I receive a great e-mail!

Longtime reader who wants to thank you so much for your work which is so important to helping conserve Catholic culture and churches. With your recent reports on churches in France, I thought about one maybe they could act on, or perhaps alternately, they should preserve it as a case study in what went wrong in the modern movement in the church.

Have you heard of Notre Dame deToute Grace in Assy, France? As a mosaic artist, I found it mentioned in an old mosaic textbook as an example of how not to do ecclesiastic art...see the gallery

In a section entitled "The Assy Experiment", the author J. Mallentin Haswell notes how the dominican patrons were opposed to the revival of historical styles, so instead they commissioned the stellar artists of the secular world including Roualt, Matisse, Lipchitz, Chagall, Bonnard, Lurcat, and Leger. Consecrated in 1950, the works in the church resulted in virulent attacks, and bitter opposition from many, and even criticism by the Vatican, especially towards a crucifix by Germaine Richier, which was later removed. (Cathcon- I think this is it, she is a celebrated artist of the stick figure school - which, of course, expresses neither Christ's humanity or divinity).

What the author of the book said then seems so true today..."It seemed that the weakness of the schemes was inherent on the fact that many of the individual artists were incapable of expressing the dogma of the Christian faith because of their inability to accept it. The individual contributions are simply works of art with a religious subject matter, rather than works of religious art."

Further, "The continuity of the iconographic programme ...suffers considerably The figures are depicted without employment, narrative is nonexistent,...dogma is unstated...the figure of Christ appears only three times."

The large mosaic in traditional venetian glass smalti tessere on the Western facade was by Fernand Leger and the craftsmen of Maison Gaudin in Paris, with the subject of the Virgin of the Litany. This could and should have been GREAT! But, the author points out, "Leger was a Communist...and had publicly expressed the idea that something should be substituted 'for the sentimental and outmoded church.' He wished to see the emergence of something 'capable of liberating humanity from the interference of the religious'."

Why do so many churches, if there is art to see at all, have art that is unconnected to the faith, made by artists who are professed aetheists or other non-Christians, much less Catholics? Why have so many Catholic churches been stripped of art that did evangelize the Roman Catholic faith, to be replaced by whitewashed nothingness or rediculous-at-best attempts at ecclesiastic art furnished by persons who normally dont set foot in a Catholic church much less worship in one? We know its not over, think Gerhard Richter's cathedral in Koln, or the work of Miguel Barcelo at Palma de Majorica Cathedral? Your work at cathcon is much needed and appreciated!

Identity witheld on request.

Much more on this early warning of the devastation to come.