, which is to say that all of her attributes, including those that might be associated with her gender, and her physiognomy, would have been directed by, and concentrated on, the holiness that separates itself, without condescension or pride, from all that is common, vulgar, and profane.

In other words, she would’ve carried with her, in her bearing, and in her way of relating to objects and people and other creatures, the sort of steady and undifferentiated regard (which isn’t to say indifference) that is attractive because it does not insist on being attractive.

Does this mean Our Lady wouldn’t have experienced emotion as accordingly as anyone else might experience it, or that emotion wouldn’t have registered on her countenance, and in her gestures, when something affected her, and awoke her sympathies, or her capacities for anger and indignation? No, not in the least. Only that her emotions were likely ordered so proportionately to the measure of her circumstances as to seem harmonious, in and of themselves (regardless of the category of feeling to which they belonged), and therefore communicative of an altogether intangible sort of beauty.

Meaning, whatever she was attending to at any given moment, or whatever occupied the conscious part of her mind, to the exclusion of other things (regardless of how agreeable or disagreeable a given activity was to her personally, or constitutionally), did not intrude on the recollection in which the deepest part of her person always resided.

My point being, anyway, to return to the subject of Our Lady (and the way she is depicted in art), that she was possessed of such holiness that her inner life might be likened to a state of constant prayer.

Which isn’t to say that one doesn’t feel sorry for some of the types who find themselves involved in it, for one does, but only that the industry, of late, is responsible for the denigration and icing out of those rare individuals whose talent will manifest as a synthesis of religious vision and of virtuosity in a particular medium.