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Chicago, Ill., Dec 21, 2017 / 04:13 am (CNA).- Coloring books for adults have exploded onto the bookstore scene in the past few years. What was once considered a hobby for the kids is now all the rage for people who are full-grown.
While the most popular books out there feature images of gardens, forests and beautiful patterns, Ave Maria Press and Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui are creating adult coloring books that draw from something else: the tradition of medieval Catholic art.
Mitsui, who lives in Chicago with his wife and their three children, specializes in ink drawing and describes his style as very graphic, with “precise edges and sharp outlines.” He’s heavily inspired by Catholic art from the 14th and 15th century, but is also influenced by the graphic elements of Japanese art, particularly with how it treats light and shadow.
While Mitsui told CNA that he hadn’t paid much attention to the adult coloring book trend at first, he has done a lot of work in black and white, which works well for the medium. He would print a lot of images in black and white and then color them in to sell as hand-colored images, and he would give his children the extra prints, or the prints that didn’t turn out just right, for them to color.
“I would save all of the ones that didn’t pass my quality control, and I would give them to my kids to color at Mass,” he told CNA.
“I have small children who have a hard time paying attention so I would give them some of these coloring sheets. And friends of mine started asking for them and I thought, you know, I should really make this available to the public.”
With this in mind, Mitsui started adding the black and white images – usually of saints or other religious images – to his website, so that parents could access them for their kids and leave a little donation. Almost immediately, he was contacted by Ave Maria publishing company about creating a book for adults.
His first book features images from the mysteries of the rosary. Mitsui had been privately commissioned for a project on the rosary a few years back, and so he said it was easy to compile those images and create a coloring book with a unifying theme.
Faced with quick success, he soon began planning for another book, featuring colorable images of the Saints. While the book includes many of the main players – the Virgin Mary, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Michael the Archangel – it also includes some more obscure figures like St. Robert of Newminster, St. Gobnait, and St. Hugh of Lincoln.
While many of Mitsui’s images in the coloring books come from privately commissioned pieces he’s done in the past, some of them also come from images he’s created as part of lessons for his children, who are homeschooled.
Mitsui added that he finds it unnecessary to divide coloring books into categories for children and adults. Children deserve, and equally enjoy, the beautiful and more intricate images that are often only marketed to adults, he said.
“I don’t think that you should say well, we have these really sophisticated coloring books with detailed art, and we’re going to give these to adults, and then we present things that have artwork in them that we don’t really think is that good, and then give those to kids,” he said.
“There’s so many children’s picture books that are really beautiful and really sophisticated and intelligent artwork, but they kind of get drowned out by so many ones that are sort of insipid, and I don’t think that that’s right,” he added.
“Kids like to see detailed images, they can actually appreciate serious art, and a good way to introduce them to it is to look through what coloring books are being sold for the adults.”
The sudden upsurge in the popularity of coloring books for adults has fascinated everyone from researchers to art therapists to yoga and meditation connoisseurs.
Mitsui said he’s excited about the trend, because it may mean that more adults are acknowledging their desire to express themselves creatively.
“It seems there’s an idea that a lot of adults have that drawing or making art is something that you do when you’re a child, and then unless you become a professional you kind of give it up,” he said. “And I think that’s just sort of a poverty…I don’t know why there’s a reluctance on the part of so many adults to create artwork.”
Drawing used to be the fashionable thing for adults to do in the Victorian era, he added. Many adults, particularly women, had their own sketchbooks and honed their drawing skills. Some of these sketchbooks have been preserved, and some of the work is quite good.
“I think what that demonstrates is that a lot of what goes into being an artist is skill that is learnable with practice,” Mitsui said. “People have this idea that somehow when it comes to art, you’re given this measure of ability from the beginning and you can never do anything to increase or decrease that, and I don’t think that’s true.”
For Catholics in particular, a Catholic adult coloring book is a way to become familiar with the rich tradition of Catholic art in a way that is different than viewing a painting in a museum, he said.
“The Catholic church has such a superabundance of wealth in terms of its artistic tradition, that sometimes it can get lost when it’s just sort of viewed as data,” he said.
