Sydney
7 September 2003
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Conversation:
Prof Friedhelm Mennekes, parish priest and art lecturer - Space for art in a sacred
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Conversation: Prof Friedhelm Mennekes, parish priest and art lecturer - Space for art in a sacred space
By Marilyn Rodrigues
“What I have learned from artists is that it is sacred spaces that train people for religion. If I were a bishop, I would bring my priests into the church for about eight days and nights to sleep there before they were ordained.
“Think of when the cardinals elect the pope. They have to be enclosed in the Vatican, because they have to come in contact with the space, and then they have the space to change.”
So says Jesuit scholar Friedhelm Mennekes, parish priest, professor of pastoral theology and the sociology of religion, art exhibition maker and visiting art lecturer (pictured).
It is as a lecturer that Prof Mennekes has been in Sydney and Melbourne. He spoke to The Catholic Weekly before delivering a lecture – on crucifixions in 20th century art – at the North Sydney campus of the Australian Catholic University.
He tells how, in his desire to bring abstract contemporary art to “ordinary people”, he transformed his parish church of St Peter, in the centre of the German city of Cologne, into an exhibition space for leading contemporary art – an exhibition space housed in an active church.
To do so he stripped the late Gothic style church, one of the oldest in Europe, bare of every artifact, sculpture, image and pew and painted the walls white. (Chairs are brought in for liturgies and removed straight afterwards.)
“People need the time and the space to reflect,” the professor says, “and to offer them a sacred space is important.
“This is why I was so concerned to have an empty church. It touches people who are not Catholic or even Christian.”
Prof Mennekes has been described as a mediator between the Church and modern art, but he says this is the role of every believer. He describes himself as a “radical person”.
He believes art should never be used as a means of evangelisation because, like religion, art should be free.
“But you need to live in your time,” he says. “You need music and many other things.
“In our time our consciousness, our thinking, our bodies, they are formed by art. You are touched by movies, by design, by advertising.
“Art is part of yourself and you as a believer have to make bridges with religion, even if art and religion are separate.”
The Jesuit priest says he never draws on exhibitions for material in his homilies.
“I never say anything about a present exhibition during the Mass because the priest’s role is to preach the Gospel, no symbolism, no politics, no non-religious training of the people, but just what Jesus said or what we have in the Bible,” he says.
“Also it’s very important that art and religion are separate, because in our day they are separate, and they have to be, even though they work together and have the same sources.
“And this is what the artists who exhibit in the church like; they know that they are not used, but at the same time I fill my church each Sunday.
“It is always very crowded, it is a very young parish and we have many baptisms.”
Prof Mennekes has never formally studied art and does not claim to be an artist or an art critic, but simply one “who opens doors for contemporary artists”.
He has studied philosophy, theology, political science and history, and is a professor in practical theology.
He opened his first exhibition space 25 years ago in Frankfurt’s main railway station, one of the biggest railway stations in Europe.
We ask: “What is art?”
Prof Mennekes says it could be “what you see as art”.
“One cannot say what it is in an objective way,” he says.
One example he gives is of a French artist who filled the loft of St Peter’s in Cologne with hay and invited parishioners to take baskets of leaves upstairs and scatter the leaves among the hay.
“So people were asking: ‘What has the church got to do with hay?’
“Hay has got to do with harvest, dreams, memories, nature,” he says.
“The baby Jesus was put into hay; you could make relations with baptism and many other things.
“I would not say that the hay means any one thing, so maybe you don’t get the answers but you get the impulses to ask questions and to open up visions, memories and many other things.”
The professor’s other parish work is at St Martin’s, a church he established especially for young children. He believes that children need their own sacred space, not merely a room to meet in during services in the adults’ church.
“I found a Romanesque tower, seven by seven metres in a square, and it has this really magic room that we can bring up to 200 kids into,” he explains.
“We sing, tell stories, paint, do theatre; we are printing our own bible and many other things. It is important to give them a beautiful space and form in them reverence for their own church.
“A priest has to be an artist in a way; an artist has to create constantly and so does a priest. And that is why the children’s church is so crowded every Sunday.”
The professor has banned biblical illustrations by contemporary artists from his children’s church. “I’m very against all these. Because they are disturbing, they stand for qualified art,” he says.
Instead he favours paintings and illustrations by the kids themselves.
His passionate opinion on the aesthetics of churches today is a challenging one.
His main gripe is with churches that are filled to the brim with statues, images, icons and sculptures which are never changed.
“If you take art into your church, there are conditions,” he says. “It has to be empty, free.
“A church that has too many things in it comes out of a time when it made sense.
“The times have changed and it doesn’t make any sense.
“I don’t have to illustrate or furnish heaven.
“Statues of the Madonna, especially; for many it becomes a cult object.
“I am a radical person; I would say: ‘Better to take all art out!’
“But then, at same time, we need it; we do need a Madonna in churches.
“For example, I own a big Rubens, the crucifixion of St Peter. But I cannot see it all year long, just for some periods.
“Images are not to be stored on walls, but in storage, and then from time to time bring them out, so that the people haven’t seen them for a long time and they stimulate new ideas, new impulses.
“Catholic priests have a responsibility; they must do away with having so many statues, and from time to time bring them out, like we do with Christmas trees and nativity scenes; we don’t hold the installation or image all year long.
“When you celebrate Christmas or even Easter, use visual things to celebrate but they have to be the best quality you can get, don’t take kitschy things or reproductions; there are originals enough.”
Prof Mennekes says that churches in general do not reflect the level of artistic feeling in society.
“Every church needs a Madonna, a cross, a tabernacle, a place to light a candle, and we need to deal in a new way with sacred spaces,” he says.
Also on his hit list are pews and chairs.
“These came into the Church in the 15th century with the Reformation and then also the Counter Reformation.
“That was when the content of faith got more attention than the form, and maybe that was important for that time.
“But now times have changed, the chairs are not needed this way. You don’t see the church’s architecture; if you have a column, you don’t see it.”