Convention
(06.03.2008)
Relation between Art and Faith
in Places of Worship
On Thursday 6 of March 2008, a convention was held at the St. Bernardino Institute of Ecumenical Studies on the topic of Relation between art and faith in places of worship. The speakers discussing the theme included the Superintendent of Monuments and Fine Arts of Venice Renata Codello, Professor Crispino Valenziano, Professor Ermanno Genre, Professor Giancarlo Macchiarella and the Rector of the Faculty of Architecture of Venice Carlo Magnani.
The conference focused on the peculiarities of denominational places of worship to investigate if any compatible or complementary features existed among them.
Two ecclesiologies emerged from the presentations, characterising Christian places of worship: the Catholic and Orthodox inspired by tradition and the Protestant which stresses the meeting between worshippers with the Word. The two perspectives are certainly complementary to each other, although it is necessary to maintain the symbolic perspective to avoid falling into functionalism. On this last point some speakers have indicated how easily our cultural heritage may become trivial if disjointed from an immaterial dimension, that is symbolic.
At the end of the discussions, the Chairman Professor Giuseppe Dal Ferro summarized the following main points emerging from the conference:
1. Places of worship are rich in culture and they constitute an essential part of local identity and civilization.
2. Whenever the symbolic dimension is lost, these places become functional, multipurpose and subsequently impoverished.
3. The Ecumenical aspect of pluralism, in time and in space, cannot therefore be pursued by levelling them out, but through the symbolic recovery of the immaterial aspects as intended by the places of worship.
4. The diversity of the places of worship, inspired by diverse concepts, may establish a dialogue amongst each other inasmuch as they are connected to art and above all maintaining a relation with mystery. To this end, rationality is to be integrated with emotional dimensions in order to retrieve an anthropological perspective opening up to relation and Transcendence.
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