“I’m interested in medieval religious art, and I think the art of that era certainly is very rich in terms of what it can teach you about the Catholic religion in that it’s very precise theologically, it corroborates the writings of the Church fathers, it corroborates the liturgy. So you see all of the Catholic tradition more clearly if you’re familiar with its presentation,” he said.
Having a book that you’re able to look at closely, and an image that you’re engaging not just with your eyes but also your hands, forces you to slow down and really concentrate on the image, he added.
“It’s a way to train yourself to really look at art and I think to really look at anything,” he said. “That more concentrated vision is something that is quite peculiar to a mass media age.”
This article originally ran on CNA July 10, 2016.
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Vatican City, Dec 20, 2017 / 09:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Wednesday that the funeral Mass of Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston who died Dec. 20, will be held Thursday.
As is customary for cardinals who most recently resided in Rome, the Mass will be held at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, and will be presided over by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, alongside other cardinals and bishops.
After the Eucharistic celebration, Pope Francis will preside over the rite of Last Commendation and the Valediction, as is usual. Law will be buried in a tomb at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major, which is customary for the priests who have served there.
Cardinal Law died in Rome at the age of 86, after a brief hospitalization due to a congenital heart failure. Two weeks ago, he experienced a decline in health and was admitted to a clinic in Rome to monitor the problem. He had been unresponsive for several days before his death.
Pope Francis sent a telegram Dec. 20 for the cardinal’s death, expressing his condolences to the College of Cardinals and offering his prayers for the repose of his soul, “that the Lord God who is rich in mercy, may welcome him in His eternal peace.”
He also sent his apostolic blessing to anyone who might be mourning Law’s death, entrusting them to the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, under her title of ‘Salus Populi Romani.’
Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vt., who served as Law’s spokesman during the period before the cardinal’s resignation from Boston, said in a statement on his death that like each of us, Law’s days had their fair share of “light and shadows.”
“While I knew him to be a man of faith, a kind man and a good friend, I respect that some will feel otherwise, and so I especially ask them to join me in prayer and work for the healing and renewal of our Church,” he said.
““May Cardinal Law rest in peace. And in these days when, as Christians, we celebrate the Child who restored God’s goodness to our broken humanity, may we all recommit ourselves to making Christ’s Church a worthy, welcoming home for all, especially those most vulnerable and in need,” Coyne added.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston and Law’s immediate successor, published a statement Dec. 20, offering his sincere apologies to anyone who has experienced the trauma of sexual abuse by clergy.
“As Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law served at a time when the Church failed seriously in its responsibilities to provide pastoral care for her people,” particularly children, he stated, noting his own work and the work of other priests and religious sisters of the Archdiocese to help bring healing to those most affected and the wider Catholic community.
The fact that Cardinal Law’s life and ministry, for many people, is identified with the crisis of sexual abuse by priests is a “sad reality,” he said, because his “pastoral legacy has many other dimensions.”
These include his involvement in the civil rights struggle in Mississippi in the early part of his priesthood, as well as his leadership in the ecumenical and interfaith movement following the Second Vatican Council.
He was also well-known for his ministry to the sick, dying and bereaved, O’Malley recounted.
“In the Catholic tradition, the Mass of Christian Burial is the moment in which we all recognize our mortality, when we acknowledge that we all strive for holiness in a journey which can be marked by failures large and small,” he concluded.
“Cardinal Law will be buried in Rome where he completed his last assignment. I offer prayers for him and his loved ones as well as for all the people of the Archdiocese.”
A Dec. 20 statement by Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, echoed O’Malley’s statement of condolence and prayers.
Expressing his closeness to survivors of sexual abuse, especially at this time, DiNardo prayed that they might find peace and strength.
He also commended their brave witness, which led to “a comprehensive response from the Church in the United States to protect and heal the deep wounds of abuse.”
Law was appointed Archbishop of Boston in 1984, and resigned from the position on Dec. 13, 2002, after reports revealed that he did not disclose multiple allegations of clerical sexual abuse to the police or to the public, or intervene to remove priests accused of sexual abuse from priestly ministry.
After his resignation, Law moved to Rome. He was assigned as the Archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in 2004 by Pope John Paul II, a largely ceremonial position from which he retired in 2011, at the age of 80.
