Environment And Art In Worship: A Roman Catholic Document On Art In Worship Part I

This statement is the result of the cooperative effort on the part of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions and the Bishops' Committee of the Roman Catholic Church. It addresses both theological and practical considerations regarding almost every aspect of the visual arts in worship. 1. Faith involves a good tension between human modes of expressive communications and God himself, whom our human tools can never adequately grasp. God transcends. God is mystery. God cannot be contained in or confined by any of our words or images or categories. 2. While our words and art forms cannot contain or confine God, they can, like the world itself, be icons, avenues of approach, numinous presences, ways of touching without totally grasping or seizing. Flood, fire, the rock, the sea, the mountain, the cloud, the political situations and institutions of succeeding periods-in all of them Israel touched the face of God, found help for discerning a way, moved toward the reign of justic…