I found this on an Armeina Church site. It is almost as good as the ones I design myself.
Though a very diferent style.

Beeswax for ever!

In former times the Church instruct that all candles used in the Liturgical Celebration be at least 51 percent beeswax ( in majori vel notabili quantitate ex eadem cera) and that the paschal candle and the two candle used at Mass should be made ex cera apum saltem in maxima parte (Cong. Sac. Rit., 14 December, 1904). However, today things have change and wanting to relax the rules and regulations the church has let things get out of hand and it is quite common to find upon our altars such gordy things as lime green or plasticy purple fat and ugly candles. It is good that the Church can leave and trust parishes to their own devices, thus it is now the time for the laity to stand up, reviving pious tradition and cry beeswax for ever.

The Older edition of the Catholic Encyclopaedia claims that it is or mystical reasons that the Church prescribed the exclusive use of beeswax candles at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and at other liturgical functions (sighting luminaria cerea. -- Missale Rom., De Defectibus, X, I; Cong. Sac. Rites, 4 September, 1875). It goes on to say:
“The pure wax extracted by bees from flowers symbolizes the pure flesh of Christ received from His Virgin Mother, the wick signifies the soul of Christ, and the flame represents His divinity. Although the two latter properties are found in all kinds of candle, the first is proper of beeswax candle only.”

The truth is that it was probably for practical reasons that this legislation came in to play. I have read it said that the Church legislated the use of pure beeswax because those candles did not cause the soot and smoke problems that other candles did (damaging building interiors and artwork). Moreover, modern advocates of the use of beeswax (usually those trying to sell them) claim that Beeswax burns more cleanly and longer than other common wax types. That said, the fact that a mystical reason could so easily be attributed to their use is evidence of the edification that they give and the piety that they stimulate. Moreover, there is no doubting that Beeswax smells nicer than synthetic candles and thus helps to engage the sense of smell in the act of worship when there is no incense to fulfil this role.

If people want aesthetic variety than we can again look to former times and makes the present day measure up to past glories. Prior to the Novus Ordo it was taught that candles should on ordinary occasions be of white bleached wax, but at funerals, at the office of Tenebrae as well as at the other Good Friday ceremonies they should be of yellow unbleached wax (Caerem. Episc.). De Herdt (I, no. 183, Resp. 2) says that unbleached wax candle should be used during Advent and Lent except on feasts, solemnities, and especially during the exposition and procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Thus, with white for the more joyous and tanned for mournful, along with the number of candles used, the mood can be altered to soot.

So, do your bit, tell your parish priest or get on your local candle buying sub-commity of the auxillary commity of purchases wich is a branch of the parish pastoral planning and finace club and say "Beeswax for ever! please."

On Catholic Art Part II

I recently read a book, by Josep Pearce, entitled 'Literary Converts'. An excellent read that I highly recommend, it is about that wave of 20th Century English converts to Catholicism that include such great names as Chesterton, Benson, Knox, Waugh and even Wilde. Oscar Wilde it was that said 'the Catholic Church is the church for both Saints and sinners, for perfectly respectable people Anglicanism will do'. What strikes one in reading the conversion accounts and about the draw of the Catholic Church is that those great literary figures, those weavers of words of wonder, were primarily attracted to the Church by her beauty. A church of saints and sinners she was to them far from mundane, prosaic or even merely respectable but in fact sublime and wonderful. True, those 'literary converts' had to then go on to discover its truth (and many of them became great apologists for that truth) but, first, their emotions were stirred not by clear clever arguments but by beauty. By Catholic Beauty I am not here just talking about Gothic Architecture or Baroque Painting, nor do I mean merely Classical Chant and Divine Liturgy, but the whole Catholic thing (as it was in England at that time): priests, monks and nuns dedicated to God, congregations on their knees, Saints, Martyrs, feasts and fasts, all in harmony, culturally rich, a delight of dreams. Into this, on top of this and as part of this, reflecting, breathing conjuring up and signifying this entire cultural feeling where the visual arts of the Catholic Church.

Who does not walk into a Gothic, Romanesque, Byzantine, or baroque Church and know – this is special, this is where something wonderful takes place, this is the home of devotion and heart felt beauty. My point here is to say that beauty has as much place in salvation as truth. For it is beauty, true beauty in Christ Crucified that draw one with devotion to the Church. I you want community you join a tennis club is you want to worship God you turn to that which is given to the worship of God – the sublime, the beautiful!

