Day 10- Papa Francesco

We woke up and left the dorms by 6:30 in order to leave for an audience with the pope.  To be honest, I had no idea what to expect, but as we neared the walls of Vatican City, I could already begin to appreciate the vastness of this Pope's audience.  Pope Francis has been receiving larger crowds than was historically normal.  While I was very excited for this opportunity, I was extremely curious about what was to happen in St. Peter's Square that warranted swarms of people arriving three hours before the Pope was to show.  When Pope Francis finally stepped onto the stage and addressed the crowd, I saw the large group of people go completely crazy.

Pope Francis greeting his fans

For years, this audience with the Pope offered to the public has been a popular place for Catholics and non-Catholics combined to be able to see and hear the leader of the church.  Pope Francis, however, is drawing more crowds than usual.  I got to thinking- isn't this near-worship of the Pope a form of idolatry?  Should we be greeting Pope Francis with such fervor?
In class, we discussed the veneration of the saints and the controversies that surrounded this worship.  Eventually, at the Council of Trent, the church agreed on guidelines through which saints, relics, and holy images may be invocated.  This decree explains that the veneration of saints may be used, but not in substitution for worship of God:  "Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of other saints, are to be had... and that due honor and veneration are to be given them:  not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them."
The worshipper must understand, according to the Council, that God is above all, and that these saints are not in any way gods, in themselves.  Although, the Catholic community understands that the Pope is not a god, the incredible excitement surrounding Pope Francis demonstrated today makes me wonder if people may forget the words of the Council, and begin to escalate the Pope to a god-like worship.

Day 9- Caravaggio

Learning about Caravaggio and his many works made me consider art from the perspective of the artist.  Caravaggio commissioned many works for the Catholic Church, but did not feel a special enthusiasm for religious works.  In fact, most of his works before being hired by the church were centered on secular ideas.  Caravaggio enjoyed making observations about daily life.  He would take every day objects and cast them into shadow, or focus light on them in different ways in order to make ordinary things seem extraordinary.  His religious transformation in the art world did not really occur until his second period in Rome, when he found that he could make a living out of exploiting Christian themes.


Caravaggio's Madonna di Loreto
Commissioned by the Confraternity of the
Holy Trinity of Pilgrims

This bridge between the artist and his work really makes me consider Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.  In the film we watched, Pope Julius II exalts Michelangelo's faith, as professed in his rendition of the creation of man.  He states that Michelangelo must have a true and loving interpretation of God in order to create such a powerful piece.  Raphael, on the other hand, argues against this theory.  In an exchange with Michelangelo, he says, "Before we even begin to work, to feed this craving of ours, we must find a patron, a rich man of affairs, or a merchant, or a prince or a Pope...We are harlots always peddling beauty at the doorsteps of the mighty."  Raphael seems to think that an artist's work is not a reflection on his intuition, rather it is a reflection on his wallet.
I realize that this film is a fictionalized piece, intended to entertain, as well as inform, but the movie does make some good points.  Many artists in Caravaggio's and in Michelangelo's time, and even today, had to set aside their artistic ideals in order to appease their patrons.  This is why, when I study a piece of art, I am sometimes skeptical
the true intentions of the artist.

Day 8- The Importance of Balancing Vanity and Religion

Today, we visited St. Ignatius Church.  This church, built in the baroque style, was created in honor of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus.  While the interior of the church is, without a doubt, beautiful, it appears to be unfinished.  A few side chapels have bare walls because the parish ran out of resources before it could be finished.  If you stand in the center of the church, you can see a huge dome.  Once you step closer, however, you can see that the dome is not, in fact, real.  It has been painted on a flat drum on the ceiling, again, as a result of the church's lack of finances.
This juxtaposition of illusion and aesthetic reality reminds me of the story of St. Alexis.  This saint left his family to venture into the dessert in order to escape the vanity and fame he was soon to inherit (he had recently married a wealthy, famous woman.)  Upon Alexis' return, neither his parents, nor his bride, recognized him.  He lived out his life as a beggar on the stoop of his childhood home and only after his death did his family realize who he truly was.
I think this theme of losing yourself in the superficial and failing to fully comprehend the obvious can be seen in many areas of the Catholic faith.  The optical illusion of the dome reminds the congregation that, for lack of a better phrase, things are not always as they seem.  The beggar on your doorstep could easily be your son.  Christ, the savior, could easily be mistaken for a simple, humble man.
St. Ignatius of Loyola preached this theme throughout his life, as well.  He was more concerned with helping the poor and hungry than with promoting himself.  His aversion to vanity is the great virtue that continues to propel Jesuits in their missions around the world.

