Fine Arts

But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome places health, and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.
– Plato Republic 401c

Plato expressed a strong Greek belief  that early education ought to consist primarily in training youth in the fine arts, the arts that present beauty and grace in works of imitation addressed to the senses.  Exposure to beautiful works of music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture develops in souls a powerful instinctive taste for what is beautiful; the ugly and banal causes pain. Youthful love for the beautiful naturally leads to a desire to become beautiful through a virtuous life.  As the mind awakens in adolescence, the predisposition toward what is beautiful will arouse wonder and delight in understanding, for fine art is akin to “beautiful reason.”

Plato’s vision might not have taken into account man’s fallen nature, but it does hit on a natural truth: encouraging students to strive for moral goodness and noble understanding is hampered if their souls have tastes only for what is merely popular, fun, harsh, or ugly.

Pope Benedict recently emphasized the apologetic power of the Church’s treasury of  beautiful works:

In the same way, if we contemplate the beautiful works of art created by the faith, they represent, I would simply say, the living proof of the faith.  If I look at this beautiful cathedral, it is a living proclamation! It speaks to us, and starting from the beauty of the cathedral we can visually proclaim God, Christ, and all God’s mysteries: here they have taken form, and they look at us.  All the great works of art, the cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.  
– Question and answer with priests, August 6, 2008.

Music is particularly important.  No work of art reaches into the soul more powerfully than music, which forms tastes and passions.   No other kind of art pervades our life the way that  music does.  

“And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,” said I, “that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary?” 
– Plato, Republic 401d

Men and women whose soul can be thrilled by Palestrina, Bach and Mozart have an experience of divine beauty lost to the majority of our fellow citizens.

Listening to all these works – the Passion of Bach, his Mass in B Minor, and the great spiritual compositions of the polyphony of the 16th century, the Viennese school, all the great music even of minor composers – suddenly we feel: ‘It’s true!’ Where things such as these works are born, there’s the truth. Without an intuition about the true creative center of the world, such beauty cannot be born. 
– Benedict XVI, Q&A