Thus when I learnt of what took place recently between her and her husband, PR guru and promoter of exceptionally bad art Charles Saatchi, at my favorite restaurant in London, I was absolutely appalled.  If there were no pictures of the event, one simply would not have believed it.  Mr. Saatchi, who is 70, is not exactly superhero material either in size or anything else, and one would think that a lady as intelligent as Ms. Lawson would not have allowed such an event to take place.  If someone had asked me what I thought would have played out in such a scenario, my prediction would have been that the moment the bounder reached to grab his wife’s throat, she would have jumped up from the table and left.  Instead, she simply took the assault he dished out.

Ms. Lawson and her children have apparently moved out of the home she shared with her husband, who has been cautioned by the police.  Fortunately she is in a position with respect to family, friends, and resources to get help, which sadly many victims of domestic violence are not.  I hope that both of these people get the help they need, since as we all know these cycles of abuse tend to repeat themselves.

Yet what I want us to think about in this situation is not why these incidents of domestic violence happen among supposedly educated people, or how to address them, since to that end I would direct you to an excellent piece on these questions by Conservative MP Dr. Sarah Wollaston in today’s Torygraph.  I want to ask a different question raised by the incident and specifically by these photographs, which might not occur to you at first glance.  Specifically: why did not a single man in that restaurant stand up to defend Ms. Lawson?

In asking this question I am not in any way discounting the ladies among my readers, who of course have an equal moral obligation to do something to aid someone in distress if they are capable of doing so.  After all, we only recently saw the incredible bravery of three British women who tried to aid the victim of a brutal murder carried out on a British soldier by Muslim fundamentalists in London.  Nor am I advocating a change to the judicial code, whereby one has a legal obligation to involve oneself in other people’s domestic disputes.

Yet we should not need a written code provision to tell us that when he sees someone physically assaulting a lady in public, no matter the identity of the assaulter, a gentleman intervenes.  How a restaurant full of management, waitstaff and patrons, let alone passersby outside where the couple were sitting, could simply stand there and do nothing EXCEPT TAKE PICTURES, simply boggles my mind.  It is clear that many of us men need to take a long, hard look at ourselves, and ask what has happened to our sense of honor, in standing up for those who are not in a position to do so for themselves, particularly women and children.

If this attitude strikes you as rather old-fashioned, then good: it’s meant to.  It seems we have so emasculated ourselves as a culture that, bizarrely enough, treatment of women has grown worse, not better.  She has become simply another sack of finite genetic material, and not a beautiful gift from God, as Eve was to Adam, meant to be treasured and protected.  Whatever our supposed multi-cultural sophistication today, the fact remains that if you choose to stand by and do nothing in a situation like this, then please do not have the gall to call yourself a gentleman, let alone a man. A real man does not allow weaker people, particularly the ladies, to be taken advantage of by bullies.

A society which does nothing to help its weakest members is one riddled with relativism and sophistry, which Edmund Burke would recognize as lethal to its survival. So yes, fellow, you should open AND hold the door for women; allow them to go through the doorway ahead of you; pull out their chair for them when they want to sit at table, and so on.  Most of all, however, you should never look the other way when you see your sister in distress.  For even if no one sees you walk by or avert your gaze, you can be sure that the Man Upstairs certainly has seen it.  And He is the most impartial of all judges.

This should never have happened.

You can listen to the story of Channing’s discernment of her religious vocation, and how she has been preparing for the new adventure of her life, by listening to this recent episode of the Catholic Weekend show, where she joined us to talk about how she came to realize that God was calling her in a very special way to be a bride of Christ.  As you can see, Channing has already taken down her website, This Catholic Life.  After tomorrow, she will be deactivating her social media accounts, as she enters into the contemplative, cloistered life in just a few weeks’ time.

