Yorkshire, England, June 2001Never in my life had I seen such a massive, hulking beast of a building. The cathedral was enormous. It didn’t just tower, it loomed, its highest spires butting against the clear blue sky as if holding up the clouds. Standing in York Minster’s shadow with my tour group and our guide, I could only gape. How could anyone look at that edifice and not feel the weight of centuries pressing down on them?I had been 18 for two weeks and a Catholic for eight, my heart full of the optimism of youth and my soul still reveling in the newfound life I had in Christ’s true Church. England to that girl was a marvel. I knew York Minster belonged to the Anglicans now, but I could love it still. I could love it for the centuries of service it had given the Church, could imagine myself back in time, on my knees behind those walls of stone.And yet…something wasn’t quite right.Taking a deep breath and working up some courage, I approached our tour guide. He smiled as I stood before him, and I smiled back because he was cute and British. But that wasn’t enough to distract me from my question.I looked from our guide to the cathedral’s strangely bare walls. “Why are all the statue niches empty?”“Good eye.” Tipping his head back, he surveyed York Minster, its surface entirely covered with bare stone niches. “It’s simple, really. During the Reformation, the Roundheads wanted to remove any trace of Catholic idolatry. So they pulled down the statues.”“Pulled…pulled down the statues?”“That’s right. They smashed them all.”Those blue English skies might as well have turned their stereotypical gray for me. I turned back to those empty niches, a heavy feeling in my chest. As my gaze swept the spaces that once housed reminders of God’s most faithful servants, I had only one thought.What ignorance! What hate!Little did I know that nineteen years later, I would watch St. Junipero Serra’s statue fall and think the same thing.  This is Why We Can’t Have Nice ThingsAs the dust has settled in the year since protestors toppled the missionary saint’s statue from its pedestal, many of us are still reeeling, wondering why. What has inspired such anti-religious fervor? Some blame the devil and some the Democrats, but that only speculates on the who, not the why.The why is important. The who is ever-changing in the age-old struggle between man and his Maker, but the why remains the same century after century, from the anti-Catholic Roundheads to Antifa and their ilk today. So what is the why? When push comes to shove, when you get right down to it, why do the forces opposed to truth target statues, saints, and all our treasures? Why can’t we have nice things?The reason now is the same as ever. It can be found in the shadow of York Minster’s bare walls and in the echo of voices on a YouTube video of St. Junipero Serra’s statue’s fall.We can’t have nice things because of ignorance. We can’t have them…

Art Can Save Our Eucharistic Faith...with a Little Help from the Sacred HeartIn the Catholic Church, we have something that no one else has--we have the literal Heart of Jesus in our midst. At every visit to Adoation, every Mass, and especially every Communion, we don’t just encounter Jesus’ prophecies, teachings, or a touchy-feeling experience that can be manipulated through catchy music or spurred by an inspired message. We become one with the Maker of all things when we consume the Heart of our God.And that’s exactly how He wants it.Now, this isn’t the sort of wording that will bring people to our parishes in droves. The idea of eating human flesh--even Divine Flesh--tends to make people run the other way. That is, unless they understand the depth, breadth, bliss, and life that permeate this precious reality.God Himself gives us His own body to nourish us, because without the food that is Jesus, we cannot live. You and I know that, and we see the beauty of that truth. But the rest of the world isn’t ready for that yet.That’s where the Sacred Heart comes in.And it’s where you come in, too.Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept ItThe visual image we know as the Sacred Heart of Jesus--with its flames, cross, crown, and wounded side--was given to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque by Jesus Himself precisely to make His Heart accesible to those not ready for the reality of the Eucharist. It was given to non-Catholics, yes, but it was given even more to the members of the Church. Because just being Catholic doesn’t mean we have Eucharistic faith.We live in a time when most of the people we need to evangelize are our own. The faithful are leaving the Church en masse, and 75% of the ones still standing don’t believe in the True Presence. They don’t believe that the God of all things has plunged Himself into our messy world and scandal-ridden Church. They don’t believe He desires any part of our brokenness.Lies. All of them.Jesus Christ has stepped down from Heaven to walk among men of clay and turn them into Himself. It’s a truth too spectacular for many to reconcile with what we know of ourselves. The only way the Church or the world can accept the truth of the Eucharist is if someone makes it palatable for their earthly sensibilities.Jesus did that. He gave the Church--and the world--His Sacred Heart. And...he gave the Church artists who could paint it, sing of it, write about it, and etch it in stone.You and I, my friends, are artists. And that means we have God’s work to do. That means we must, with a zeal and devotion unsurpassed, take up the mission of the Sacred Heart. What is the Mission of the Sacred Heart?Before we can take up the Sacred Heart’s mission as artists, we must take it up as Catholics first and foremost. So what is the mission of the Sacred Heart?For our purposes, the Sacred Heart’s…

Creative pursuits at God's service can make a man's heart sing, but they're just as likely to make him beat his head against a wall. They're plagued with doubts, with false starts, with curses and prayers, and with a fear and sense of failure that seldom come with secular work. I thought God wanted me to do this. Was I wrong? It’s enough to make a man quit in a fit of artistic pique. But Father Philip wasn’t so easily deterred. Considering the scope of his plan, that was a miracle in and of itself. It was a big plan for a big problem. Simple in theory, but when do simple plans ever stay that way? With God on his side, Philip had faith that things would work out, but it was comforting to know he also had earthly help. He had a bunch of weird friends. Rome: The Catacombs Unknown Artist A Strange Plan Requires Stranger Friends Rome in 1553 was in a bad state. A Christian nation? That was a thing of the past. The city was Christian in name, but in practice, Rome had traded the Bible for Bacchus and returned to its pagan ways. Adultery ran rampant. Cardinals glutted themselves on wealth and excess. Rome took its values lightly and its vices seriously. So Father Philip decided to do the same. Holiness, after all, was a much lighter burden to bear than sin’s chains. Reformers who had come before Philip thought to solve the problem with fire-and-brimstone preaching, but some unexplainable glimmer in his heart told him this wasn’t quite right. He had a different idea, one that won him his share of critics. Their discouragements, plus the creative turmoil that surrounds innovation, might have stopped him...if he didn’t have friends. Because his friends? They were just as crazy as he was. And together, they would make sure his hare-brained scheme got off the ground. Or went underground, as the case turned out to be. His idea? Counter one of Rome’s most popular entertainments with a city-wide pilgrimage that started in the catacombs. This might sound eerily entertaining to today’s crowds, but the Renaissance Romans were more interested in living it up with the, well, living than in chilling with the dead. It was an ironic place to begin his pilgrimage, but the irony didn’t stop there. After the catacombs? They would start singing. As they walked to the next stop on the road. But still. After that? They’d watch a performance and eat lunch before heading for another church. They’d sing some more along the way, and someone would tell a joke or two. (It would probably be Philip; he carried a book of jokes everywhere he went.) All in all, they’d visit seven churches. And sermons denouncing vice? They wouldn’t hear one. It was a weird way to combat hedonism and bring souls to Christ. But it worked. The first ragtag pilgrimage boasted about 20 companions, but as time passed, Father Philip’s pilgrimages amassed…