“As the French playwright Jean Anouilh said, ‘Beauty is one of the few things in the world that do not lead to doubt about God’,” says Fr. Peter Cameron, O.P., interviewed by Our Sunday Visitor. “The Church intuits that immediately. When we’re in the presence of something beautiful — an act of forgiveness, a newborn baby, a sunset — beauty wounds us. It has a visceral effect on us that is delightful, that increases our humanity.” Beauty
also reveals to us that there is something more to the world and something more to beauty than the beautiful thing itself. It leads to contemplation. That contemplation consists of wondering at where the beauty came from. It would be impossible for a human being who has just received a bouquet of flowers to not reach into the flowers to find a card. The beauty of the flowers moves us to wonder about the sender. Then, when we know who sent them, we enjoy them all the more. Every act of beauty does the same to us. It moves us to find the author and the reason.
Fr. Cameron is the editor of Magnificat. Read the rest of the interview here (the Dominicans’ website) or here (OSV‘s website).
September 27th, 2012 | 3:08 pm
call me cynical, but beauty does not always lead to contemplation…. i was standing one day in front of the cathedral of notre dame in paris. along came a woman with a camera and without even looking at the cathedral, proceeded to ask me if i could take a picture of her with the cathedral in the background.
i took the picture and handed the camera back. she then walked away toward the subway stop.
it seems to me more and more of us are “men without chests,” to use c. s. lewis’ phrase.
September 27th, 2012 | 9:06 pm
Should that not be “Beauty is one of the few things in the world that DOES not lead to doubt about God” ? Correct English is beautiful too and does not lead to doubt about God. I’m rite about this ain’t i?
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