St Josemaria Parish, Gerona, Tarlac, Philippines

Beauty as Ideal

It is often said that our age is a time in which we suffer from a crisis of ideals, our young people no longer know what to believe. Why not offer them the ideal of beauty again? But not beauty only in an aesthetic sense, but as a profound value behind which they will always find God. The Church had understood this, promoting the most artistically valid sacred music, the sacred art of the highest level, literature at the highest levels: true beauty is the seed of holiness.

The usefulness of beauty

Your magazine gives a lot of importance to the dimension of Beauty. It is a line that I approve of, but often – when I talk about it – I get objections regarding the futility of art. They tell me that Christianity must pursue a certain essentialism, otherwise it would be distracted from serving God and man. How can I answer these objections?