I had the privilege of meeting Channing for the first time in real life at the Fortnight for Freedom closing mass celebrated on Independence Day last year at the National Basilica.  Not only did we attend mass together, but we ended up on the front page of The Catholic Standard, the newspaper of the Washington Archdiocese! Well, sort of:

It is safe to say that was one of the absolute hottest, most stifling days I can recall being out and about in the Nation’s swamp capital, but spending time with such a poised, smart, and fun-loving young woman deeply committed to her faith, was a source of great hope and inspiration, knowing that gifted and intelligent people like her are responding to the call to religious life.

Then in January of this year, I got to meet up with Channing in person again, when she returned to Washington to participate in the March for Life.  I managed to record a special segment for the Catholic Weekend show with her and over a dozen other Catholic new media users, who gathered for a meet-up at the National Gallery of Art before the March began.  You can listen to that episode here, and to see more pictures of Channing and the rest of us, here is the link to the original post.

Though our friendship has not been one of very long duration, Channing has always been ready with prayers, encouragement, and humor throughout.  I shall miss being able to simply type her a message and have a near-immediate response, or seeing her ask for prayer intentions for those who need them.  Indeed, I shall particularly miss having her around during those moments when I lose my temper – not an infrequent occurrence, sadly – and need a bit of perspective on how not to pummel people into the ground on social media.

However I, do know that the calling which Channing is about to follow into the contemplative life is one which will bring her into an even deeper and more wonderful communion with Our Lord, and that she will be praying for all of us even as we pray for her.  The great Doctor of the Church and reformer of the Carmelites, St. Teresa of Avila, described the experience of her own entry into that life in a rather powerful way, in her “Autobiography”, and I can think of no better way to conclude this post as she prepares to tread the same path.  God bless you, Channing, as you enter into this new life with Christ, and please know that I and many others will be praying for you and wishing you well.

When I took the habit, the Lord soon made me understand how greatly he favors those who use force with themselves in serving him. No one realized that I had gone through all this; they all thought I had acted out of sheer desire. At the time my entrance into this new life gave me a joy so great that it has never failed me even to this day, and God converted the aridity of my soul into the deepest tenderness. Everything connected with the religious life caused me delight; and it is a fact that sometimes, when I was spending time in sweeping floors which I had previously spent on my own indulgence and adornment, and realized that I was now free from all those things, there came to me a new joy, which amazed me, for I could not understand whence it arose. Whenever I recall this, there is nothing, however hard, which I would hesitate to undertake if it were proposed to me. For I know now, by experience of many kinds, that if I strengthen my purpose by resolving to do a thing for God’s sake alone, it is His will that, from the very beginning, my soul shall be afraid, so that my merit may be the greater; and if I achieve my resolve, the greater my fear has been, the greater will be my reward, and the greater, too, will be my retrospective pleasure. Even in this life His Majesty rewards such an act in ways that can be understood only by one who has enjoyed them. This I know by experience, as I have said, in many very serious matters; and so, if I were a person who had to advise others, I would never recommend anyone, when a good inspiration comes to him again and again, to hesitate to put it into practice because of fear; for, if one lives a life of detachment for God’s sake alone, there is no reason to be afraid that things will turn out amiss, since He is all-powerful. May He be blessed for ever. Amen.

(L to R) Mike Gannon, Channing Dale, Fr. Kyle Sanders, the author, Pat Denny

The CNMC always sells out, and tickets are strictly limited. so if you are thinking about attending, don’t think too long.  Seats are already going fast, with first preference given to Boston-area residents.  Thus the sooner you register, for whatever level of participation you are interested in, the better.  For those not able to attend the CNMC in person, SQPN is also offering you the chance to register for a “virtual ticket”, which will give you access to audio and materials from the conference even if you cannot make it there yourself.

I am really humbled to have been asked to participate at the CNMC, and look forward to finally meeting in person some of the people with whom I have gotten to know through social media.  This is true particularly with respect to the people I have met through SQPN, back when I was simply a fanboy of the network, downloading podcasts, hanging out in chatrooms, or leaving feedback.  I am also looking forward to learning from the experiences of those who work in new media, and what they see as the opportunities and pitfalls of these tools in the future.