The cross of Christ Crucified is the height of our experience of beauty.
Our faith is not a purely apophatic one. While we cannot make idols to experience the one true God, the Word made flesh communicates God to us in image and form. When we meditate it is not as the Buddhists do, separating ourselves from all that is sensate. No, we use our God given imagination. In the Benedictine tradition, reflecting on the divine word, or, with St Dominic, thumbing our beads we ponder the mysteries, or, like St Ignatius, we put ourselves in the Gospel stories and in the words of St John of the Cross 'we allow God to lead us up that dark mountain' where we experience Him through what he has revealed. God reveals God's self to us in the person of Jesus Christ. We do not make an idol of a great unknown nothing and white wash our walls to express it.

As we are all aware, all of are naturally attracted to various things, many of them that are not of God. Natural religions (those without the light of revelation) often seek to purge the spiritual life in order to find God beyond the beyond, away from all that is. When really God is not beyond our created world, but indeed, behind it. God is the source of all things, truth, goodness, beauty and even being itself. Moreover, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, has chosen to speak of himself. And so, instead of turning to the world, which is not God, or turning away from the world, which is not God either, we need to 'convert'[ from the world to God. God wants to speak to us and be seen by us and so God has created a world precisely in which He can express himself, a world of images and likenesses in which we, creative and symbol making, are the crescendo and Jesus the summit there-of.

Of course, while keeping this in mind we should remember the old axiom lex crdendi lex orandi – the law/rule of belief is the law/rule of prayer. That is to say: who believe God to be determines how we approach Him and the image/concept of God that we approach is who or what we really (in practise) believe God to be. We are only deceiving ourselves if we say anything other about God than that which we imagine in our prayer life. Thus (getting back to the visual arts) any use of images should be determined by our understanding of the one to whom we are turning our attention. By this I do not just mean image of Jesus or Gospel stories but any use of the arts. Images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of Angles, of Saints, the images created by music or evoked by the use of language all impacts of how we experience God, especially when used in worship. And indeed, any lack of the use of image (be that visual, musical, liturgical or even the liturgical action) does not have a neutral effect on our relationship with God, but taints it all the same.

On Catholic Art Part I

We have all heard it said before: ‘the best way to preach is by example’, or ‘ the best apologies for the faith are the saints themselves’. In a certain sense, what the Catholic artist is called to do is akin to that of the saint, that is ‘make, by analogy, other Christs’. Artists, and indeed Catholic Artists, co-creators with God, are given a special task of capturing and showing the form of beauty. The Saint does this with his or her life. The artist (weather painter, poet, song writer or other) should strive to do this also through their work.

It seems that this goal, showing forth the beauty of God, was, in yester-century, more to the artists (and indeed art critics) mind than it is today. Yet, today there is even more need for beautiful art. We live in a visual, symbol-oriented age. From advertising billboards and magazine racks to the ‘icons’ on our computers, we know that one thing can represent, speak and indeed capture the form of another. The only step further in this creative speaking by analogy would be to make the thing actually effect and truly be that which it signifies. Of course that would take the direct intervention of God who gives each created thing it nature. That is precisely what a sacrament is. Sacraments gain their nature through Jesus Christ who is the full revelation of God and (and because) he is God. God uses forms and things to speek of Himself and yet we seldom (these days at least) use the arts to speak of God. Even our liturgies have become wordish and boorish (I once heard the modern mass described as ‘one person after another talking at you through a microphone’) and most unlike the Saints who speak to the heart. Like the Saints Catholic artists needs to re-find ways of stirring the viewers emotions and singing of God, not with just stale dry words but with beauty and imagination!

Jesus Christ is loved, in part, because he captures our imagination. Moreover, with Christ the whole human person is redeemed. That means your heart, your love, your joy and your imagination as been sanctified in Christs having of a human heart, love joy and imagination.
Any sound epistemology must bring us to the conclusion that the imagination is an intrinsic aspect of the intellect and not something to be escaped. Nor should we want to escape it, as the Buddhists do, for it brings us such delight. St Thomas Aquinas describes it as an essential power for allowing us to understand all things.
It is clear that for the intellect to understand actually, not only when it acquires fresh knowledge, but also when it uses knowledge already acquired, there is need for the act of the imagination (ST Ia, 84, 7)

As we cannot posses things in themselves in our minds (neither God nor any material object nor anything extrinsic to us, save the emotion for which they stir) we need to imagine factually. Rather than turning to the thing itself (which cannot be in our mind of itself) we turn to phantasms of that which we are to understand. So, even when grasping things in truth (as they really are) we are using images – phantasms – the imagination.

And so God gives us imaginative ways in understanding and experiencing him. None more importantly that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where we can see our Lord Jesus Christ’s entire life death and resurrection played out in signs and symbols and ultimately taste and consume His very real presence. So let us take a cue from God and strive to make the mundane of this world beautiful in art to say the least of that which is already sacred, our churches and chapples and places and things of worship.

