The Wreck of the Deutschland, by Fr. Dennis McNally, SJ, (acrylic, 9' x 7') was inspired by Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem of the same name. A newspaper report of this 1875 disaster off Britain's coast reported that a nun on board was "calling out loudly and often 'O Christ, come quickly' until the end came."

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has just reopened its Baroque salons with a magnificent Titian altarpiece at the head of the grand staircase. Likewise, there is a stunning reredos in the just reopened European Galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; it once hung behind the altar in a great church. There is a new trend in museum management. The art world is rediscovering religion!

A few years ago I escaped to D.C. for a bit of R&R from my usual haunts, in need of luxuriating in beauteous leisure far from my daily duties; there I saw the exhibit at the National Gallery on the art of the Italian region of Emilia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was an astounding event for me. My thinking about the exhibit began to fuse the varying approaches to life that my commitments as both priest and painter distinguish, aiding me in my search for a unifying theory of Church and art in America.

On limited time, I rushed to the West Wing to view the exhibit. Encouraged by a few good reviews, I forced myself to trudge through 200 pieces of "old art." Though like so many of my generation I was totally uninterested in the accomplishments of the lesser painters represented, contemporaries of Titian, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio, all of my categories were disarmed by the show. Beverly Louise Brown, on the illuminating acoustiguide, called Guido Reni one of the greatest of the followers of the Carracci, whereas I had been convinced years ago by some leaders of the academic establishment that he was a hack, a mere sentimentalist. It is amazing how influenced we can be by those who speak with all the clarity of angels but with only the pretense of truth!

These altarpieces of intense color and brilliant humanity are immense. Many had been commissioned by private-sector patrons of Renaissance Italy, fitting originally in chapels and cathedrals to the delight of a congregation, rich and poor alike, of the pre-Enlightenment. These teaching and preaching altarpieces have as a basis some theologically sound story, approved by a local community (they needed to preserve themselves and their edifices, in those days, from the penetrating gaze of the Inquisition). The beauty of these devotional visual aids is in the magnitude of affection for Catholic verities displayed by these new saints in my aesthetic canon.

The Blessed Soul of Guido Reni glows with a luminescence that I'd previously thought succeeded only in the eighteenth-century expressions of William Blake or in the pre-Raphaelite revolution of the nineteenth century. The tortured Christ of Ludovico Carracci's Flagellation brought me to tears, empathetic tears for my Lord. Guercino's Saint Bernardino of Siena, with Saint Francis of Assisi, Kneeling in Prayer before the Statue of the Madonna of Loretto brought me virtually to my knees. His triple- tiaraed virgin, whose whole body was hidden in the dark drape held in the arms of a couple of delightfully silly putti, evoked in me a prayer that I might serve the Lord with my own painting if it be his will that I muddle along, unacclaimed and possibly even unworthy of acclaim. I don't know exactly what grabbed me, but I was hooked.

The hitherto unacclaimed painters are now a source of emulation for me. Isn't this always the way? I was reminded of the "carry on" message that exhibits of van Gogh's works always elicit because of his tenacious spirit and pathetic begging for his brother Theo's philadelphian loyalty. Meanwhile, he worked his wonders in spite of being unknown and unliked by the illuminati of Republican France.

My religious vocation is rooted in the ground in which all these seeds were planted. As a priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, my heart ached to know that here in America we have such a small tradition of great art in Church. I am mournful at the knowledge that the vast majority of the Emilian exhibit's 200 works were borrowed from museums and private collections; only ten came from churches.

Why mournful? Not, of course, because the works would be better cared for in churches but because people go to museums to look at art and are intolerant of being moved to prayer or empathy in the wrong setting. These works would work in churches, where the tired and lonely, the depressed, the lost, the little ones go to seek otherworldly succor. And, for the most part, in the United States, they are not there. These paintings of such artistic merit are also of great religious merit because of the sacred subject matter but more because they are religious in the same way that the paintings of the atheist Matisse are religious: they are done with a holy intention toward union with the cosmos. When the Dominicans were considering Matisse as the designer of the Vence Chapelle du Rosaire, there was much discussion of whether to engage an expressed atheist; the argument was solved in his favor because of the truth of his artistic expression.

To visit churches in the practice of this priestly profession is to be in the presence of mass-produced crucifixes and madonnas sacred in content but not religious in truth because they are created without what John Dewey calls "intention." The National Conference of Catholic Bishops' statement on Art and Environment claims similarly that art used in church should show the hand of the artist. False art can lead one only to ignore the object in order to pray; true art, in which real human aspiration is expressed, can companion one in prayer.

The danger, of course, for enlightened iconoclast and philistine alike lies in the living reality itself that must imbue art. The more true the art, the more human, the more sacred the expression of the Spirit praying through human hands and human eyes. The Spirit beckons or demands through art that has spirit. Art with spirit may offend sensibilities. The danger lies in precluding the possibility of offense.

It is not my purpose to solve the problem here but to lament the passing of great things as civilization changes and to consider the dark problems in the light of the changing self-awareness of the Church and the changing needs of society.

Priests who must pay the bills to protect churches, when they cannot hear this voice of God, the voice in some artist's work, sometimes choose to make money or save money while it's still possible. Who can blame them? But the voice of the Spirit should not be hampered by those who hold the keys just because it comes from an encumbered quarter. Paul Goldberger, art critic of the New York Times, wrote in the June 1985 issue of Historic Preservation, "To position architecture up against bread is to guarantee that it will lose." He gives a credible argument in favor of "quality of life" decisions against simply stating that money needed to preserve a building could be better spent; though he doesn't solve the problem of paying the bills, he implies that riches need be kept in praise of and cooperation with God's continuing creation. Art and architecture can help us to pray; they should be treated respectfully. As a priest I want art, good art, to express and form a healthy prayer life in the Church. As an art professional I want real art commissioned and great art preserved. The dichotomy in America between the art world and the world of religion is a sad indicator of the unholy fears that divide the Church.

This conflict between art and religion has been too often resolved by rules on one side and abandonment on the other. But it is a most welcome reality that, now at least, the conflict takes the form of dialogue where, until recently, there had been silence. In fact, Pope Paul VI effectively encouraged this conflict when, in a 1964 address to artists, he said for himself and his predecessors of this century: "We have insisted on this or that tradition to be followed; we have set up these canons from which you must not deviate; we have oppressed you at times as it were with a cloak of lead . . . For this we beg your pardon."

With cloak of lead removed, the expression of the faith of the Church in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Emilia, Venice, Spain, and France can become common again. Art and architecture can be real, and the American Church would have an aesthetic experience that could be prologue to a religious one. This depends on the risk, informed risk, that communities must take. We must commission artists to do unique and real art for our churches. In the competitive art world lie the seeds of a real American Church culture. Private devotion could flourish and would infuse mass culture. Thy kingdom come. Amen.

Fr. Dennis McNally, SJ, chairs the department of fine and performing arts and directs the art gallery at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He has written and lectured on art and exhibited his art extensively in the United States and abroad.