CathNews New Zealand

Pope Francis has warned on many occasions over the past seven years of the danger of the Church being like a museum, full of lovely stuff that’s without any real currency.

He phrases it in various ways, but the message is the same.

“Keep us from becoming a ‘museum Church,’ beautiful but mute, with much past and little future,” he said recently as he opened the synodal process.

The pope has put this finger on a crucial point: if a living body is only fit for a museum, then it is of no further value for the living.

But this absolute need not to become a museum can easily be misunderstood and people imaging that the Church does not need a museum of its own.

Anyone familiar with museums knows that they are more than storehouses for antiquated bits of kits.

A museum also tells a group’s stories — those of which it is proud and, more importantly, those of which it is not proud; those which, in the pursuit of a better future, it must not forget.

We all can remember the nice bits — and in any case, people will make films about them — but museums are organized memorial structures that stop us forgetting our blunders.

They tell us part of the story of how we got to where we are now, and they can help tell us why we are in the mess we are in.

A museum versus a gallery

For most people, museums are a [very small] part of a summer holiday. If you are in Florence – you must see the Uffizi. If you are in Washington, DC., then the Smithsonian is also a must.

If you go to Paris and do not visit the Louvre, don’t tell your friends. They may think you are not sufficiently cultured.

Or if visit and really enjoy it, you may decide not to tell your friends lest they think you are too “high-brow”.

The funny thing is that we all have strong feelings about these places because we either think them really wonderful or downright boring.

Waiting to be searched on the way into the National Gallery in London recently I heard a wonderful exchange between a mother and her son. They were obviously visitors to London and were “doing all the “must-see” places.

The little boy tugged backwards on his mother’s sleeve and exclaimed: “Mummy! I’m bored! I do not want to go into another museum!”

Displaying great works of genius

The mother, without a moment’s hesitation, replied, “That’s OK, this is a gallery, not a museum!”

We often confuse galleries and museums, but they do two distinct (if often overlapping tasks).

The gallery’s first function is to display those artefacts which we consider the great works of genius. In this process, there may be explanation, background, and notices that give context and history.

But the primary aim is that we should look, appreciate, and enjoy. If we look at any wondrous work of art, we want to just savor it, let it sink in, and encounter it.

If someone turns it into a lecture or a history lesson, something is somehow taken from it.

Yes, the person who knows the background may have a more nuanced appreciation, but they should get the background somewhere else than in the moment of seeing it in the gallery.

Meeting and touching the past

The museum is a different experience: here history is told through the objects. The object becomes the focus and vehicle of explanation that has a very different dynamic to the history lessor or the book.

Here we meet the past, and through the object touch the past in a new way. This is why some modern museums actually have objects they want visitors to touch and encounter in this very immediate, sensitive way.

Take, for example, a set of rusty iron slave chains — such as can be found in most countries where slavery was an accepted part of life, and which can even be found by archaeologists across the area of the Roman Empire.

Such items would have no place in a gallery but are a most important exhibit in a museum.

In the museum, they bring the reality of slavery close to us — and the surrounding information, “the story”, is all-important.

Now, these mute objects recall what our ancestors — perhaps less than two centuries ago in the case of parts of the United States – were willing to do to sister or brother humans.

These are not the nice wonders we want to see. This is the reality that warns us that we have erred.

The accompanying narrative that would distract in the gallery, here becomes the communication that brings us into contact with the truth.

Back in London, I do not know whether that answer satisfied the little boy because I was called just then to go through the scanner, but his mother had given him a very good answer.

Our museum as Roman Catholics

So what exhibits should we put in our museum?

The item has to be outdated

It has to be part of our story.

And, perhaps, we should remember it because it can be a warning from history.

Pope Francis has warned on many occasions over the past seven years of the danger of the Church being like a museum, full of lovely stuff that’s without any real currency.

He phrases it in various ways, but the message is the same.

“Keep us from becoming a ‘museum Church,’ beautiful but mute, with much past and little future,” he said recently as he opened the synodal process.

The pope has put this finger on a crucial point: if a living body is only fit for a museum, then it is of no further value for the living.

But this absolute need not to become a museum can easily be misunderstood and people imaging that the Church does not need a museum of its own.

Anyone familiar with museums knows that they are more than storehouses for antiquated bits of kits.

A museum also tells a group’s stories — those of which it is proud and, more importantly, those of which it is not proud; those which, in the pursuit of a better future, it must not forget.

We all can remember the nice bits — and in any case, people will make films about them — but museums are organized memorial structures that stop us forgetting our blunders.

They tell us part of the story of how we got to where we are now, and they can help tell us why we are in the mess we are in.

A museum versus a gallery

For most people, museums are a [very small] part of a summer holiday. If you are in Florence – you must see the Uffizi. If you are in Washington, DC., then the Smithsonian is also a must.

If you go to Paris and do not visit the Louvre, don’t tell your friends. They may think you are not sufficiently cultured.

Or if visit and really enjoy it, you may decide not to tell your friends lest they think you are too “high-brow”.

The funny thing is that we all have strong feelings about these places because we either think them really wonderful or downright boring.

Waiting to be searched on the way into the National Gallery in London recently I heard a wonderful exchange between a mother and her son. They were obviously visitors to London and were “doing all the “must-see” places.

The little boy tugged backwards on his mother’s sleeve and exclaimed: “Mummy! I’m bored! I do not want to go into another museum!”

Displaying great works of genius

The mother, without a moment’s hesitation, replied, “That’s OK, this is a gallery, not a museum!”

We often confuse galleries and museums, but they do two distinct (if often overlapping tasks).

The gallery’s first function is to display those artefacts which we consider the great works of genius. In this process, there may be explanation, background, and notices that give context and history.

But the primary aim is that we should look, appreciate, and enjoy. If we look at any wondrous work of art, we want to just savor it, let it sink in, and encounter it.

If someone turns it into a lecture or a history lesson, something is somehow taken from it.

Yes, the person who knows the background may have a more nuanced appreciation, but they should get the background somewhere else than in the moment of seeing it in the gallery.

Meeting and touching the past

The museum is a different experience: here history is told through the objects. The object becomes the focus and vehicle of explanation that has a very different dynamic to the history lessor or the book.

Here we meet the past, and through the object touch the past in a new way. This is why some modern museums actually have objects they want visitors to touch and encounter in this very immediate, sensitive way.

Take, for example, a set of rusty iron slave chains — such as can be found in most countries where slavery was an accepted part of life, and which can even be found by archaeologists across the area of the Roman Empire.

Such items would have no place in a gallery but are a most important exhibit in a museum.

In the museum, they bring the reality of slavery close to us — and the surrounding information, “the story”, is all-important.

Now, these mute objects recall what our ancestors — perhaps less than two centuries ago in the case of parts of the United States – were willing to do to sister or brother humans.

These are not the nice wonders we want to see. This is the reality that warns us that we have erred.

The accompanying narrative that would distract in the gallery, here becomes the communication that brings us into contact with the truth.

Back in London, I do not know whether that answer satisfied the little boy because I was called just then to go through the scanner, but his mother had given him a very good answer.

Our museum as Roman Catholics

So what exhibits should we put in our museum?

The item has to be outdated

It has to be part of our story.

And, perhaps, we should remember it because it can be a warning from history.

What else?

A museum with just one exhibit would hardly attract visitors.

What other antiquated bits of the Church need to be placed in this new museum?

• Thomas O’Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’s Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

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News category: Analysis and Comment.