Saw John Wick 4 last night.
Better than watching the Vols lose, I suppose.
This is all I’m going to say about it. We’ll be spoiler-free here.
No, it’s not a spiritual journey. It’s…John Wick.
But what it shows, once again, is the truth of something I have been saying for years:
One of the post-Vatican II (here we go) tropes I lived through was the consistent denigration of physical expressions of faith, from medals and holy cards to church buildings themselves. People these days comment on this, but they never really seem to grasp the motivation – they rumble on about wreckovation and revolution without any attempt at all to look at what was actually being said and written at the time.
It was actually pretty simple: All of that stuff was an expression of, first, an immature faith that required “props” and externals. Secondly, all that stuff was time bound – it did not express the faith of Modern Man. Third, all of that stuff functioned as a distraction, a diversion. It lulled people into thinking they were practicing the faith, that they were faithful, but actually all they were doing was sitting in a pretty building, listening to nice music, not even actively participating, the horror. Fourth, it was essential that people get past all that to understand and live the reality of Church, which is the people of God, not a building.
It was absolutely necessary to strip all of that away so that we would grow up, recognize Christ in each other and in the community, witnessing to Christ in the modern world as modern people, who of course, as Modern People, have no use for those externals. They’re put off by all of that. That stuff is not what’s going to attract Modern Man.
Well, they were wrong, weren’t they?
This is a false dichotemy. For church buildings are witnesses to the presence of Christ in the world: in the middle of a city, in a neighborhood, in a suburb, on a rural road in the midst of cornfields.
And people – yes modern people in the 21st century – still see them, go to them, and experience them as such, even if they don’t believe. Even if it’s just functioning as a prop or a background –
…that prop or background is the most powerful and immediate way to connect action or an inner state with important, essential human experiences and promptings: contemplating love, death, meaning, purpose and connection.
And it’s not just cultural baggage. There really is something integral about the sights and sounds of traditional Christianity, east and west, that organically evokes and connects even non-believers to these truths and sensibilities.
So in John Wick 4 – you not only have John, in a candle-doused church (I mean…who lit all those candles? Who’s maintaining them? Okay, it’s a movie, I know….) musing to Caine, the blind assassin – Donnie Yen is the best part of the film, I think – about whether or not he can communicate with his dead wife, but you also have this….
I wish I had a screen shot – one might eventually turn up, but it hasn’t yet – but one of the final scenes of John Wick 4 has John sitting on the stairs in front of Sacre Coeur, the gleaming white church in the background, and not just because a huge fight scene has taken place on the 222 steps leading up to the basilica, but because….it’s an important moment. What’s below is a shot of filming from this website.
Whether the filmmakers intended it or not, whether it was chosen just because it was cool and because of those steps, this moment happening in this place carries a meaning that it wouldn’t if it were happening in front of another iconic Paris landmark like the Eiffel Tower. They can’t help it. It’s just there: built into the building that stands as a witness in the midst of the city, in the thick of the chaos, violence and death.
…yeah…..
I always notice that in ANY show where they have someone in a Catholic Church, it is never a church built since the 60s! It is always a gorgeous old church with lots of stained glass, candles and statues.
Your four part summary is exactly the conclusion I’ve come to about many of the changes, and I find it so frustrating. The Church knew so much about human nature; how could they have possibly believed that this plan would work?
The analogy I always think of is that They thought Ordinary Old Catholics were just using these devotions and rituals etc etc as a some kind of crutch, instead of doing the Real Thing … and, so, as a solution, instead of a better crutch, or physical therapy, they just … kicked the crutches out from underneath everyone …
And here we are, 60 some years later, and They are still shocked that people who need a crutch don’t magically fly when you take their crutches away?
That is a great comment. I would add to the “not understanding human nature” point that they also didn’t understand that when they took things away, replacements would evolve, and how much of that replacement dynamic would be characterized by human ego.
Worth a read — “Don’t Blame Vatican II: Modernism and Modern Catholic Church Architecture”. It’s a very long, detailed piece; here’s how it starts:
‘Many people seem to think that contemporary Catholic church architecture is so ugly because of misunderstandings that arose from the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This thesis is especially attractive to those of a more “intellectual” bent, such as theologians and liturgists, because it suggests that the problem is one of ideas. Correct the ideas—enforce a proper theology of the liturgy (the job of, guess who, theologians and liturgists)—and voilà, we will get better-looking churches.
As attractive as that thesis is, its one big drawback is that it is largely untrue. Bad church architecture is not primarily the result of bad ideas about the liturgy—however much those abound. No, bad church architecture in America is the result, quite simply, of America having bad ideas about architecture. Our problems began some decades before the Second Vatican Council convened: they began with the embrace of modernist architectural principles by contemporary architects and, more disastrously, by the liturgical “experts” who have insisted on laying down the rules and regulations for all new Catholic churches built in America.
A good example can be found in a small, but particularly illustrative little booklet published in 1952 by the Liturgy Program at the University of Notre Dame called Speaking of Liturgical Architecture. The author, one Fr. H. A. Reinhold, is described in the preface of the book as someone who “needs no introduction to American Catholic readers” because “he has become a household term [sic] in things liturgical.” And although the correct expression should probably be “he has become a household name in things liturgical,” the point is clear: he was a well-known and highly respected liturgist who can be said to represent the mind-set of his generation, —a mindset that continues to dominate much of the official thinking about church architecture to this day.
Although published in 1952, the lectures contained in Speaking of Liturgical Architecture were actually delivered several years earlier, during the summer of 1947, at “the first liturgical summer school at the University of Notre Dame.” Given that these lectures were delivered some fifteen years before the Second Vatican Council began, whatever faults Fr. Reinhold may be guilty of, it would be something of a stretch to blame them on the Council. And, although it is certainly true that Fr. Reinhold may have held in the 1940s and 1950s some of the same ideas that brought about the liturgical reforms of the Council, it is not primarily his ideas about liturgy that are the problem, it is his ideas about architecture. And those ideas are identifiably and undeniably modernist.’
The link: https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/dont_blame_vatican_ii