Recovering Christian Visual Literacy

Though we are not Catholic ourselves, my family and I have attended a local parish for years, drawn by the warmth of the community and the welcoming way the liturgy invited us into worship. Like everyone else, we sing the hymns and join the responses, guided along by the slides projected high on the Epistle side of the sanctuary that display lyrics and text for each Sunday’s Mass. But at this particular church, the slides frequently pair text with images of artworks lifted from a long sweep of Christian history. Added to the mix is a generous dose of the sentimentalized renderings of Jesus so prevalent in contemporary devotional media. Images aren’t confined to a single moment, but shown throughout the Mass: the gathering song, Kyrie, Responsorial Psalm, Gospel Acclamation, Offertory, Communion, and closing song. In this respect, our church is clearly atypical in its visual freedom. The use of slides has long been a subject of debate concerning what is liturgically appropriate, yet today the projection of lyrics is far more common in Catholic churches than the projection of images. The format is simple and consistent, with lyrics in large white italicized text on black paired with their illustrations. I used to enjoy the challenge of identifying famous artworks when they were shown, making it a private game I played to test the limits of my art-historical knowledge. But after watching these slideshows for weeks, eventually months, the effect began to change. Their overall dissonance was becoming impossible to overlook.

This jumble of clashing images made me wonder how much of the Church’s visual inheritance we’ve forgotten. I began to imagine how powerful these presentations would be if they were arranged with greater coherence and purpose. And I realized how this seemingly harmless aid to participation was formatively consequential. How a rapid procession of disconnected images will at best confuse attentive viewers, and at worst trivialize sacred truths, undermining spiritual formation. Though I don’t doubt the sincerity of the staff member who prepares these slides, when a church takes seriously the history and theology embedded in Christian art, its riches can be deployed with greater care to guide the congregation in seeing, imagining, and believing. Most Catholics know that the Church has a visual tradition, but fewer realize that it is not just beautiful—it is a language. And like any language, when we stop speaking it fluently, meaning begins to slip away.

This essay appears in Genealogies of Modernity: Part I and Part II. In it, I explore how the often-overlooked images that now routinely accompany church teaching disclose deeper patterns in contemporary Catholic worship, and why recovering a more rooted and discerning visual vocabulary matters for catechesis and spiritual formation today.

Giotto di Bondone

Adoration of the Magi

c. 1304