Muzyka sakralna w perspektywie dialogu wiary i kultury

As the contemporary man experiences moral and spiritual loss, resulting first of all from the lack of the sense of God and the loss of sensitivity to beauty, as well as the influence of intellectual trends and cultural changes connected with post modernism, relativistic dictatorship and secular processes. Pope Paul VI denounced the „divorce” between art and the sacred that characterised the 20th century and observed that today many have difficulty treating Christian themes due to the lack of formation and experience of the Christian faith. The culture emerging from materialistic and atheistic worldviews, characteristic of secularised societies, causes disaffection from religion, sometimes opposition to it, particularly Christianity, with a new anti-Catholicism. Due to this, it is the role of the Church to help the human being in their again, the unity between good, truth and beauty. Pope John Paul II called for a new dialogue of faith and culture between Church and art, underlining their reciprocal needs and richness. The evangelization of culture aims at letting the Gospel penetrate the actual situation of the lives of the people of a given society. For the believer, beauty transcends the aesthetics and finds its archetype in God. The contemplation of God is the living source from which the Christian artist takes inspiration to speak of the mystery of God and the mystery of man saved in Jesus Christ. Christian-inspired works of art, which constitute an incomparable part of humanity’s artistic and cultural patrimony, are the object of a veritable infatuation for believers and nonbelievers, agnostics and those indifferent to religion. In the face of great music, the human being rises in the attitude of contemplative admiration, feeling the border of everyday life is crossed and the land of transcendental beauty entered. Benedict XVI is an experienced guide on this way – one of the greatest intellectual popes in the history of the Church.