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Vatican City, Dec 19, 2017 / 09:38 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Bernard Law has died after a brief hospitalization due to congenital heart failure, according to sources close to the cardinal and a report from the Boston Globe. He was 86 years old.
Law was appointed Archbishop of Boston in 1984, and resigned from the position on Dec. 13, 2002, after reports revealed that he did not disclose multiple allegations of clerical sexual abuse to the police or to the public, or intervene to remove priests accused of sexual abuse from priestly ministry.
“It is my fervent prayer that this action may help the Archdiocese of Boston to experience the healing, reconciliation and unity which are so desperately needed,” Law wrote at the time of his resignation.
After his resignation, Law moved to Rome. He was assigned as the Archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in 2004 by Pope John Paul II, a largely ceremonial position from which he retired in 2011, at the age of 80. The appointment was controversial, especially as many in the US continued to call for his criminal prosecution.
Law was born on November 4, 1931 in Torreon, Mexico, the son of a Catholic father, an Air Force colonel, and a Presbyterian mother.
Law attended high school in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and graduated from Harvard University in 1953. He was ordained a priest on May 21, 1961 for the Natchez-Jackson diocese in Mississippi, and was named vicar general of the diocese ten years later. He also served as a writer and editor for the diocesan newspaper, the Mississippi Register.
In 1973, he was appointed Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, in Missouri.
As a young priest and bishop, he was involved in ecumenism and the civil rights movement. In 1975, he organized the resettlement in his diocese of 166 Vietnamese priests and brothers who had fled Vietnam as refugees.
In the late 1970s, he served as chairman for the U.S. Bishop’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interracial Affairs, and, in the late 1990s, as chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
In 1984, Law was appointed Archbishop of Boston, and in 1985 he was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II.
In 1985, at an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, Law was among the first to call for a universal catechism, which prompted the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992.
“I propose a commission of cardinals to prepare a draft of a conciliar catechism to be promulgated by the Holy Father after consulting the bishops of the world. In a shrinking world a global village-national catechisms will not fill the current need for clear articulation of the church’s faith,” Law said at the synod.
Beginning with visits to Cuba in 1985 and 1989, Law was instrumental in laying the diplomatic groundwork that made possible Pope John Paul II’s visit to the country in 1998. Law met with Fidel Castro on several occasions, and arranged aid from the Archdiocese of Boston to support Cuba’s Catholic Church.
In 2001, Cardinal Law became the subject of international criticism after he admitted that he knew of the accusations of serial abuse against retired priest John Geoghan, and responded by moving Geoghan to another parish rather than going to the authorities.
Law apologized to Geoghan’s victims in a press conference in early 2002.
The sexual abuse scandals in the Archdiocese of Boston led to nationwide outrage regarding practices which failed to protect children from abuse in the Catholic Church. In the spring of 2002, American cardinals met in Rome to discuss the matter, at which time Law offered his resignation, which was initially refused by the Vatican. Sexual abuse scandals broke in the media around the country, in a period which many now call the “Long Lent of 2002.”
In June 2002, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops passed The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, known as the “Dallas Charter,” which established procedures and policies for addressing allegations of sexual abuse in the Church, and for fostering “safe environments” for children and other vulnerable individuals.
On December 6, 2002, Law was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, which was investigating possible criminal violations on behalf of Law and other diocesan officials in the abuse scandal. One week later, his resignation as Archbishop of Boston was accepted by the Vatican.
In September 2002, the Archdiocese of Boston reached a $10M settlement with 86 victims of Geoghan. In 2003, the Archdiocese of Boston agreed to pay $85M to 552 people who claimed to have been abused by Catholic clergy, many of them during Law’s tenure. The Archdiocese has continued to face litigation related to allegations of sexual abuse.
Law was not criminally charged for his involvement in the abuse scandal.
Two weeks ago, Law experienced a decline in health and was admitted to a clinic in Rome to monitor a congenital heart problem.
A few days ago, Law became unresponsive, and, according to reports, he passed away on Tuesday evening.
Funeral details will be made available later this week.
Law will be buried in a tomb at Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major, which is customary for the priests who have served there.
© Catholic World Report