Of course I do not engage in media creation for a living.  Rather, it is  something I engage in with free time I may have, away from my career and my home life.  Whenever I am asked to do something for someone else, like write for a newspaper or make a media appearance, it always strikes me as somewhat improbable that I would be the person they turn to, when they are professionals who do what I do, and so much better, in new media.

Yet in discussion with an author friend the other day at brunch, she pointed out that the way one find’s one’s apostolate is not necessarily the same process by which one finds one’s career.  Different aspects of who we are and what we are interested in, can come to the aid of someone else, whether in terms of providing them physical assistance, emotional encouragement, exposing them to information and ideas they may not be aware of, and so on.  Thus, in an example which for obvious reasons I find rather inspiring, a businessman can manage his investments and projects all week, and then go be a superhero on the weekends for sick kids who need a bit of cheering up.

Regardless, whether you create new media or simply engage with it, the CNMC is a great way to get ideas, network, and share your experiences and questions with others who have similar interests to yours.  I am honored to have been invited to participate, and I know both the practical and spiritual dimensions of what we Catholics do in new media are topics which all of us will be able to benefit from discussing together, and in-depth, as part of the New Evangelization to which Pope Benedict XVI called us.  Hope to see many of you there!

The classic example of an auction house getting into trouble with a seller or buyer is exemplified in a suit recently settled by Lempertz auctioneers in Cologne.  The house had brought to market a work purportedly by the important Abstract Expressionist painter Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957), pictured below, which was sold in 2006 for $3.7 million.  At the time this was a new world record for the highest price paid for this artist’s work.  When the art gallery which acted as broker for the buyer became suspicious, upon closer examination of the work, the research trail eventually led police to a pair of art forgers who had been producing fakes of works in the style of well-known modernist painters for a number of years.  The discovery caused many collectors, museums, and galleries to go back and re-examine a number of their recent acquisitions, and in the process more than 50 paintings from the hands of these forgers were detected – including one purchased and later re-sold by actor Steve Martin.

What was particularly egregious on the part of the auction house in this case was that the current recognized expert-of-experts, if you will, on the life and work of Campendonk was never consulted by the auction house to authenticate the painting.  Even more bizarrely, said expert in fact lived in Cologne, the very same city where the painting was exhibited and sold.  While in bills of sale the old motto of “caveat emptor” often explains why courts will bar recovery, in this case there was no question that the buyer relied on the seller to have done their homework in bringing the painting to the floor, and the auction house failed in providing that service.  As a result, not only was Lempertz stuck with their own legal bill, but that of the plaintiff as well, in addition to having to provide full restitution of the purchase price, as part of the settlement agreement.

This case was a particularly egregious example of a failure to do the job which the auctioneer is supposed to do when a work comes in for valuation and sale.  However as interesting as such examples are, these slip-ups, while inevitable, are situations which most auctioneers and dealers do try to avoid.  Last month for example, Christie’s New York branch withdrew ten works by Brazilian modernist painters from its sale of modern and contemporary Latin American art, after questions were raised about their provenance and authenticity; the house indicated that further research and investigation were needed before the paintings could be offered for sale.

Then a few days later, Phillips auctioneers in New York withdraw a work by a Brazilian modernist which was to be sold in its own impending sale of Latin American art, after similar questions arose regarding its authenticity.  And Sotheby’s New York had to withdraw a work claimed to be by French Modernist Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955), when questions were raised about its authenticity through the “droit moral”, or “moral rights” to authenticate the work of a deceased painter whose work still falls under legal protection.  In these cases, the houses did their due diligence, in order to satisfy themselves and their potential buyers that fakes were not being offered as the genuine article.

Yet no matter how good an eye an auction house expert may have, it does not take very much for an inauthentic piece to make it into an auction catalogue and fall under the hammer for a high price.  Moreover, because of the ridiculously high sales levels being paid for modern and contemporary art at present, and the relative ease of forgery of such works, this is in fact a growth industry for art forgers, money launderers, and the black market.  Exposure to such litigation can be avoided, one suspects, largely by a change in attitude.

