Our Philosophy

True, Good, and Beautiful art is an engagement between the transcendent and human experience

“If you want to make a Christian work,
then be a Christian, and simply try to
make a beautiful work, into which your
heart will pass – Do not try to “make
Christian.”
– Jacque Maritan

On The Reality of Existence

• GOD (“That than which nothing greater can be thought”) is the ground of all being.  The Creator of all things good.
• The MATERIAL UNIVERSE is a created reality that in essence reflects God in some way (“a footprint” = vestige of the divine); therefore, every created reality can open us to some awareness of the source of the “footprint.”  The human person is created by God with a corporeal and spiritual nature, body and soul, and herein is its special dignity within creation.
• THE WORLD WITHIN (HUMAN PERSON’S SOUL) is not simply a vestige, rather an image of the Divine: Memory - Hopes for eternal life; Intellect – Seeks understanding for faith; Will – Ability to choose for love’s sake.
• THE WORLD BEYOND (METAPHYSICAL) is transcendent and real.

Our yearning for truth, goodness, beauty,
and happiness together with our awareness
of our own limitations cry out for the
existence of that Supreme Truth, Goodness,
and Beauty which is God.
– Bonaventure.

On Transcendence

God can be thought of as an intelligible
sphere whose center is everywhere and
whose circumference is nowhere.
– Bonaventure

That which exists beyond the material universe or the world within is not limited to it.  It is independent of the human experience of phenomena, namely, it is metaphysical, mystical, or supernatural.  Yet, transcendence is within the range of knowledge.  It can be apprehended.  It affects us.  It is exteriorly, interiorly, or superiorly operative on the human person.  Transcendence, such as truth, goodness, and beauty leads us beyond the merely limited human philosophical visions.

Further, the transcendental quality of the true, good, and the beautiful permits them to retain their objectivity, while their relationship with the world and our experience, allows us to appreciate (delight in) them subjectively.  It is this dynamic that can be humanly life changing, for we are transformed (or Reformed) by them, such as cleansed in the goodness of justice, exercised by the truth of knowledge, and perfected by the beauty of wisdom.  It is as if one encounters God Himself in transcendence, and indeed they do, because it is God alone who is the Supreme Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

A New Ethos Film “gives us vision into the world
and the transcendent and connects the two so
we can embrace the transcendent in the world.”
– Flannery O’Connor

On Art – Art must not DO rather it must BE something

Art’s nature is “To Make.”

• For art there is one law, the good of the work produced.
• The “good of the work” is an intellectual virtue (“habit of art”), namely, it imprints an idea in some matter.
• Art does imitate God (Creator, Divine Artist) in “being fertile,” namely, it seeks to beget a being like unto itself.

Art “reveals” in its making and reaches beyond the limitations of the
in tellect – beyond any mere theory that a writer may entertain – and
suggests an image of ultimate reality that can  be glimpsed in some
aspect of the human situation.  [Art] Produces in accordance to the
rule and measure of the thing to be effected.
– Jacque Maritain

Art’s object is to BE beautiful.

• Art is concerned with the structural elements of the form being made.
• Art’s contribution to the “making” of the form is to its basic structure of reality as found in the universal metaphysic of TRUTH, BEAUTY, and GOODNESS.

The being of all things derives from the Divine Beauty
– St. Thomas

Art’s aim is to be true to the subject being made in which it’s beauty lies.

• Art plays an important role in the “journey of a soul” as it pursues beauty, namely, to persuade persons to piety and bring them to God.
• Art's aim is the communication of Divine goodness.

“A work of art is good in itself
(not in its utilitarian value).”
- St. Thomas Aquinas

On the Artist’s Vocation – To reveal truth, beauty, and goodness in reality.

“The artist is what he is, without caring
about what he may appear to be.”
– Jacque Maritain

Their Calling:

• To participate with God, the Supreme Artist, who projects ideas in His mind through the created universe.
• To participate in the creative process (re-creation), a necessary condition to make communication possible between the transcendental and human experience, and by which the world will be brought to its God intended goal.  This goal is communion with God.  This component of the Artist's calling is  referred to as the "Participation Metaphysic."
• To constantly seek, struggle, and wrestle for new ways in which the radiance of form can shine on matter.
• To act in a way that is courageous, inasmuch as he/she positions him/her self, through their work, as a means to understand how the transcendental relate to the world and our experience.

Artist Limitations?

Must an artist believe in God to do “good art?  Not necessarily, however:

• An artist is first of all a person given a talent by God (whether they know it or not) to portray reality as it manifests itself in our concrete, sensual life.
• An Artist is not to “tidy up” reality; then it would not be true.
• It is wise for the artist to first seek the will of God through the laws and limitations of what is to be created so he/she may be able to achieve true beauty as its end.
• At the same time, with God, the artist’s horizons are limitless as they seek to penetrate the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality.

“Catholic (artist) doesn’t have to be a saint; he doesn’t even have
to be Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be an artist.”
– Flannery O’Connor

“[Artist is] required to open his eyes on the world around him
and look.  If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still
required to look…and then required to reproduce what he sees.”
– Baron von Hugel

On Entertainment - Not just mere escape, it is an encounter and part of our journey back to Divine Love.

“You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”
– Flannery O’Connor

Entertainment’s Nature (an integration of the two major groups of the arts):

• Inorganic (architecture, sculpture, music)
• Organic (human life, theater, dance)

“Entertainment is the most impure and most modest and the most human of
the arts.  It is closest to man in his sin and his suffering and his hope –Often
rejected by people of faith for the very reason that make it what it is.”
– Flannery O’Connor

Entertainment’s End Purpose:

Entertainment helps us “to taste” what we know.  A true and ultimate understanding of things is enlightened by our experience of love that comes to us from beyond all sense experience and intellectual efforts (in the true, the good, and the beautiful) and whose end is the ultimate ecstasy of love – namely, the Love of God.

Entertainment leads us to encounter – experience – and ultimately to contemplate those universal values of truth, beauty, and goodness, and ultimately, increases our faith, hope, and love for God and “neighbor.”

“Its goal is not simply to be a knower but a
lover of truth, beauty, and goodness.”
– St. Bonavanture

On the reductionist thinking that “Its just entertainment”:

Entertainment truly gives us a key to contemplating and understanding the 3-fold mysteries of reality and our relationship to it [The Word = The Word of God]:

The uncreated Word by whom all things are produced
The Incarnate Word by whom all things are restored
The Inspired Word by whom all things are revealed

"A people is known not by its statements or
its statistics, but by the stories it tells.”
– Flannery O’Connor