IMAGES IN CHURCH
African Ecclesiastical Review, January 1966, 40-43
A church cluttered with statues is a thing of the past. At least it is regarded so wherever the first purpose of a church building is realized. A church is not built to demonstrate Catholic wealth or artistic capabilities, nor to show honour to a saint or a mystery in the life of Christ, nor even to shelter the Blessed Sacrament, but to accommodate the church of the faithful, the true temple of God, in their common worship. consequently, a church should have no statues, side altars or shrines which draw attention away from the focal points of the action of the assembly, namely the altar and the pulpit.
The different practices of modern churches, however, reflect an uncertainty concerning the place of images in church. Some churches have simply moved their statues, with altar base reredos and all, to recessed chapels or alcoves. These areas, however ,are not integral parts of the church but appendages to it: chambers for private prayer. Perhaps there should be side chapels for visits outside liturgical services. but it should be recognized that to move statues to chapels is to remove them from the church.
Another practice has been simply to reduce the number of statues within the church to perhaps one of Christ (crucifix of otherwise) in the apse and one of Mary and Saint Joseph at either side. While this thinning out is laudable, in most cases the remaining statues are still centres of attention themselves in no way related to the central liturgical action.
A recently more popular practice has been to transform the images within the church into reliefs or murals. The madonnas which faced the people and whom one might address in the second person have given way to depictions of Mary acting in the third person; shrines have given way to tableaux. Granted that this solution eliminates the competition which shrines offer to the liturgy, the question remains, can these tableau forms or even ordinary statues serve a liturgical function?
Sacred images of any form or medium certainly can have an instructive value as signs of faith, declaring or calling to mind the meaning and reality of the mysteries being celebrated and the whole plan and history of salvation. some churches are encyclopedias of Christianity, and that without detriment to the focus of the liturgy.
On the other hand, the instructive value of much of this imagery cannot be felt during the liturgy, both because a plethora of detail cannot be studied during the liturgy and because much of it is located in clerestory windows and other places too far removed even to bee seen during the liturgy. This art may be valuable in preparing a person to participate in the liturgy, but it has no function within the immediate liturgical scene.
Images of saints
Some sacred imagery, however, can play a functional role in the liturgical scene. Representations of the saints, for example, can be symbols of faith in the triumphant meeting of the Church with its Lord which is progressively being realized. In particular, these images can be witnesses of the union in Christ which binds the saints in heaven with the Church on earth gathered for worship. To fulfil this function, however, iconography and statues within the liturgical scene should not be mere representations of edifying instances in the saints' lives, told as it were in the third person. Neither should they be primarily shrines or objects of cult apart form the congregation, to whom the congregation is related as "we" to "you". But they should embody the personal presence of the saints as one with the congregation in the act of worship.
This unity of worship does not mean that the images of the saints should assume the postures of adoration of the wayfaring congregation, any more than that hey should be set aloof by fanciful sunbursts or over-realistic haloes. they should possess a dignified human stance, and show both that the saints in glory worship God unceasingly - without implying that they now make use of sacramental intermediacy - and that ties of fraternity and love unite their worship with that of the rest of the Church still on earth. It is the task of artists to find particular ways to depict the intimacy of the Church in glory with the Church in time. The rows of saints in the icons of many Greek churches have succeeded quite well. Modern Western art necessarily will be different in spirit and in style.
Although statues of the saints represent primarily the saints' union with the worship of the wayfaring church, they can assume the secondary role of a shrine, something to which the people in the church might turn before or after the liturgical service (perhaps occasionally within, as in the litany of the saints in the Easter Vigil), much as they would turn and converse with their neighbours.
The traditional theology that images are signs or instruments through which honour or worship is given to the persons whom the images represents finds its application here. This theology was formulated in reaction to the iconoclast movements of the eight-ninth and the sixteenth centuries. While this theology justified the propriety of giving relative doulia to statues of the saints, it did not say what place honour to the saints in their images should have in a church. Images within the church should not detract from the focal points of the liturgical scene nor should they be given a cult which would destroy the sense of solidarity and fundamental equality between the people in the church and the saints in glory. Images of the saints should not be too prominent and should ordinarily fact the altar. Statues should perhaps be recessed into niches. Particular circumstances would determine whether special honours, such as the burning of a vigil light, would be fitting.
Even if an image of a saint is given none of the customary signs of cult, it should be emphasised that the very placing of the image in church is an act of veneration, whether the saint is merely held in memory by being represented as a third person or whether in addition his active presence is invoked by his being represented as incorporated into the first person plural of the worshipping community.
Images of Christ
So far nothing has been said about images of christ. some of the same principles apply as those which govern images of the saints. Less prominent parts of the church could contain representations of scenes from Christ's life, shown as it were in the third person. In the main body of the church an image of christ certainly should not be a shrine - crucifix, Sacred Heart statue or other - whose position in relation to the altar leaves any doubt as to which is the centre of attention.
An image of Christ within the liturgical scene should show him as the living leader and head of the church, present spiritually in every member of the congregation and in their midst as they pray. A large figure looking or reaching out to encompass the whole congregation together with the images of the saints would help to show the overshadowing omnipresence of Christ in the Church by his power and by reciprocal knowledge and love. but the artist would have to use his best ingenuity to make this figure as it were hover over the celebration of the liturgy and not become itself a focal point or shrine. he should not create the impression that the spiritual presence of Christ is drawn into and contained within the image, but should make the image reflect Christ's presence in the whole assembled church.
These few general suggestions concerning the place of images in church certainly apply differently according to varying church structures and locales. Exactly how they apply in each case can be determined only by good taste and experience.