Remove Rupnik? Immoral Artists and Sacred Art

The word “art” refers to something that has been produced, something that requires artifice. In that sense, we can judge its merits based on the product itself, rather than the subjective disposition of the producer. You can be a good painter and a bad person, for instance. We do not have moral tests for those who make products for us or perform practical services. It’s harder to say that, however, in other areas of life. How could you be a good judge, who is meant to be impartial and just, if you are fundamentally distorted within?

Does this some distinction between the product and producer apply to sacred art? There is no clear answer. In the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic tradition, the writer of the icon performs a sacred task of prayer. In the West, however, the artist has acted more as an artisan, making products like others. In the Middle Ages, for instance, artists become apprentices within guilds, though these were considered to be religious organizations. It was not until the Renaissance that the artist emerged as a creative genius producing works that arose as individual expression versus the product as a craftsman.

The Church has never produced a moral litmus test for artists. In fact, some of the most famous producers of sacred art led scandalous lives. Homosexuality was prevalent among Renaissance artists in Florence. The great biographer of artists, Vasari, suggested that Raphael died from exhaustion from his sexual escapades. Bernini was involved in a love triangle involving his brother and a married woman that led to discipline by his papal patron. And most infamously, the unstable Caravaggio had a penchant toward violence that even led him to murder a rival in Rome. We have been able largely to separate the product of these creative geniuses from their personal lives. We have not, not yet at least, sought to cancel them or remove their works from churches.

But now a prominent contemporary artist, the disgraced priest and former Jesuit, Marko Ivan Rupnik, has brought to the forefront on conversation in the Catholic world the conflict of an immoral artist and his work. He is probably the most prominent Catholic artist in the world right now, with his mosaics even adorning a chapel in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. Now that it has come out that he abused his position as a priest and his influence as an artist to sexually coerce women over decades (while being protected by the Jesuits and the Vatican), many have called for the removal of his works throughout the world.

Catholic News Agency recently ran a story, “John Paul II Shrine ‘Considering’ Whether to Remove Mosaics by Father Rupnik.”The Knights of Columbus, who now own the shrine, must decide if they will retain his decorations in the shrine’s main chapel. The CNA article featured commentary by an activist against clerical abuse:

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of a group that keeps an online database of clergy abuse, sharply criticized the John Paul II Shrine for not having removed the Rupnik mosaics, claiming that it signals that the Church’s “commitment to healing victims is shallow.”

“His art now profanes the sacred spaces that it inhabits,” she told CNA.

Doyle, who has met and spoken with some of Rupnik’s alleged victims, said that “he sometimes used his victims as his models for some of his pieces” and that “his art and theology and his sexual predations were all intertwined.”

I find these comments particularly relevant because they point us to a key difference between the Rupnik case and past immoral artists. Even though Raphel used one of his mistresses, Margarita Luti, as a model for some of his Madonnas, what we don’t find in past artists is a distorted spirituality intertwined their presentation of the sacred with a distorted sexuality. They were flawed men producing great works of art commissioned by the Church.

What is the difference?

An immoral painter can execute a sacred work as a competent artist, even with a creative vision that grasps the sacramentality of the faith more acutely than theologians. Would we prefer a holy artist like Fra Angelico? Well, why wouldn’t we? But, do we reject Caravaggio’s paintings because he was not holy like Fra Angelico? No.

With Rupnik, however, he approached his work with a twisted spirituality, using his influence as a priest-artist to abuse religious women in a way intertwined with his art. It’s not simply a sinful man producing an objective product, but that the work itself expresses something evil: a distortion of the faith for abusive purposes. I find the work itself to be flawed—demented in appearance, particularly in its figures’ eyes, and lacking beauty—perhaps as a sign of the underlying problem. But beyond their appearance, such a bold statement of abuse should not stand.

For this reason, I support removing Rupnik’s works.