Day 7- The Last Judgment

Walking into the Sistine Chapel, my breath was taken away.  Not by the ceiling, however, as I would have expected.  I could not believe the incredible detail in Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.  This fresco, created over twenty years after the completion of the ceiling, depicts the apocalypse.  Jesus is shown descending from the heavens, along with the saints, and bringing up those souls deemed worthy into the Kingdom of God.  Demons pull some souls down, while Saints grab onto people and try to save them.  At the bottom middle of the fresco, the Devil stares out at the audience, as though waiting for them.  Michelangelo implies that he will be unsuccessful, however, as his fresco was painted exactly behind the altar and a large crucifix which blocks the Devil's eye line and keeps him in Hell.
I was extremely taken with this fresco mostly because of the artist's representations of the saints.  Each Saint holds the instrument of their death as they ascend, alongside their savior, into heaven.  At first it seemed odd that these saints would be holding their own murder weapons, but then I remembered our textbook, The Christian Theological Tradition explaining why Jesus is always associated with the cross.  In Christ's case, the cross is not only the instrument of death, but is also his instrument of rebirth into the Kingdom of God.  This is the same with the saints.  Saint Katherine holds the wheel that dismembered her.  Saint Lawrence carries a gridiron, representative of his tortuous grilling.  Saint Bartholomew holds a knife and his own skin, as he was fileted alive.  While all these objects brought about the end of the saints' mortal lives, they ensured that they would all join Jesus in this scene, the last judgment, as he recognizes those faithful to him.  This veneration of the martyrs sits behind the alter, looking out onto the conclave.  It stands to remind them of the importance of faithfulness to Christ and the church as they make one of the most important decisions for the Catholic community: electing the new Pope.

Day 6- Michelangelo's Pieta

Today, we visited Michelangelo's Pietà.  This marble sculpture was built in 1497, originally to be placed on an altar in St. Peter's basilica.  Unfortunately, in the early 1970s, a crazed man entered the basilica and, taking a hammer to the Pietà, greatly damaged the piece and removed at least 50 fragments.  When we visited the sculpture, it was encased in glass, in order to avoid any further damage.
I found this piece incredibly interesting because it presented Mary and Jesus in what was a revolutionary manner at the time.  Michelangelo created a scene in which Mary holds a recently crucified Christ in her lap.  Jesus, still bearing the wounds of his torture on his hands and feet, looks utterly vulnerable in his mother's arms.  Michelangelo, in fact, sculpted the pair disproportionately, in order to emphasize Mary's strength in the face of this ordeal and her continuing maternal love for her son.
In this scene, Mary is depicted as a young woman, despite the fact that, at the time of Jesus' passion, Mary would have been nearing fifty years of age.  This girlish youth reflects the virgin mother's innocence and contrasts greatly to the representations of this mother-son duo of years before. 
In the preceding centuries to the Pietà, Mary was often depicted with great, sorrowful looks of anguish on her face.  Now, however, Michelangelo creates a piece with an entirely different message:  acceptance and faith.  Mary does not wear her suffering on her face, rather she reflects in what appears to be silent prayer.  She sits with hand wrapped around Jesus, holding him to her and keeping him upright.  Her other hand lies, palm facing upward, in a gesture of prayer.  While the viewer certainly understands Mary's mourning and loss in this sculpture, her face projects a sort of serenity and we can see that she understands why her son was taken from her and she accepts this fact.  This acceptance is a true testament to Mary's faith.
Though Mary was not put to death, her disposition reminds me of that of many of the martyrs we have studied in class.  John and Paul, specifically, seem to have followed Mary in their faithful acceptance of God's will.  The two martyrs, killed in their homes for their faith, understood the reasons for their death and expressed such great faith in God to gracefully, and without protest, accept their suffering.  Mary, like John and Paul, does not question the reason for her loss or for Jesus' suffering.  She mourns, but does not question.  Michelangelo captured this perfectly in the Pietà.