Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture

The days 15-18th February 2025 are being marked as a Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture. The Press Conference held ahead of the event is reported here.

The Constitution Gaudium et Spes (n.53) explains the idea of culture as follows:

Man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture, that is through the cultivation of the goods and values of nature. Wherever human life is involved, therefore, nature and culture are quite intimately connected one with the other.

The word "culture" in its general sense indicates everything whereby man develops and perfects his many bodily and spiritual qualities; he strives by his knowledge and his labor, to bring the world itself under his control. He renders social life more human both in the family and the civic community, through improvement of customs and institutions. Throughout the course of time he expresses, communicates and conserves in his works, great spiritual experiences and desires, that they might be of advantage to the progress of many, even of the whole human family.

Pope St John Paul II was in his lifetime a strong proponent of a correct understanding of the idea of culture, both in his philosophical studies and in his exercise of his mission as the Successor of St Peter. His address to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on 2nd June 1980, during a visit to Paris, contains much of his thinking on the subject and offers analyses of different questions arising with regard to the understanding of culture. My excerpts cannot do it justice, in particular with regard to the way in which it responds to the challenges Pope St John Paul II sees in different aspects of the contemporary situation with regard to culture.

[The] fundamental dimension is man, man in his fullness, man who lives at the same time in the sphere of material values and in that of spiritual values. Respect for the inalienable rights of the human person is at the basis of everything. [n.4]

Man is the subject of culture in that it arises from his own activity; and he is the object of culture in that it is through culture that he becomes more fully man. 

One cannot think of a culture without human subjectivity and without human causality; in the cultural field, man is always the first fact: man is the primordial and fundamental fact of human culture.

And man is always that: in the completeness of his spiritual and material subjectivity.

If the distinction between spiritual and material culture is correct in terms of the character and the content of the products in which culture is manifested, it is necessary to note at the same time that, on one hand, the works of material culture make apparent always a "spiritualisation" of the material, a submission of the material element to the spiritual forces of man, that is to say, to his intelligence and to his will; and on the other hand, the works of spiritual culture show, in a specific way, a "materialisation" of the spirit, an incarnation of that which is spiritual.

In cultural works, this double characteristic appears to be equally primordial and equally permanent.[n.8]

In taking note of the educational dimension of culture, Pope St John Paul II argues that man needs to develop his culture both with others and for others, and so culture becomes not only an individual possession but also a shared heritage. In this light, he asserts a right of a Nation in relation to its culture:

The Nation is in effect a large community of men who are united by varied links, but above all, precisely, by culture. The Nation exists "by" culture and "for" culture, and it is therefore the great educator of men that they may "be more" in the community.

It is this community that possesses a history that goes beyond the history of the individual and of the family....

There exists a fundamental sovereignty of a society which is manifest in the culture of a Nation. [n.14]

 In his Letter to Artists of April 1999, Pope St John Paul II speaks more specifically of the vocation of the artist:

A noted Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.

The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was good, God saw that it was beautiful as well. The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. ...

It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. [n.3]

 After surveying the way in which art and the Gospel have been connected through history, a theme that is also present in the address to UNESCO, the letter ends with an appeal to artists:

Mine is an invitation to rediscover the depth of the spiritual and religious dimension which has been typical of art in its noblest forms in every age. It is with this in mind that I appeal to you, artists of the written and spoken word, of the theatre and music, of the plastic arts and the most recent technologies in the field of communication. I appeal especially to you, Christian artists: I wish to remind each of you that, beyond functional considerations, the close alliance that has always existed between the Gospel and art means that you are invited to use your creative intuition to enter into the heart of the mystery of the Incarnate God and at the same time into the mystery of man.... [n.14]

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.[n.16]