Auction houses dealing with works of art of such high monetary value need to make a point of handling each work that comes in through their doors with utter suspicion.  In other words, rather than waxing enthusiastic and assuring the consignor of how wonderful a piece is, the position of the valuer ought to be leaning more in the direction of refusing to sell a painting of questionable provenance, rather than trying to overlook the flaws in its pedigree.  The costs for being sloppy in one’s research and marketing can be very grave, indeed, not only to the bottom line, but also to one’s professional reputation, thereby reducing the possibility of future sales.

Fake Heinrich Campendonk painting sold by Lempertz in 2006 for $3.7 million

I was deeply touched at my birthday party recently to learn that a group of my friends had agreed to pray a Novena to St. Rita on behalf of my intentions.  For my non-Catholic readers, please note that this is not worship: Catholics draw a distinction between worship, which is confined to God alone, and prayers asking for intercession.    The belief that the Church on Earth is united with the Church in Heaven, i.e. those of us who have “made it”, as it were, means that we are asking those who are already in God’s Presence to add our prayers to theirs, just as you might offer to pray on behalf of a friend of yours who is going through a rough time.  In this case, over the years I have asked St. Rita to pray for me on many occasions, not because I was not already directly asking God for help, but because I felt that she would take up my pleading my cause as well.

There are many pious stories about the life of this particular saint, but one which I only recently became aware of involves her life-long devotion to St. John the Baptist, one of her patron saints; in fact she was baptized in the church named after the Baptist in her native Cascia.  Now as it happens, I have for many years thrown a party in June to celebrate St. John the Baptist’s birthday, which is a favorite custom in Catalonia.  However his unexpected connection with one of my favorite saints, who lived many centuries after him, was previously unknown to me.

St. Rita’s husband was one of the victims of the long-standing feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the two prominent political factions of Medieval Italy.  In Umbria, as indeed as common throughout Italy in this period, there were assassinations and resulting vendettas that led to a great deal of bloodshed in an endless cycle.  With the murder of her husband, and the subsequent death of both her sons from the Plague, St. Rita wanted to fulfill her childhood hope of becoming an Augustinian nun, a hope which she had not been able to fulfill because her parents had instead arranged her marriage.  However the convent refused to take her, partially because they were worried that the vendetta which surrounded St. Rita’s husband’s family would be brought to their doorstep.

Through prayer to St. John the Baptist and her other patron saints for their intercession, and despite her being a widow with no political power, St. Rita managed to bring about a peace agreement between her husband’s family and the family that had ordered his assassination.  This document was signed before Cascian officials in a public ceremony, and permanently put an end to the local feuding and revenge murders.  Now St. Rita was at last able to successfully return to the convent and ask for admittance.  In fact it is said that the gates of the convent were opened for her in a vision by St. John the Baptist and her other favorite saints.

Having friends in high places is always a good thing, whether you are trying to get a table at a good restaurant, or whether you want to be bumped up to first-class on a flight.  So having a friend in the ultimate high place of all is a very good thing indeed.  I would encourage all of my readers to learn more about this wonderful saint, who understood human suffering so well and united herself spiritually in prayer to the sufferings of Christ, to serve Him, her family, and her community.  She is a dear friend whom you will very much love getting to know.

Detail of “St. Rita of Cascia” window (19th Century)
Cathedral of St. Mary, Austin, Texas

You may have read, gentle reader, of the destruction of a Mayan pyramid in Belize, which was bulldozed to be turned into road fill.  This took place despite the fact that the archaeological site, and the structure itself, have been known and marked for well over a century now, as part of a far larger complex which has yet to be scientifically excavated.  Even today, with all of our technology, the jungles of Central and South America still have many secrets yet to reveal to us.  There are many more things to be discovered in these areas, and which continue to occur on a regular basis, such as was announced recently in the discovery of a large statue from a pre-Columbian ball game court in Mexico.

