Art: Provided

Until the late Renaissance, European artists devoted most of their talents to religious art; then the secular tide set in. Today few artists even think of painting for churches. Pope Pius XII made an attempt to reverse the drift three years ago with an encyclical proclaiming that "modern art should be given free scope in the due and reverent service of the church and the sacred rites, provided that [the artists] preserve a correct balance between styles, tending neither to extreme realism nor to excessive symbolism . . ." Last week he welcomed 300 artists and art authorities from 23 countries to a Rome conference on religious art, and told them more about what he meant by "provided."

Art, the Pope argued, is nothing if not understandable: "Art helps men to know each other ... All maxims which make art fall down from its sublime role profane it, and make it sterile 'Art for Art's Sake.'"

Personal Opinion. To some delegates the welcoming speech sounded like an official blast at surrealist and abstract art. Not so, said conference officials: it should be interpreted as a strong recommendation against falling into extremes, but the Pope had mentioned no school of art by name. Moreover, his words had been those of a simple speech rather than an encyclical, and should therefore be considered as the Pope's personal opinion.

To illustrate its points, the Vatican had arranged a vast show of 1,400 religious art works produced in the past half century. Most of them were conservative and many were dull, although the exhibition did include a few standout pictures that proved how "understandable" religious art can be without sacrificing freedom or strength of expression. Among them were a powerful close-up of Christ on the cross, drawn by aging French Modern Georges Rouault, and an industrial-age view of Jesus in the Street, by a little-known Italian painter named Francesco Perotti. But the chilly traditionalism of the exhibition as a whole showed that the Rome conference had been long overdue.

"Catalogue Virgins." Delegates attacked the problem from both sides. Some threw bricks at free-wheeling artists and some at brake-stomping clerics. They passed resolutions urging the formation of Catholic artists' unions, and more thorough religious training for Catholic art students. They even recommended that "competent authorities update-the artistic culture and taste of the clergy."

Maurice Lavanoux, the good grey secretary of Manhattan's Liturgical Arts Society, gave strong support to that idea. In the U.S., he declared, church-goods houses "have debased the taste of generations of worshipers" by filling churches with mass-produced, painted-plaster "catalogue Virgins." Most parishes, Lavanoux added, "accept this practice because they think it is the normal thing, but the capacity of the average parishioner for accepting good art has been greatly underestimated . . . We need the contemporary artist to help us end the scandal of the trash that is in our churches."