Plaster saints that blot the Irish landscape

A MONTH spent this past summer in West Cork brought very many delightful experiences, but it also contained one feature which raised in me indignation, not pleasure. This was the quality of the religious statuary which I observed everywhere — outside churches, by the roads, in the grounds of schools. Rather like Paul at Athens, I decided to make a protest.
So I wrote a small article for The Times, which appeared on November 13 under the title "The Reign of Our Lady of the Simper". In the article I described the simpering statues of Our Lady, made of white plaster, which I encountered everywhere,
I also protested against the bad Victorian stained glass which I met in most of the Anglican churches in these parts, in which, I claimed, Our Lord was made to look like a member of the Mother's Union. I said that the usual defence for this sort of art, "the people like it", was not good enough.
Bad art, I maintained, makes for bad religion: sentimental art encourages sentimental notions about God and his saints. And I ended by suggesting that this was something that the ecumenical movement might tackle.
Purify
Borrowing a phrase from T. S. Eliot, I said that we must "purify the dialect of the tribe" in the area of religious art. My final proposal was that the great Eastern Orthodox tradition in Christendom might very well be called in to help us in this task.
I must have touched on something about which Christians feel strongly, because never before have I had such a marked reaction to a newspaper article of mine. Some of it was hostile: there was one lady who, writing from a country part of Ireland, obviously connected me in her mind very closely with the late Oliver Cromwell and assumed that my attitude to the Catholic Church must pretty well coincide with his,
Several prominent members of the Mothers' Union leapt to the conclusion that I had insulted that admirable lady which was far from my intention. My old friend Professor James Atkinson of Sheffield University wrote a letter advocating simple iconoclasm, which was not my intention either.
But much more interesting was the favourable reaction which my article received in Ireland itself. Mr Oisin Kelly, a distinguished art expert whom I used to know in my student days in Dublin, heartily backed my protest. Another Irish expert deplored the fact that cheap commercial statuary was set up when a much better standard of art was available at no greater cost.
Best of all was a most judicious article in The Irish Press or November 19 in which my criticism was accepted in the most generous spirit and the suggestion made that in the realm of religious art Ireland should "move out from a cosy Victorian backwater into the turbulent currents of this century". Plainly, a good number of thinking Catholics in Ireland agreed with my protest against Our Lady of the Simper.
The Editor of the Catholic Herald has kindly offered me
the opportunity of following up my article in The Times, and I do so with the greatest alacrity.
I think there are just four points I want to make about this most interesting debate.
Dishonest
I. As the editor of The Irish Press clearly understood, my article was not written with any animus against devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or against the use of statuary in Christian devotion (or indeed, let me add while I'm about it, against the Mothers' Union!). We must use art in worship and devotion of course; but let it be good, honest art — not sentimental, commercialised art.
2. As an Irishman, I Felt that the Irish people deserved something better as the public monuments of their religion than these feeble objects. The Irish are no longer a set of simple peasants. They are a
sophisticated Western European nation, and I resent the notion that cheap statues are all that they can be expected to appreciate.
In any case, it isn't as if the Irish had no indigenous artistic tradition to which to appeal. They have in fact two splendid artistic traditions, an old and a new — not unconnected, of course.
They have the wonderful tradition of ancient Celtic art, a non-representational tradition, be it noted: and Our Lady of the Simper suffers from a crude representationalism. The other one is the modern tradition of the Celtic revival, which has produced striking achievements in pictorial art (I think of Jack Yeats for one).
With such a wealth of artistic treasure to draw on, it is pathetic that we can show the visitor to our shores almost nothing but third-rate alien art.
3. The statue which sparked off m article (it was on Clare Island) was, I believe, a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. At least Our Lady simpered from the side of a grotto and a female devotee simpered on her knees a few feet away.
Now, as it happens, we know something about Bernadette Soubirois' views on images of Our Lady. She did not like the sentimental ones, and indeed maintained that not even the most impressive and austere statues of the Blessed Virgin conveyed anything like the awe, the mystery and the holiness of her vision.
As a matter Of fact, I suspect that Bernadette was herself a most unsentimental person. I was very much impressed by one remark she is recorded as making, to the effect that, if the Blessed Virgin could have found anyone more ignorant to whom to reveal herself, she would not have chosen Bernadette. There is an earthy reality about that remark which convinces me that Bernadette had the root of the matter in her.
Sentimental
How disastrous that to unsentimental and honest a devotee should be belied by sentimental representations of her visions! The sentimental is ultimately the dishonest. We do honour neither to the Blessed Virgin nor to Bernadette by dishonest reproductions of their encounter.
4. I meant my suggestion about the part the ecumenical movement could play here to be taken seriously. At first sight, I must admit, it seems quixotic to expect Catholics and Anglicans in Southern Ireland to cooperate in a movement to improve religious art.
Church of Ireland churches (except for the ubiquitous stained-glass windows) seem to affect an almost Puritan avoidance of imagery. Roman Catholic churches have plenty of imagery, but far too much of it in the worst taste.
Anyway, the two traditions seem to use imagery for different purposes; the Anglicans to commemorate the dead, the Catholics to edify the living. But in fact both traditions are to some extent converging. The Anglicans have, relatively recently, allowed a much larger element of symbolism within the sanctuary; the Catholics are showing a tendency to greater austerity and economy in their use of imagery. Both traditions would gain immensely by studying the classical tradition of the Orthodox icon.
Let me end by a personal experience. The Anglican Church where I worship in Hull is used every Sunday by both Anglicans and Catholics. A few years ago the Catholics were looking for somewhere to celebrate Mass on a Sunday, and our vicar offered them the use of the parish church.
From the first the arrangement has worked excellently. It was all summed up by an ingenuous remark of a lady in the Catholic congregation after the first Mass was held in the parish church: "Why," she exclaimed, "it's almost like a Catholic church."
The Rev Professor Anthony Hanson
Department of Theology, University of Hull.