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March 8, 2018
Lidia Wasowicz
Expanding a recent San Francisco archdiocesan initiative to encourage reverent music and enrich liturgical life, a new website celebrates Catholic culture as a means to share and spread the faith.
The online venture of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, founded in 2014 and based at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in Menlo Park, offers information and inspiration in its wide-ranging content.
From stage to screen, canvas to cinema, from ballet to biography, photography to poetry, creative enterprises of every genre find the spotlight at http://benedictinstitute.org.
Bemoaning the decline in “that noble, great and transcendent sense of art that the church has always given us,” Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone notes in a video welcoming site visitors: “Beauty is important because it’s one of the ways in which we can be in touch with the divine and draw others to be in touch with the divine.”
The Benedict XVI Institute, he says, aims to ensure that “every liturgy, every Mass is a real encounter with the Lord and sets people on fire for their faith,” as envisioned by the Holy Father whose name graces the organization.
The website, designed with the assistance of the Emmy Award-winning Catholic-oriented production firm Spirit Juice Studios and launched Jan. 23, carries those goals beyond church walls.
“Our mission is to open the door of beauty to God by providing practical resources for more beautiful liturgies and by energizing a Catholic culture of the arts,” said Maggie Gallagher, the newly appointed executive director of the institute.
A centerpiece of the electronic enterprise, the magazine Catholic Arts Today, provides a platform for Catholic artists and their sacred and secular work, featured in videos, articles, reviews, film clips, poetry readings and photographic displays.
Each entry testifies to the force of faith.
“Art is something that has come from God,” multimedia music composer Sean Beeson attests in the initial issue. “We have a responsibility to nurture … grow … and share it with other people.”
He cites his wife’s advice that kept him going through turbulent and triumphant times: “If you’re going to worry, then don’t pray, but if you pray, then don’t worry.”
In another video, Broadway actress Madison Mitchell relates how as “a daughter in Christ,” she recites the Magnificat in front of cast members and strives to “get across to my performer friends that Catholics are real people too.”
Gallagher hopes viewers will enjoy the format and recommend performances, painters, concerts, books and films highlighted in the magazine.
“That’s the way a community of Catholic artists and art lovers grows,” she said.
Alongside the audience, the agenda will be augmenting to include weekly video messages from the archbishop on liturgy and the arts, publicity for the Facebook page, which has attracted more than 2,300 followers from around the globe since its activation in August, a social media campaign to increase traffic to the website, at least four annual lectures by celebrated artists and scholars and concerts or worship services emphasizing music, particularly Gregorian chant.
The calendar is filling fast.
In April, a talk on how and why to watch movies will be presented by Dr. Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun who became a screenwriter, script consultant and founder of Act One, Inc., a Hollywood-based nonprofit that trains and mentors Christian writers and producers.
On May 5, the second lecture will feature California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, who chaired the National Endowment for the Arts under President George W. Bush; and Anthony Esolen, a Dante scholar, writer, social commentator, translator of classical poetry and professor of English Renaissance and classical literature at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.
The public event on the Stanford University campus will be followed by an informal get-together with St. Patrick seminarians and an invitation-only dinner at the archbishop’s residence.
On Mother’s Day, May 13, at 4 p.m., the first annual Festival of Marian Hymns at St. Mary’s Cathedral will introduce an innovative “lessons and carols” format that begins with the congregation singing a simple version of hymns to the Blessed Mother, followed by a spiritual reflection and a professional rendition of the same music by a 16-voice choir, dubbed “The Benedict Sixteen.”
In the summer, the institute will host the first chant camp for children and teens and a training seminar for potential camp leaders. “Young people love them,” Gallagher said.
There are also tentative plans for a solemn requiem Mass for All Souls Day in November.