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Human culture and civilisation

The whole life of the Church follows in Christ's 'wake' as part of God's eternal plan: the Apostles and Saints, a visible Church, Catholic life and culture and devotions. All of this was in the mind of God.

The whole life of the Church follows in Christ's 'wake' as part of God's eternal plan: the Apostles and Saints, a visible Church, Catholic life and culture and devotions. All of this was in the mind of God.

No Catholic should look down on our ancient Christian devotions, or those of other Christian cultures, where the imagery of faith is clothed in an unusual or unfamiliar appearance; for example, Our Lady of Sorrows.

Christ said to me: "I speak all languages". He meant that no-one need feel distant from Christ through not knowing the language or culture of Jesus Christ's earthly life. Whoever does the Will of the Father in Heaven is a brother, sister, mother or father to Christ.

The Church has for centuries inspired, employed, or admired painters, who keep before the eyes of the faithful, in graphic form, those truths of the Faith on which we should act, if we are to be saved by the grace of Christ. We can be helped by images of Heaven or Hell, even if angels or demons, for example, are portrayed in semi-human form, or in ways stemming from a particular culture.

Wherever Catholics live out their faith with goodness and conviction, they have an effect upon their culture, as Catholics have since the earliest times. The Bishops hand on the truth from Jesus Christ, people are forgiven and transformed, freed from superstition, men and women are equal in marriage, the sick are cherished and not rejected, prisoners receive justice, little girls are educated, children are valued, even the unborn, the arts flourish - art, architecture, music and scholarship - and the Saints set an unparalleled example of goodness, in all sorts of ways.

It is part of God's plan that we respect what is worthwhile in our culture and heritage, that we treasure our families, and worthwhile traditions, stories, and means of enriching everyday life in ways pleasing to God. Even cookery recipes, handed on through the generations, can cement bonds in family life, preserve customs, and bring joy in shared meals.

In various societies and cultures, people are confused, and need help in bringing order to their stormy lives. The task of artists is to help people to see what is good, true and noble - even by sometimes depicting what draws people away from the good, though not through any obsession with what is grotesque, demeaning or sadistic. Such images can harm flawed human beings.

Modern countries call themselves civilized. But they differ from those ancient cultures who offered human sacrifice only in that people today usually try to hide what they do. Unborn babies are routinely killed, supposedly to bring happiness to the mothers, and some elderly or sick persons are killed, to make life easier for other people: killed in modern hospitals, quietly, by professionals who defy God and ruin their own souls.

In St. Joseph's shrine, in Missouri, for example, people of earlier centuries were immersed in Catholic imagery and culture. Absorbing it, they were helped to withstand the alien culture outside the places of worship. Today, we need to be so immersed; and since so many of our Catholic churches have been stripped bare of imagery, that is both inspiring and educational, God has provided both truth and beauty in the Radiant Light collection of pictures, in which anyone on-line can be immersed.

It takes courage to be faithful to Catholic teaching on marriage. What Christ wants to see are many more faithful Catholic women: women who accept God's plan for married life, for example, and who avoid all sinful practices so common in our culture, and who do not neglect their children; women who pursue a career only if their children are genuinely well cared for; women who do not see it as demeaning to serve the family, and to respect their husbands, yet with each spouse respecting the other.

As if throwing precious cargo into the sea, there are non-Catholic Christians who delight in discarding long-standing Christian beliefs because they want to fit in with popular culture, mistakenly supposing that they will draw people to Christ. It is a dreadful thing, in Heaven's sight, that prominent Christians, through the desire to be 'modern', can encourage others to ignore God's laws about sexuality, marriage, and other tremendously important matters to do with salvation.