Ars Catholica follows up an earlier post on its mediation on art, beauty and God with some troubling news from secular atheists . The summation holds a key: But let’s think here - can art really point to a better, nobler life without belief in God? What is to define beauty, if truth has no meaning other than what humans decide? What is there to lift us up to, if there is no example beyond ourselves? And isn’t the concentration of today’s ‘art’ on shock and surprise directly related to a decline in faith? This is precisely why a loss of Catholic traditions in art, music, liturgy, and architecture and the influence of contemporary theories of art in the mass is so poisonous. Just as contemporary art chooses only to offer us veneration of ourselves with no possibility of transcendence, modern church architecture and ‘mass in the round’ wreakovation attempts to bring the focus on the congregation, that group of “morally troubling fellow human beings” rather than pointing us to Christ. ...