The Catholic Studies Reader

11. Visual Literacy and Catholic Studies

11 Visual Literacy and Catholic Studies catherine r. osborne In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great wrote one of his bishops a letter on the question of iconoclasm that has reverberated down almost to the present day, frequently quoted to justify the use of images in Christian worship and later cited by scholars to explain the role of pictures in the Middle Ages. Gregory argued, To adore a picture is one thing, but to learn through the story of a picture what is to be adored is another. For what writing presents to readers, this a picture presents to the unlearned who behold, since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow; in it the illiterate read. Hence, and chiefly to the nations, a picture is instead of reading.1 In Gregory’s understanding, an image is the straightforward, transparent equivalent of a written text, inferior but nevertheless capable of conveying the essentials to the simple and above all to the unconverted barbarians (‘‘the nations’’). But just as scholarship has rejected the idea that texts themselves are able to straightforwardly convey true information, insisting instead that they be read ‘‘critically,’’ it has rejected the notion that images and objects are simply pendants to texts, visual expressions of ideas that are always rooted in words.2 Art history, and the broader interdisciplinary approach of ‘‘visual culture studies’’ to which it is related, has used the metaphor of ‘‘visual literacy’’ to suggest that images and objects deserve analysis in their own right and with attention to the specifically visual attributes that make them different from texts.3 In this essay, I argue that visual literacy deserves attention in Catholic Studies classrooms alongside the more familiar skills of critical reading , and I briefly outline several techniques for interrogating images, 236 catherine r. osborne drawn from art history and visual/material culture studies. To suggest the breadth and ubiquity of the kinds of evidence the use of the visual might open up in classrooms and in research, I touch on a wide variety of examples. The visual arts—among them painting, sculpture, architecture , and photography—stand here alongside less exalted media like advertising and consumer design. Why Visual Literacy? Catholic Studies, as an interdisciplinary program, seeks to understand an entire Catholic world: how Catholics have negotiated their faith in various ways, and how their Catholicism has informed or failed to inform the multiple dimensions of their lives and practices. Theology, history, literature, sociology, and economics all have much evidence to offer here. But relatively little attention has been paid to music and the visual arts. The lacuna is surprising, given the consistent theological stress on Catholic sacramentality and given that Catholics have tended to announce their arrival in any given location not with a speech, a sermon, or a book, but with a building. There are three major reasons why the ability to analyze images is especially important for Catholic Studies. The first is that, as Colleen McDannell points out, ‘‘Christian material culture does not simply reflect an existing reality. Experiencing the physical dimension of religion helps bring about religious values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes .’’4 In other words, religious images and objects are not just illustrations of one theology or another; they actually comment on or even create theology, and they can make interventions in theological arguments on all topics: God, Christology, anthropology, eschatology, sacramentology. Scholars of visual culture would agree that both iconoclasts and iconodules from the seventh century to the twenty-first have been correct in their assessment of images as powerful and deeply implicated in the formation of actual Catholic beliefs and practices. Studying Catholic images, in this view, is equivalent to studying Augustine, Aquinas, and Rahner, for they make theological arguments in their own right. visual literacy and catholic studies 237 The second reason is that the study of visual culture gives us a particular type of historical access that is otherwise largely unavailable. For most of Christian history, written text, while venerated, was only indirectly accessible to the vast majority of the population, who lived in an oral and visual world. This is what Pope Gregory was pointing out. Even today, while surveys record the steep decline in reading, it is the rare Catholic household that has no pictures, statues, or crucifixes. Our understanding of the worlds of Catholics across history, then, would be greatly enhanced...