9/11 - 23 years later
Father Marco Rupnik v Caravaggio
There are inconsistencies about artists thought acceptable for Catholic display or for Catholic liturgy (e.g., ).
Artists whose work is itself anti-Catholic should NEVER be considered. If someone claims to be Catholic and is not currently excommunicated, I believe that our primary focus should be on the quality of the art itself - as to whether it merits inclusion.
Father Marco Rupnik (1954 - )
Accused of sex crimes against women religious, Father Marco Rupnik has yet to stand trial by a Vatican court. The long wait has allowed Rupnik's reputation to fester. A Catholic art expert has provided a key to understanding the "art" of Father Rupnik:
To understand the transgressive, subversive nature of Fr. Rupnik’s work, it’s necessary to understand the style he is parodying. Most people with normal minds look at these mosaics and have a vague sense of wrongness and unease. They are clearly intended to look like ancient Byzantine art, but it’s off, anti-true, somehow....[Rupnik's art] takes the extreme precision and rationality of Byzantine Christian art and creates chaos with it, visual gibberish. Its style, by imitating children’s scribbles, implies that the Christian things it depicts are silly, imprecise and ultimately irrelevant nonsense, stories fit only for children. Rupnik’s art is deliberately subversive of its source material, anti-rational and anti-mathematical (Hillary White, 8/9/23).
Bizarrely, some compare Rupnik to one truly magnificent artist who had clear moral flaws; the similarity ends with the moral flaws! Rupnik's work reminds me of the laughably poor quality of art in 1970s Catholic school religion textbooks.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; 1571 - 1610)
Caravaggio was a master in every sense of the word; his use of colour, light, perspective, and composition and his masterfully realistic depictions of the human form stand out in a league of their own....
Rupnik’s art is cartoonish - without motion or discoverable symbolism. The figures are alien-like, with misproportioned faces and bodies, and great dark, lifeless and unsettlingly inhuman eyes....
In [the] future, we would do well to ignore anyone who says beauty is subjective, and judiciously cling to what we know of the good, the true, and the beautiful when choosing artworks for the house of God. (cf, Stop comparing Rupnik to Caravaggio, Edward Hauschild, 6/10/2025).
About the Author
Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband since 1986, a dad to two adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology, as well as a catechetical diploma and certificates in benefits planning and Catholic social ministry. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.
On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, cinema, geography, history, Italian food, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.
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