{"id":4878,"date":"2016-06-03T06:41:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T12:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=4878"},"modified":"2016-06-03T06:41:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T12:41:16","slug":"the-sacred-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/the-sacred-heart-4878.htm","title":{"rendered":"The Sacred Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Savred<\/a><\/p>\n

by Pompeo Batoni\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (today\u2019s feast day) has not been entirely salubrious for the Church. It is no doubt good and helpful to focus on the human nature and emotions of Jesus; but which emotions are presented and how those emotions have been presented has created problems. The intensity of Jesus\u2019 emotions was often expressed in anger, his emotion most frequently mentioned in the Gospels. One would never guess this from the images in popular devotion, which try to convey love, but a love that is devoid of the anguish and intensity that is portrayed in the Gospels. The image of the Sacred Heart has been soft, effeminate, and sappy. \u00a0Here is a section from my forthcoming book:<\/p>\n

The Sacred Heart<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If women were responding to Jesus erotically, as they were encouraged to do in the tradition of bridal mysticism which we will examine in the next chapter, one would think that Jesus would be seen as very masculine. However, this was not the case. The original brutal image of the suffering heart that Margaret Mary Alacoque saw was largely replaced by depictions based on a 1767 painting by Pompeo Batoni for the Church of the Ges\u00f9 (the Jesuit church) in Rome. It shows Jesus, pointing to his heart, but more importantly gazing outward at the viewer, engaging his (or much more often, her)\u00a0 eyes.\u00a0 The new image emphasizes \u201cthe tenderness and accessibility, even the vulnerability\u201d of Jesus rather than his brutal physical sacrifice. The feminine softness and sympathetic gaze of Jesus established a bond between him and those who sought his aid, that is, \u201cprimarily women and children.\u201d\u00a0 This was a major change, as David Morgan points out, from the original image of the Sacred Heart; it substitutes \u201ccloseness and delicacy of feeling for the older passion, devoted personal relationship for penitential anguish.\u201d\u00a0 The tone of hymns expressed this:<\/p>\n

Sweet Heart of Jesus, we implore<\/p>\n

O make us love thee more and more<\/p>\n

Sweet Heart of Jesus, make us pure and gentle<\/p>\n

And teach us how to do Thy blessed will,<\/p>\n

To follow close the print of Thy dear footsteps<\/p>\n

And when we fall, sweet heart, O love us still.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jesus was seen as a gentle, non-threatening, understanding man, everything that ordinary men were not. The devotion to the Sacred Heart was taken up by the Jesuits and used against their enemies, the Jansenists, who were dubious about the devotion to the Sacred Heart on theological grounds.\u00a0 But even the Jesuits were not happy with the effeminate overtones of the devotion. Franz Hattler in 1894 described the image of Jesus in the Sacred Heart cult as \u201ca matchmaker\u201d with a \u201cflirtatiously bowed head, longing eyes, a mouth puckered with kisses,\u201d and \u201cfoppishly crimped hair.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Otto Pf\u00fclf found the devotion \u201ctoo sweet,\u201d \u201clike a pious fantasy,\u201d that was \u201cmore suitable for the souls of women.\u201d\u00a0 Richard Burton describes the nineteenth-century French Christ as \u201ccuriously androgynous, with his wispy beard, doe-like eyes, and delicate, soft-limbed body.\u201d\u00a0 In 1899 in the United States an historian described the image of the Sacred Heart as \u201ca young man in flowing gowns, with soft face, large eyes, small delicate mouth, slightly parted lips, small thin nose, downy beard, long curly hair parted in the middle and falling gracefully to the shoulders, slender hands,\u201d or, as another critic called the image, \u201ca biological Valentine.\u201d\u00a0 George Cutten at the beginning of the twentieth century claimed that \u201cRoman Catholic art depicts him [Christ] as most effeminate, and he is always described as the passive sufferer, with hyper-developed emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such sentiments and images did not appeal to men, as Pius XII recognized, when he criticized those who thought the devotion to the Sacred Heart \u201ca type of piety nourished not by the soul and mind but by the senses and consequently more suited to the use of women, since it seems to them something not quite suitable for educated men.\u201d\u00a0 As a badge, the Sacred Heart had political and therefore masculine implications, but as a devotion it was decidedly non- if not anti-masculine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Pompeo Batoni\u00a0   The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (today\u2019s feast day) has not been entirely salubrious for the Church. It is no doubt good and helpful to focus on the human nature and emotions of Jesus; but which emotions are presented and how those emotions have been presented has created problems. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,242,44],"tags":[1325,1326,1324],"class_list":["post-4878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-liturgy","category-masculinity","tag-batoni","tag-effeminate","tag-sacred-heart","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4880,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878\/revisions\/4880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}