In Egypt, scholars are alarmed at the increasing rate of destruction at the site of the ancient Roman city of Antinopolis, built by the Emperor Hadrian to honor his boy toy Antinous, who accidentally drowned – or was murdered, depending on whom you believe – in the Nile near this spot in 130 A.D.  Here, the nearly intact Roman hippodrome has been swallowed up both by the desert sands and an encroaching modern cemetery.  In addition the area of the ancient necropolis, or “city of the dead”, which has yielded numerous superb mummy portraits, is being converted into farmland for the burgeoning population of actual living people in the area to work.

Even in the United States, we can see the shocking destruction of buildings which are, if not as ancient as the aforementioned, not only old, but beautiful.  Take the demolition of old St. Patrick’s Church in suburban Albany. New York, a Neo-Gothic building from around the turn of the previous century.  Due to various factors including declining mass attendance, many of these old churches now serve shrinking populations.  Often this leaves the diocese or religious community which maintains these structures no choice but to put them up for sale.  In this case, the church is being replaced with a supermarket, which is perhaps rather too-telling

The story of architectural loss in the Americas, Egypt, and elsewhere is one not only based on values, but on resources.  It is all very well to pass a law saying that historic buildings must be preserved.  However if there is no enforcement mechanism in place to impose that law, nor the budget to fund it, then all the good intentions in the world will not halt demolition or decay.

There is also a kind of absolutist tendency among some in the historical preservation world to argue that anything more than a few years old is “historic”, and worth preserving.  We saw this in the battle over the hideous Third Church of Christ Scientist by “starchitect” I.M.Pei here in D.C., which unfortunately has yet to be demolished.  And indeed similar arguments are being made to preserve the even more egregiously awful and failing FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.  How anyone with an advanced degree could argue that, ”I think if it can be saved, it should be,” with a straight face is beyond me.

As in everything in life, the key here is to strike a balance.  For many poorer countries, preservation of architectural monuments and important buildings or ruins is simply not possible.  There are organizations like UNESCO to help them, but as we saw in the destruction of ancient structures in Mali during the Islamist uprisings, even international organizations can only coordinate restoration efforts up to a point.  These are often viewed as a luxury which wealthy, first-world countries alone have the means to play with.  For all of us, the loss of these pieces of the past, however they come about, are tragic, and call for our attention and, yes, our financial support, if we care about history, or architecture, or art.

Yet even at home, we can do our part in our own communities.  Rather than worrying so much over whether it is historically appropriate for our neighbor to paint his front door fire engine red, as is so often the kind of in-fighting that goes on in well-to-do historic neighborhoods, perhaps we ought to be looking with a more keen eye to see what is actually worth our time and effort to preserve.  Nothing built by the hands of man will last forever, after all, and by tailoring our preservation efforts to those structures which are not simply old, but exemplary of the best that human beings can do when they push themselves, we will all be better-served.

Demolition underway at St. Patrick’s Church
Watervliet, New York

Beginning around a decade ago a number of public art institutions, inspired by the example of Sir Nicholas Serota at the Tate conglomerate began to rearrange the collections of painting and sculpture in their care.  The exercise lead to the works being displayed, not chronologically or in “schools”, as one would study them in art history, but in whatever bizarre arrangement the management felt would draw in the curiosity-seeking public, and get them more press.  Curators would decide that a group of completely unrelated works evoked thoughts – for them, anyway – about sex, the environment, a cause du jour, and so on, and group them together, often in a highly discordant fashion.

At the time, the art press went into raptures over the idea that this idea was something bold, new, and fresh – which of course it wasn’t.  If you have ever been to a private museum, such as The Wallace Collection in London, you know that oftentimes private collectors and their families hung pictures of different centuries and styles together in their homes.  They did so because they liked the way the pieces looked together, as well as matching the colors of the drapes, furniture, or carpets.  Some pieces then occupied the space they did because they were thematically suited to the purpose of a room, or conversely were banned from a particular room because they were ill-suited to it.  One would not like to see a painting of the beheading of St. John the Baptist hanging over the sideboard in the dining room, for example, even if it was by Sassetta.

