Will Beauty Save the World?
There are many people today who view art and culture as a form of religion, because it offers a glimpse of transcendental reality. Beauty entices and ravishes one to a perception of truth. Yet truth in art is necessarily elusive, refracted, and cannot lend itself to a total integrity and self-giving, and can be no substitute for the transcendence of faith. Art and culture cannot pass for liturgy, any more than liturgy can dictate an aesthetic code for art. The worship of art constitutes an idolatry, which in turn produces banality and cultural stagnation.