Catholicism is an aesthetic. When you look at Catholic art and architecture, particularly from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, cathedrals, statues, stained glass, and all the other trappings of the church were explicitly designed to be an aspirational aesthetic. Church design wasn’t just there so that illiterate people could understand biblical allegory before Mass was done in linguae francae, but to be beautiful and glorify God. Church fathers from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas had long treatises on beauty, and why it pleases God and why we should strive for it. The Church wants to be #aesthetic and always has.
But heretic! you may say, surely that beauty belongs only to the church and to believers, and only those who ascribe to Catholicism should revel in it?
Well, see now, we need to discuss Catholicism as a domineering force in Western art and how it defined what type of art was allowed to be created throughout much of Europe. Basically, the cultural hegemony of the Catholic church was so constricting in Europe that nobody was allowed to create art about anything else. Well that and portraits of kings and stuff, and maybe mythology. During the Renaissance, mythology got to be bigger, but before than in Europe, you were really limited in what you were allowed to create. Even if you aren’t Catholic, if you’re of European descent, that is honestly part of your cultural heritage. For centuries, Church art and Church architecture was the only allowable aesthetic, and it’s within peoples’ right to explore and reclaim it. We place such incredible value on the Renaissance- in Western society, we let it still inform things like our beauty standards and what we consider to be “real art.” The ghosts of the Renaissance follow us as we deem other cultural traditions worthy or unworthy. It’s a huge problem, honestly, and I think that exploring the Renaissance aesthetic- which just so happens to be Catholic, the two are uniquely intertwined- isn’t something you, OP, or anybody else should try to police. We need to reckon with the past in order to understand how it impacts the present, and using these themes as an #aesthetic can help us think critically about why we feel the way we do about art and where our artistic standards came from.
Also, this doesn’t just cover the traditions of the Renaissance in Western Europe. Look at the role Catholicism has played with Eastern European aesthetics. Look at the hard and fast rules for icon design, and how that grew as the Orthodox churches split away from the Roman church. When you claim that somebody is appropriating your religion, who are you to determine what a person’s background is? What they might be connecting to through the aesthetics of Catholicism? This is especially true for modern Eastern European diasporas- connecting through the aesthetics of faith, even if you don’t practice, is one of the ways that people can connect with distant family histories.
Blasphemer! you may say, only in the modern era have we, and by we I mean Western Culture, strayed from the loving arms of Mother Rome. Surely the modern appropriation of Catholic imagery is a modern mockery?
Now what’s interesting is that when you look at local theology during the golden ages of Catholic architecture, you actually get a variety of beliefs. Outside of Rome and the Papal States, people knew some Latin, mostly in the form of prayers- but people were arguing about theology in general a lot more than they do today. Today’s Catholicism is really tame compared to what it used to be like. The Church has the major points of its philosophy hammered down- all arguments today are minor compared to the rip-roaring pre-medieval fights about things like divinity, sainthood, trinitarian heresies, etc. etc. etc.
Point being, during the sort of golden age of Church architecture, there was a lot of theological variance. What this means is that you really did have little sects and folk beliefs in Catholicism popping up here and there. The Catholic aesthetic you’re so protective of is not modern- it’s medieval and renaissance, the grand and glorious cathedrals, the precious metalwork, the mosaics and inlays and carvings and paintings. This aesthetic was not actually created by the Church as a monolithic faith. Instead, it was created by a Church that existed as something that you aligned yourself with for political power. Church iconography wasn’t just about your belief or faith, it was about showing who you were. Like when we look at Catholic monarchs- by and large they were terrible Catholics and terrible people! It didn’t really matter though, because they looked Catholic, and that was enough. It’s always been an aesthetic. Is it not part of the grand tradition of the religion to have its trappings adopted by people outside of the faith?
It is also important to remember that the aesthetics of faith are not the faith itself. Catholic practices don’t get appropriated like other religions’ practices do. People actually take sacred practices from other faiths and do them without really engaging. But like, nobody’s walking around saying “Paternoster” like they say “Namaste.”
And this leads to what might be the most important bit: Catholicism is an imperial force, and pressed itself upon millions of people. How can you appropriate that which was forced? How can you say in the face of the religious trauma that the Church has caused that it is unfair to play with the aesthetics of it to suit one’s own identity? The Church has much to answer for, and there is no reason not to play around with the aesthetic for your own purposes. Whether you’re exploring your heritage, processing religious trauma, or you just think it looks good, the Church’s history as a global imperalist force means that it’s given up any claim to being a closed practice. In a sense, its global outreach made it public domain. The Church has always wanted to be globally appreciated; who are you, tumblr user, to interfere?