However when more public institutions began to make similar idiosyncratic arrangements of their collections copying Serota’s lead, there was quite correctly a vociferously negative reaction from those of us who love good art, but who thought that museums  were losing their way.  There is a time and a place for creating what are popularly called “mash-ups” of seemingly conflicting elements in exhibition spaces:  it has always been the purview of the temporary exhibition to juxtapose works which might not otherwise be displayed nearby each other, so as to encourage the visitor see the connections between them.  Artists always influence each other, sometimes centuries apart, and so for these traveling shows the mixture of styles and centuries can work rather well.  The highly-regarded Manet/Velázquez show at The Metropolitan in 2003 was a good example of this.

The point of the public museum is not to indulge the personal whims, bad taste, and general ignorance of its leadership.  Serota for example once argued that the great High Renaissance master Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” should be allowed to be sold and leave the country, since British public institutions needed to collect more “foreign” art – apparently forgetting the fact that Raphael was from Urbino in present-dy Italy, and never set foot in Britain in his lifetime.  Unfortunately this is the sort of person leading most major public art collections these days, and we all suffer as a result.

Rather museums are meant to be institutions which both preserve art for future generations, and educate us as to its history and meaning.  Having been established for the public good, they are provided with certain legal protections and exemptions, as well as taxpayer funding.  As a result, they are not meant to be a rich man’s plaything, nor a venue for proving to others in your field that you are a bigger hipster than they are.  Thus it is a very good thing indeed to see that Director Curtis has taken the time to examine the role of the art museum in public life, and to try to recapture a sense of purpose from which all may benefit.

Interior Loggia at Tate Britain, London

Before we begin, a bit of history should be kept in mind here by conservatives who are hopping mad at the Holy Father today, and who will then jump for joy at what he might tweet next week.   Pope Francis was not advocating some sort of socialist economic model, or saying that capitalism is the work of the Devil.  Keep in mind that he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires until just a few weeks ago.  If you know anything of what has happened to Argentina economically and politically over the past decade, the Pope is all too well-aware of the impact of various economic theories and practices.  Moreover, he was certainly no ally of the current populist-socialist President of Argentina, who imagines herself some sort of Kmart version of Eva Perón.

There are many areas of overlap between conservatism and Christianity, but there are also many areas of tension.  While recently a number of Christian denominations have adopted a policy of going along to get along, with regard to various societal and political issues, the Catholic Church remains immovable on a number of fundamental points, as she has for the past two thousand years of her existence.  One of those points is that love of both God and neighbor is the basis for the truly Christian life.  And while not in principle against the possession of wealth, the Christian does not make its pursuit his reason for living.

As we heard in the Gospel reading at mass this past Sunday, “‘I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ ” (St. John 13:34-35)

Nothing the Pope tweeted today was new, as you can see here for example, from two sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which point to the inherent dangers of both atheist socialism AND unfettered capitalism:

2124  The name “atheism” covers many very different phenomena. One common form is the practical materialism which restricts its needs and aspirations to space and time. Atheistic humanism falsely considers man to be “an end to himself, and the sole maker, with supreme control, of his own history.”  Another form of contemporary atheism looks for the liberation of man through economic and social liberation. “It holds that religion, of its very nature, thwarts such emancipation by raising man’s hopes in a future life, thus both deceiving him and discouraging him from working for a better form of life on earth.”

2424    A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order.  A system that “subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production” is contrary to human dignity.  Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. “You cannot serve God and Mammon.”

Secular materialism is not an illness confined only to those who practice socialism.  There are many conservatives, including those who call themselves Christians, who bow and worship at the feet of people like economists and market gurus, leaving God out of the picture entirely, or relegating Him to some sort of secondary place in their lives.  This is a very dangerous path to tread, and a choice which Catholics believe has eternal consequences.

