The Education of Catholic GirlsStuart, Janet Erskine
Religion
The Education of Catholic Girls
Stuart, Janet Erskine
Catholic Church -- Education; Women -- Education
Without Pugin's bitterness the same method of contrast has been used
most effectively to put before children by means of lantern slides and
lectures the manner in which art renders truth according to the various
ideals and convictions of the artists. It is a lesson in itself, a
lesson in faith, in devotion, as well as in art and in the history of
man's mind, to show in succession, or even side by side, though the
shock is painful, works of art in which the Christian mysteries are
rendered in an age of faith or in one of unbelief. They can see in the
great works of Catholic art how faith exults in setting them forth, with
undoubting assurance, with a theological grasp of their bearings and
conclusions, with plenitude of conviction and devotion that has no
afterthoughts; and in contrasting with these the strained efforts to
represent the same subjects without the illumination of theology they
will learn to measure the distance downwards in art from faith to
unbelief.
The conclusions may carry them further, to judge from the most modern
paintings of the tone of mind of their own time, of its impatience and
restlessness and want of hope. Let them compare the patient finish, the
complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest
painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the
hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness
from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality,
exhausted from the absence of inward repose. They will comment for
themselves upon the pessimism to which so many surrender themselves,
taking with them their religious art, with its feeble Madonnas and
haggard saints, without hope or courage or help, painted out of the
abundance of their own heart's sadness. This contrast carries much
teaching to the children of to-day if they can understand it, for each
one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art
is a unit adding strength to the line of defence against the invasions
of sadness and dejection of spirit.
These considerations belong to the moral and spiritual value of the
study of art, in the early years of an education intended to be general.
They are of primary importance although in themselves only indirect
results of the study. As to its direct results, it may be said in
general that two things must be aimed at during the years of school
life, appreciation of the beautiful in the whole realm of art, and some
very elementary execution in one or other branch, some doing or making
according to the gift of each one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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