Yawns & Nausea

Many a devout Catholic has winced at the kewpie-doll saints and candy-box Virgins which sometimes decorate Roman shrines and churches. The objection is not merely on esthetic grounds, says the Rev. David Ross King, diocesan superintendent of schools at Superior, Wis. In last week's issue of Commonweal, Father King argues that brummagem religious art is a danger to the faith:

"I believe that [Author] Julian Green did the art of Catholics in America a service when he faced honestly 'the awful spell cast over religious sensibility by [Raphael]. . . .' Raphael did indeed 'saturate and infect the minds of millions with dull commonplaces about the gospel . . . crowding the invisible with chromos.'

". . . For reverence . . . has been substituted sentiment, and for love has been substituted sensuality. Look at our 'Christs at the Helm' our St. Bernadettes (heavy with lip rouge and dreamy-eyed with false lashes)--here is love as believed in and hoped for and parodied by the world of which Satan is prince and sly master. . . .

"Well might a man grow weak in faith and careless in practice who has been reared among spineless Madonnas, saccharine Sacred Hearts, swivel-hipped St. Josephs, and gaudily garbed Infants of Prague ('genuine crystal eyes, very lifelike, $12 extra'). The yawn begins in childhood and the nausea comes in due time."

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