In St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy, the Apostle to the Gentiles lays out, very simply, why the pursuit of wealth leads nowhere:

For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.
If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.
Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.

(1 Timothy 6:7-10)

Please note, no one is saying that wealth is something which is inherently evil.  After all, the ministry of Christ Himself, and later that of the Apostles and the Church, would have been impossible without the material support of those Christians with the means to help.  Rather wealth is a tool, and what one does with that tool, for good or for ill, will give lie to what is really important in one’s life.  For in the end, no matter how much wealth one creates or accumulates, we are, all of us, worm food.

Many Catholics and non-Catholics alike are familiar with the prolific medieval writer St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest thinkers of the Church.  One of my favorite passages from his copious output - and be assured I have not even read 1/100th of it – is something which I not infrequently recall to myself.  It is useful to keep in mind both when things go wrong in life, but also when things are going well.

While celebrating mass one day in 1273, St. Thomas apparently received a mystical vision of Heaven; as a result, he stopped writing to prepare himself spiritually to go home to the Lord.  ”All that I have written seems like straw to me,” he is reported to have said, in response to urges from others that he resume writing, “compared to what has been revealed to me.”  St. Thomas was by no means rejecting the work he had already done, nor its value to those whom it had helped and indeed continues to help to this day.  Rather he realized that all he had been working on and doing in the material world paled in comparison to what was coming across the great divide, and knew that he had to prepare himself for it, even as close as he was to God.

The fact is that the Pope is right.  Many times hard-working people find themselves unemployed not because they are lazy, or because they are doing a poor job, but because the wealthy chose to protect their own fortunes, and not care for their struggling workers.  This is not a blanket statement, nor an endorsement of trade unionism or forcible wealth distribution.  Rather it is a simple fact of life: these things do happen, and are happening all the time, all over the world.

The Pope is also correct in reminding us of the inherent human tendency of selfishness, and this is why Christianity, which is founded on a Divine act of loving unselfishness, is not as easy a Faith to take on as many of us would like to believe.  The Catholic Church was built on sacrifice and blood, both of Christ’s on Calvary, and of the countless martyrs who suffered torture and death rather than submit to selfishness and sin.  Human beings never like to be reminded of the fact that we are sinners; we all like to think that we are, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, nice folks.  The truth is that under the right circumstances, we will not only take whatever we can from one another, but we will actually relish doing it – and that is what makes self-sacrifice such a very hard thing to achieve.

Thus Pope Francis’ job, lest those reading this forget it, is not to help the Republicans take over the Senate or lower the cost of crude oil.  The Holy Father is on Twitter not to chit-chat, but to get as many people to Heaven as he can.  You may not have thought about that, when you posted your snarky comment about the Pope this morning, but there it is.  He is trying to teach us both by word and by example what it means to be a Christian.  Sometimes that instruction is easily palatable, and sometimes we find it bitter and difficult to swallow.

For at the end of your life, God will not care whether you had 100 or 100,000 Twitter followers, or whether a celebrity re-tweeted you, or whether you appeared on Twitchy, BuzzFeed, or any other aggregate site.  Nor for that matter will He care whether you died a rich man or a poor one.   Rather, when you die and go before Him, you are going to have to show Him that you loved Him, as He loved you, and that you demonstrated that love in the way you treated other people, sacrificing your own comforts to meet someone else’s needs, in imitation of the same self-sacrificial love that Christ demonstrated to His followers.

Remember that, as He Himself pointed out, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head.  He was laid on a bed of straw which did not belong to Him at His birth, and He was laid in a rock tomb which did not belong to Him at His death, and from which He rose on Easter Sunday.   So now would be a good time to ask yourself, if you were angry at the Pope today, whether you are so detached from the world and materialism as to remember that if you are a Christian, these three things are more important to you than absolutely anything whatsoever having to do with the economy.  You are not made for this world, but for the next.

