REGINA: You have said we’re living in a time of iconoclastic crisis that is an attack our religious heritage.
Daniel: Iconoclasm is a heresy that involves the destruction of sacred images; it happens when the authority of religious tradition is discounted. Certainly plenty of altogether secular people are willing to preserve works of religious art or historic churches for the sake of cultural heritage, or nationalism. It is the anti-traditionalists within the Church who are actually destroying things!
REGINA: It is the grim truth.
Daniel: The faithful who are desperate or scandalized by this ought to bear in mind the experience of the eighth and ninth centuries. Almost all of the sacred art within the Byzantine Empire was destroyed. It took a long time for the crisis to end, and even after an ecumenical council, it began again. The heresy started and ended repeatedly for reasons entirely uncontrollable by the faithful; basically, one emperor decided one way, and a successor decided the other. But the faithful did not altogether forget the suppressed traditions; had they, we would have no memory of them today, none of the necessary knowledge to continue or revive them. We today, in a new iconoclastic crisis, must not despair, must not apostatize, must not acquiesce.
“[From the] Second Council of Nicea, which was convoked in the year 787 to end the first iconoclast crisis. They said: The tradition does not belong to the painter; the art alone is his. True arrangement and disposition belong to the holy fathers. I consider the arrangement and disposition that belong to the fathers to be something like a relic, and the art that belongs to the painter to be something like the making of a reliquary. Artistry without tradition is like an empty reliquary; beautiful perhaps, but unworthy of veneration. Tradition without artistry is like a relic kept in a cardboard box; worthy of veneration, but deserving of better treatment.
I believe that the traditions of sacred art deserve exaltation for the very same reason the relics of Our Lord’s Passion deserve it - because they touched God.” (Invention and Exaltation lecture).
Daniel Mitsui’s artwork can be viewed and purchased at: www.danielmitsui.com
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