Get a haircut and a real job

This art student knows that he would probably be better of with a haircut and a real job. However, what he is protesting about is actually something that we should stand up and take notice of. What I am talking about here is economic rationalist’s attack which is set to damage culture in the country.

He is protesting in the hope of saving his school. However, this is not just about the closure of any old school (though old it is). This is about the attempted death of and institution within the Australian art world. This issue is intrinsicly related to the potion of the arts (in general) in our society.

The State Government of NSW, wishing to relieve itself of the cost of the National Art School had cooked up a plan the hand it to one of the federal funded universities. In doing so it made the offer of the school, with its name (a name which includes very impressive alumni) and it beautiful and inspiring campus – the old stone gaol overlooking the old-ly-worldly districts of Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. Tenures were put out and after Macquarie took up and then put down the opportunity that University of New South Wales decided that they would be happy to take responsibility of the Art School.

The problem is that the UNSW already has a fine arts faculty. Cofa, the College of Fine Art, also at Darlinghurst but in much plainer buildings and further out, also offers graduate degree in fine art. The Cofa degree, not as well respected in artistic circles, is in reality a lot cheaper in the training than the equivalent degree from NAS. I use here loosely the term ‘training’ for that is precisely what the College of Fine Art does not do: train artists.

The National Art School, in its studio practices employs known and practising artists to mentor and hands on train its student. Class sizes are small and class hours are many. In fact, the three year degree at Cofa comprises of less than half the hours of the three year course at NAS. Moreover, NAS Students compulsory lessons in drawing (including that from life) all the way through their studies where as at Cofa one can take it as a small elective, most don’t. Anybody who knows anything about the visual arts knows how fundamental drawing is tho the practising and seeing of an Artist.

Major flour in the Cofa program is its lack of a proper education in art history and theories of aesthetics. As Dr Allen commented in the Australian (October 11, 2006) “The school believes that artists should be aware of the history of their practice and more generally of the history of the culture and society to which they belong. Consequently, the art history course is the most ambitious of any art school in Australia, covering the Western tradition from antiquity to the French Revolution in first year, the 19th and 20th centuries in second and Australian and the contemporary scene in third.”

The plight of the National Art School, I fear, is none other than the general trend and (dare I say) existing fashion and fascism of society and a cultureless culture (a kunst-less zeit geist) that is a dictatorship of a relativism that ignores the whole of human experience, love and beauty in favour of that which both economically advantageous as well as palatable only to a baby boomer bourgeoisie.


The following is an extract from the Allen article:
Educational philosophy is the crux of the matter. The NAS would have fewer objections to UNSW if the school could be guaranteed autonomous status similar to the National Institute of Dramatic Art, but that is not going to happen.
The NAS stands unashamedly for residual art practices. It believes that whatever shape the art of the future may take, the breadth and depth of skills it attempts to impart will serve its students well. It considers drawing to be the most fundamental practice of all: it is the first and most intimate contact of the artist's mind with the visible world, the first point at which what is seen or felt is turned into something finite and artificial. It also believes the study of the human figure - the hardest thing to draw but the richest in its endless potential for feeling and meaning - to be the central concern of drawing. In this, the NAS keeps alive a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance.
There is no reason to believe that the fundamental values of the NAS would be preserved in the event of a merger with COFA. A glance at the COFA website shows art history and theory at that institution are bogged down in the residual ideologies of the '70s and '80s. Lecturers seldom venture into the past without the protection of a predetermined theoretical interpretation. Students know in advance that the key to more or less any subject will be found in class, sex or race; they quickly learn, as in so many institutions, that doing obeisance to these fetishes is the path to academic distinction.
As for practice, it is hard to forget the occasion, a few years ago, when a lecturer from COFA gave a lunchtime talk to NAS students on the meaning of the expression contemporary art. She proceeded to show a series of slides, telling us what was and wasn't contemporary. Anything that was made by hand was dismissed as not contemporary; anything that was cut and pasted from previous works or media imagery was approved as contemporary, especially if it was done on a computer. This is the postmodern conception of art in its most primitive form, which denies the possibility of any real contact with experience and the value of tradition as the passing on of living ideas. In the postmodern world of appropriation, dead material is scavenged, and there is no getting past the clutter of cultural ready-mades.
There are some fine individual teachers at COFA, but the ethos of the place is permeated by stale ideologies and a moribund postmodernism that survives only in corners that haven't been properly cleaned out for ages, like universities. The living tradition of practice and an open, critical interest in the art and culture of the past are almost certain to be stifled if the schools are merged, and the range of diversity and choice in art education in Sydney will be dramatically curtailed. The NAS has often been accused of being old-fashioned, but in cultural matters it is better to be attached to traditions that are centuries old than to fashions that are decades out of date.