Detail of “The Vision of St. Thomas Aquinas” by Santi de Tito (1593)
San Marco, Florence

One reason might be that many in contemporary Western society are brought up to believe that anyone can make good art, which is simply not true.  It is one thing to encourage little Tracy to make a nice picture for Aunt Hilda with her fingerpaints. It is another to convince adult Tracy that she is a great artist, and can in fact teach other people how to be artists, when she cannot even draw properly.

I cannot speak to the European experience, but the rather poor state of art education in this country is something I suspect most of my American readers know first-hand.  One learns very little beyond a smattering of Attic sculpture, the Italian Renaissance, a bit of Dutch genre painting, and the French Impressionists,  followed by an over-concentration on Modern Art.  Then one spends the rest of the course making bad pots, or poor sketches of one of the girls in the class seated on a wobbly stool.  In fact, far more time is spent in the American education system teaching students how to boil an egg, parallel park, or avoid getting Suzy pregnant, than is on educating them about the great artistic legacies of Western civilization.

Increasingly it is the persona of the artist, feigned or otherwise, and not the art itself, which is valued and praised.  The art becomes secondary to the story, i.e. the mythos created around the artist: this one is a political dissident, or that one is a public drunk, or that one sleeps with anything he can get his hands on, and aren’t they fascinating people?  In the end, seeing someone put thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds in a room may be amusing, but no one dares to ask whether it is actually good art. [N.B.: It isn't.]  

The contemporary art world does not genuinely want to ask itself this question, nor does it want you to question their judgment on this point, because in reality much of that segment of the art market is nefarious, at best.  When you read about someone paying astronomical prices for what looks like – and in fact, is – a pile of poo with a title placard, the story is not really the art.  Rather, it is about the amount of money changing hands, based on how well the art dealers and press have managed to create a marketable brand value for the artist whose work is being sold.

What most people do not realize is that the majority of this art which makes you scratch your head or roll your eyes is not actually being brought home for people to display.  Instead, it is going into places like bank vaults or gigantic tax-free storage facilities, where it is kept as an investment  readily convertible to cash by financiers, spendthrift entertainers, and arms/narcotics merchants.  This story which broke yesterday, about private AND institutional collectors pulling out of Christie’s art storage warehouses in Brooklyn, should give you some idea of the vast amount of art created and sold over the past 30-40 years which is sitting crated up somewhere, unseen.

If it were all released onto the market at once, the value of such art would collapse, since frankly no one would actually want it.  There is already so much of it available that it has lost that one quality which collecting objects like Old Master paintings or fine porcelain has always had, which is scarcity.  We all know from economics that once the market becomes aware that something is not actually rare or difficult to obtain, it begins to lose value, and sometimes precipitously.  The contemporary art market keeps pushing along, making new art stars out of delusional half-wits to keep the flow of goods coming, but looking less like an intelligentsia and more like the purveyors of tulip bulbs.

As someone who has collected in some very niche areas of art for the last couple of decades, I regularly encourage my readers to go out and collect what you love.  Owning art is not only an ongoing means of self-education, it is simply a joy.  I would based on the forgoing advise you to avoid the temptation of buying art which requires you to install a dedicated video monitor, or put down a layer of plastic on the living room floor, in order for you to be able to display it.

Instead, look for those contemporary artists who know how to do things like actually paint – like this guy – and have made a career of careful and attentive craftmanship.  These people develop their natural talents into something striking and accomplished, whatever style they happen to work in, because they know that great art takes time and patience to create.  These artists are the men and women who inspire and encourage us to feel that link of continuity with the history of our culture, and not that we are simply cattle to be manipulated by the contemporary art world for the purposes of commerce.  And when the contemporary art market finally does burst, these will be the artists left standing.

“The Venus of Rags” by Michelangelo Pistoletto (2013)
from an temporary installation at The Louvre, Paris

St. George and the Dragon by Franz Pforr (c. 1815)
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt