Msgr. Tekippe on Modern Art (and Other Things)
Although I was able to take only one of his courses before his untimely death last summer, Msgr. Terry Tekippe instantly became one of my favorite professors of all time. He was one of these great, old-school priests who was trained before Vatican II, back when everyone learned Greek and Latin in the seminary. I took his class on Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, for example, and he came to class each day armed only with his Latin copy of the text.
His teaching method for our class of four was simply to ask each of us what we thought of the assigned reading. While this might appear like a lazy professor who didn't want to prepare a lecture, the method brilliantly forced us to read critically (since we had to show up to class with something more than, "I thought the reading was good. I, uhhh, liked it.") while giving us the impression that he was sensitive to talking about the topics that interested us. Of course, this approach meant that he had to have full command of the material, and it became clear that his responses to our comments and questions were masterfully directed to covering the major points of the reading whether we raised the issues or not.
He had a great way about him, too - every comment or answer we offered was received patiently and gratefully with a smile and, "I see, I see..." and yet he wasn't above bluntly correcting us (..."but I'm not sure that's quite right.") Despite his tremendous academic mind, he was anything but stuffy - he was among the most sociable and amiable professors I've known, and I recall driving him to the airport last year for a skiing trip in Colorado. I remember thinking in class, "In 10 or 15 years when he retires, how will we ever replace this guy?" If only...
In his eulogy, the venerable Archbishop Hannan, the 92-year-old who was close to the Kennedys in D.C. before running the New Orleans diocese for nearly 30 years, recalled that Msgr. Tekippe was invaluable in the years following the Second Vatican Council when every faction of the Church tried to claim the Council's documents as support for advancing their various agendas. Msgr. Tekippe was a theologian often assigned to sort through all this and help Hannan determine what the Council had actually said and meant vis a vis the claims made by so many.
Anyhow, in an attempt to learn a little more from him, I'm reading his travelogue Eternal City (Amazon Sales Rank: #2,798,266) in which he offers a great critique of modern art after reviewing a show of Joan Miro's work. To wit...
What has happened to our artists in the little over 400 years since Raphael? Or even in the 100 years since the Impressionists? When and why was the search for beauty thrown over? How did reality come to be so dissociated? It is as if each 20th century artist lived in a private hell of his own, sending out desperate messages in hermetic code that no one has the key to decipher.
Of course, the established art world scorned the Impressionists when they first appeared; in the meantime they have taught us to see reality in their shimmering and wavy way. Perhaps a century from now people will see through the eyes of Miro and his contemporaries. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. But may I be permitted to doubt it?
A few pages later, he breaks with the light, touristy style of the rest of the book and launches into a jewel of a sermon. The same night the North American College in Rome was holding an all-night vigil with the Blessed Sacrament to pray for a major abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Msgr. Tekippe received a call from a young friend of his who reported the recurrence of cancer that would soon kill her. Reflecting on all this before the Eucharist, Msgr. Tekippe writes:
"A number of figures prayed silently in the half darkness; I put myself on my knees and almost immediately became lost in thought. The threat of death seems particularly unfair when hovering over the head of one young and vibrant. But life is not as if we had engaged in some business transaction, and paid a certain sum in exchange for a standard 60 or 70 or 80 years, and now held a right to it. Though we usually take it so much for granted, life expectations are no more that statistical abstractions; every day, every moment of our lives is pure gift. I thought also of Jesus, whose life was violently cut off in his early 30's.
"I dwelt as well on the million and a half lives that are ended every year in the U.S. by abortion, a number so high it can hardly be grasped, a great blot of evil on the American society. What is painful is that the best of our accomplishments are implicated in the killing. Our high technology, which eases our lives in so many ways, is also adapted to the ending of life. Our hospitals, the envy of most in the world, our clinics, available to a degree practically nowhere else on earth, have also become death chambers where young and delicate lives are snuffed out. Our doctors, pledged to the protection of life, have, in many cases, devoted their energies to the more efficient dismemberment of innocent human life. Our people, intelligent, sophisticated, well-intentioned, take part every day in such activities, under euphemisms such as "terminating pregnancy," with a clear conscience. One wonders if there were not people in Hitler's Germany who had convinced themselves, as they locked imbeciles and mentally defectives in the sheds, and turned on the diesel exhaust, that they were, after all, doing humanity a service? We have made ourselves lords of death and life, in an unconscious hubris taking on the divine prerogatives, determining who shall live, and who shall die. How have we come to this? How can a society, so based on the preciousness of individual human life, suffer such rot at its core? Yet the unjust taking of innocent human life, inexorably, goes on. I stood appalled at the mass of human suffering.
"How was one to respond to this? What was God's response? I thought of the book of Job, which I had recently been studying. At first glance, God's answer seems very unsatisfactory. He simply overwhelms the Job who wanted to call him to account for his own unjust suffering. God points to Behemoth, perhaps the rhinoceros, and asks if Job wants to try conclusions with him. If he cannot face one of God's creatures, how can he face God himself? This answer seems little better than a power play: might makes right.
"Reading more sensitively, the answer of God is perhaps to be taken more intellectually. Not only is Job unequal to God's power, he is unequal to his understanding. He does not grasp the rationality of the world, he was not present when God distributed the elements in measurement, number and weight; how can he penetrate the heavenly mind or the divine purposes? The answer, then, is mystery: we simply don't understand what God is about. If we did, we would see that his plan is as wise and good as it is powerful and all-embracing. No doubt the answer is true; yet it seems very unsatisfactory to still our anguished queries.
"The author of Job, of course, could not answer with the New Testament revelation. He had no concept of an after-life, in which there would be a practically unlimited possibility of righting the balance. 'Blest are you poor; the reign of God is yours. Blest are you who hunger; you shall be filled. Blest are you who are weeping; you shall laugh,' said Jesus. (Lk. 6:20-21). And Paul: 'I consider the sufferings of the present time to be as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.' (Romans 8:18).
"Most of all, he did not have the example of Jesus himself, who did not merely talk about our sufferings, but took them on. God answers our suffering not by taking it away, but by exposing himself to it. I am speechless before the awesome passivity of God, mirrored in the silence of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate, summed up in his sharp comment to Peter, 'Put back your sword where it belongs.... Do you not suppose I can call on my Father to provide at a moment's notice more than twelve legions of angels? But then how would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say it must happen this way?' (Matthew 26:52-54).
"Behind that mysterious answer of Jesus' involvement in suffering is an immense love. 'He had loved his own in the world, and would show his love for them to the end.' (John 13:1). And behind that is a Father's love. 'Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16).
"The figure on the cross, then, bears God's most profound answer to human suffering; a figure at once in the throes of an agonizing crucifixion, and yet the sacrament of an immense furnace of divine love, which is not only equal to the suffering, and the injustice which caused it, but will also vindicate itself in the triumph and joy of the Resurrection.
"As I gradually returned to my surroundings from this meditation, I realized I had been kneeling for most of an hour. I got up stiffly and made the required double genuflection, before returning to my room."
(pp. 117-120).
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His teaching method for our class of four was simply to ask each of us what we thought of the assigned reading. While this might appear like a lazy professor who didn't want to prepare a lecture, the method brilliantly forced us to read critically (since we had to show up to class with something more than, "I thought the reading was good. I, uhhh, liked it.") while giving us the impression that he was sensitive to talking about the topics that interested us. Of course, this approach meant that he had to have full command of the material, and it became clear that his responses to our comments and questions were masterfully directed to covering the major points of the reading whether we raised the issues or not.
He had a great way about him, too - every comment or answer we offered was received patiently and gratefully with a smile and, "I see, I see..." and yet he wasn't above bluntly correcting us (..."but I'm not sure that's quite right.") Despite his tremendous academic mind, he was anything but stuffy - he was among the most sociable and amiable professors I've known, and I recall driving him to the airport last year for a skiing trip in Colorado. I remember thinking in class, "In 10 or 15 years when he retires, how will we ever replace this guy?" If only...
In his eulogy, the venerable Archbishop Hannan, the 92-year-old who was close to the Kennedys in D.C. before running the New Orleans diocese for nearly 30 years, recalled that Msgr. Tekippe was invaluable in the years following the Second Vatican Council when every faction of the Church tried to claim the Council's documents as support for advancing their various agendas. Msgr. Tekippe was a theologian often assigned to sort through all this and help Hannan determine what the Council had actually said and meant vis a vis the claims made by so many.
Anyhow, in an attempt to learn a little more from him, I'm reading his travelogue Eternal City (Amazon Sales Rank: #2,798,266) in which he offers a great critique of modern art after reviewing a show of Joan Miro's work. To wit...
What has happened to our artists in the little over 400 years since Raphael? Or even in the 100 years since the Impressionists? When and why was the search for beauty thrown over? How did reality come to be so dissociated? It is as if each 20th century artist lived in a private hell of his own, sending out desperate messages in hermetic code that no one has the key to decipher.
Of course, the established art world scorned the Impressionists when they first appeared; in the meantime they have taught us to see reality in their shimmering and wavy way. Perhaps a century from now people will see through the eyes of Miro and his contemporaries. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. But may I be permitted to doubt it?
A few pages later, he breaks with the light, touristy style of the rest of the book and launches into a jewel of a sermon. The same night the North American College in Rome was holding an all-night vigil with the Blessed Sacrament to pray for a major abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Msgr. Tekippe received a call from a young friend of his who reported the recurrence of cancer that would soon kill her. Reflecting on all this before the Eucharist, Msgr. Tekippe writes:
"A number of figures prayed silently in the half darkness; I put myself on my knees and almost immediately became lost in thought. The threat of death seems particularly unfair when hovering over the head of one young and vibrant. But life is not as if we had engaged in some business transaction, and paid a certain sum in exchange for a standard 60 or 70 or 80 years, and now held a right to it. Though we usually take it so much for granted, life expectations are no more that statistical abstractions; every day, every moment of our lives is pure gift. I thought also of Jesus, whose life was violently cut off in his early 30's.
"I dwelt as well on the million and a half lives that are ended every year in the U.S. by abortion, a number so high it can hardly be grasped, a great blot of evil on the American society. What is painful is that the best of our accomplishments are implicated in the killing. Our high technology, which eases our lives in so many ways, is also adapted to the ending of life. Our hospitals, the envy of most in the world, our clinics, available to a degree practically nowhere else on earth, have also become death chambers where young and delicate lives are snuffed out. Our doctors, pledged to the protection of life, have, in many cases, devoted their energies to the more efficient dismemberment of innocent human life. Our people, intelligent, sophisticated, well-intentioned, take part every day in such activities, under euphemisms such as "terminating pregnancy," with a clear conscience. One wonders if there were not people in Hitler's Germany who had convinced themselves, as they locked imbeciles and mentally defectives in the sheds, and turned on the diesel exhaust, that they were, after all, doing humanity a service? We have made ourselves lords of death and life, in an unconscious hubris taking on the divine prerogatives, determining who shall live, and who shall die. How have we come to this? How can a society, so based on the preciousness of individual human life, suffer such rot at its core? Yet the unjust taking of innocent human life, inexorably, goes on. I stood appalled at the mass of human suffering.
"How was one to respond to this? What was God's response? I thought of the book of Job, which I had recently been studying. At first glance, God's answer seems very unsatisfactory. He simply overwhelms the Job who wanted to call him to account for his own unjust suffering. God points to Behemoth, perhaps the rhinoceros, and asks if Job wants to try conclusions with him. If he cannot face one of God's creatures, how can he face God himself? This answer seems little better than a power play: might makes right.
"Reading more sensitively, the answer of God is perhaps to be taken more intellectually. Not only is Job unequal to God's power, he is unequal to his understanding. He does not grasp the rationality of the world, he was not present when God distributed the elements in measurement, number and weight; how can he penetrate the heavenly mind or the divine purposes? The answer, then, is mystery: we simply don't understand what God is about. If we did, we would see that his plan is as wise and good as it is powerful and all-embracing. No doubt the answer is true; yet it seems very unsatisfactory to still our anguished queries.
"The author of Job, of course, could not answer with the New Testament revelation. He had no concept of an after-life, in which there would be a practically unlimited possibility of righting the balance. 'Blest are you poor; the reign of God is yours. Blest are you who hunger; you shall be filled. Blest are you who are weeping; you shall laugh,' said Jesus. (Lk. 6:20-21). And Paul: 'I consider the sufferings of the present time to be as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.' (Romans 8:18).
"Most of all, he did not have the example of Jesus himself, who did not merely talk about our sufferings, but took them on. God answers our suffering not by taking it away, but by exposing himself to it. I am speechless before the awesome passivity of God, mirrored in the silence of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate, summed up in his sharp comment to Peter, 'Put back your sword where it belongs.... Do you not suppose I can call on my Father to provide at a moment's notice more than twelve legions of angels? But then how would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say it must happen this way?' (Matthew 26:52-54).
"Behind that mysterious answer of Jesus' involvement in suffering is an immense love. 'He had loved his own in the world, and would show his love for them to the end.' (John 13:1). And behind that is a Father's love. 'Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...' (John 3:16).
"The figure on the cross, then, bears God's most profound answer to human suffering; a figure at once in the throes of an agonizing crucifixion, and yet the sacrament of an immense furnace of divine love, which is not only equal to the suffering, and the injustice which caused it, but will also vindicate itself in the triumph and joy of the Resurrection.
"As I gradually returned to my surroundings from this meditation, I realized I had been kneeling for most of an hour. I got up stiffly and made the required double genuflection, before returning to my room."
(pp. 117-120).
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