Sister Wendy on love as an obedient art
Sister Wendy was a Carmelite nun who gained famed as an interpreter of art, especially on free-to-air television in the 1990s, and whose passion for this vocation was irrepressible.
All images of text and quotes are grabs from Sister Wendy Beckett's The Mystery of Love: Saints in Art through the Centuries (London: HarperCollins, 1996) #ISBN0551030121
The Carmelites are a Catholic mendicant order.
In Sister Wendy's introduction to The Mystery of Love: Saints in Art through the Centuries her focus is to outline the importance of obedience. As usual the context for this, and the examples, are of the individual and the christ exemplar, before the mono-god. This is in keeping with Christianity’s origins. The subtext is “yeah but how do I know what pleases him?”
Well, that information is given to you by the authority and power of the church. Obey the church as you would god. For some reason, in more modern times this imperious attitude not said… —directly, but it structures all truly Catholic thought and its mundane legal structures.
This is the shame of the church, its naked power, its pudenda. Sister Wendy does extremely well in covering it up. The fig leaf here is love.
Reaction?
Given the title of the book The Mystery of Love one might think it would use that topic as its wellspring, but it does not. Love is frameworked within obedience through respect and honour. I.E. love is obedience, not any other sort of thing a young brainless flippetty-jibbet might want to indulge in.
It is no mystery at all, unless we also ask the question why obedience and not something else?
Don't ask and the mystery is yours.
See also:
- To build a better world, we should destroy the Catholic Church
- Fideism & Obedience : the extra bit about St Augustine of Hippo
- Fideism, reason and… —the gap that is always there
Versions of this appeared on Substack in 2023 and medium in early 2024