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Obviously. The point is that they WERE depicted in icons with halos. We're not talking about commemorative portraits. And lest someone think I have a political ax to grind, my own politics tend to left-of-center on questions of civil rights, nonviolence, labor, etc.

Dear Daniel,

O.K., fair enough:

1) No to your question at face value. I don't know enough about Fr. McNichol's icon to make an informed response. There are priests involved in outreach to homosexuals. Again, I don't know enough about the entire issue.

2) I think modern iconographers ought to be faithful to tradition, but they should also use it as a spiritual springboard to introduce some creativity. This Fr. McNichol has eminently done with his Marian icons and his icon of the Orthodox New Martyr, Bl. Nestor Savchuk of Odessa. But it is also a matter of subjective view. I don't like all of Fr. McNichols' icons, but I think he has done a really traditional job of his Marian icons - and Marian icons that are hard to get elsewhere.

3) The issue of political stands is a very complex one and a good one - I congratulate you on bringing it forward, you are obviously a very studious and thoughtful person. Certainly this issue arose during the proceedings to canonize the Romanov Martyrs and others. When the Pope beatified a Croatian bishop, I forget his name, I myself received calls from Serbian friends asking me how the Pope could honour such a "fascist" person? The beatification of Bl. Jan Sarkander in the Czech Republic was greeted with anger from Protestants. When the Pope beatified the first Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan in North America, I received messages from Ukr. Orthodox who said that that hierarch had persecuted their Orthodox ancestors in Manitoba etc. But even the Pope allowed the name of Martin Luther King Jr. to be included in a general list of "20th century martyrs" who are not beatified by Catholic standards but who stood for Christian values. Privately, we may venerate such in our homes, if we wish.

4) As for non-Christians, Christians have the right to privately venerate ANYONE they deem stood for Christian values, even if they were not Christian themselves. St Augustine said of Plato and Aristotle that they "knew the true faith." Christian Churches in Europe have, for centuries, iconographically depicted such pagan philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and even Alexander the Great. The rotunda Churches of Romania have icons of these pagan Greek philosophers who are, nevertheless, not given any public cultus.

5) There is no question but that we may give liturgical, public veneration to those saints who are not only recognized as such by our Churches, but who are also recognized by our local Bishops'. There are many saints in the various Christian calendars - but our local hierarchs are the ones who outline which saints are to be honoured by our local parishes. For example, St Photios the Great is in the Orthodox calendar, but not in the RC calendar, and yet the Ruthenian Church has him in its calendar and veneration of him is allowed in the Ruthenian Church (my UGCC wouldn't be ready for that, just yet I'm afraid). Priests would bless icons for private use of recognized Christian saints. Priests may bless icon corners in our homes and bless any icons we may have there for our private veneration or inspiration. They would not/could not do that for public liturgical celebration in Church. During the iconoclastic crisis, one of the charges against iconophiles was that they brought icons of their dead relatives to Church and hung them up for liturgical celebration. That was a no-no, then as now.

In addition, the Calendar itself in our Church distingushes no less than six levels of veneration of various Saints.

There are 20 Byzantine Emperors and Empresses in our Calendar - most of whom do not have a public liturgical cult. They were generous to and protective of the Church and so the Church expressed gratitude by putting them into the calendar as a "memorial" but not for "public veneration." There are many other examples of this.

As for haloes, when done for private purposes, it is fine to write icons of not-yet or "never-will-be" canonized persons who inspire us personally.

St Xenia of St Petersburg, St Herman of Alaska, St John Maximovitch etc. all had icons with haloes that one could buy and honour privately years before their canonization.

In fact, formerly the act of making an icon of someone with a halo was an expression of the "Vox Populi" with respect to the sanctity of a person - even before the Church said anything about the matter.

For instance, when the English and Welsh Martyrs had their pictures painted in the English College of Rome, these pictures were venerated as those of true Martyrs - which they were.

In fact, when Rome came to the question of their beatification, the fact of long-standing private devotion to them helped, rather than hindered, their beatification.

As for non-Christian or questionable subjects - this is largely subjective.

I would personally prefer only icons of saints and not-yet-canonized persons of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (or any church that has the Apostolic doctrine of the canonization and veneration of Saints).

I have a Protestant friend who is into venerating saints and he has pictures of Martin Luther and John Calvin in his home that he honours. But these two would have personally resisted any sort of canonization process . . .

That Martin Luther King Jr. is honoured as a martyr with a small "m" - the Pope himself has allowed him to be considered a small "m" martyr for human rights of the 20th century.

If he is a martyr in the classic sense, and I don't know, then we know that the Church often included into her calendar martyrs who were not Catholic or Orthodox - but outright heretics.

St Basil the Great wrote a panegyric to St Nicetas the Goth, an Arian priest ordained by the famous Arian leader, Ulfilas (who even wrote an Arian creed).

St Artemius the Dux Augustalis of Egypt was honoured for being martyred by pagans as he destroyed their temples in Alexandria - the thing is, though, that he was an Arian heretic and was also, at the same time, destroying Orthodox-Catholic churches too!

As Fr. Holweck in his "Dictionary Of Saints" says, "the fact of martyrdom led the Church to overlook the defect of their orthodoxy. Perhaps it was through ignorance that Nicetas (or Sabbas) were Arians.

We know that St Isaac of Nineveh was an East Syrian Saint and that he was more likely than not consecrated by a Nestorian bishop - there were no other kind of bishops in his region where he lived.

The only real issue with Fr. McNichol's icons, as I see it, is the homosexual activism matter you raise.

And again, I don't know what's behind that, what it's supposed to get across. It is not the kind of icon that I would purchase as it doesn't say anything to me. But it might to others - and what, I don't know. But I agree that it is questionable.

And one may find questionable icons in even traditional Church stores.

The Old Believers will never buy an icon that portrays the Holy Spirit as a Dove or God the Father as a bearded "Ancient of Days."

Alex

Well, thank you for a most learned [as usual] response. I think "questionable" is a bit weak but I'll accept it as a sort of concession to my point [I am more inclined to term it "outrageous"].
I would contrast the iconographers in question with Br Claude OSB of Mt Angel monastery [I believe you once mentioned his icons of OL of Lourdes and other Roman images]. He once did an icon based on the "do not weep for me Mother" image only Christ was depicted as bearing the marks of Karposi's sarcoma ie, as an AIDS patient. There was an outcry from Orthodox iconographers, who insisted that Christ is not to be portrayed as a symbol for any cause, in keeping with iconographic traditions.Br Claude responded by confessing that he was insufficienty aware of these traditions and apologized to anyone he had offended. He promised in the future to be more careful and admitted that an image of the suffering Christ ought to be sufficient inspiration to all who suffer without any further additions. As far as I know he has been faithful to that promise.

Dear Daniel,

Point well taken - but icons have promoted all sorts of causes over the centuries.

I've seen an icon of St Mark of Ephesus standing over a prostrate pope with his tiara falling off.

The "Pillars of Orthodoxy" icon is meant to assert a certain anti-unionist (with RCism) perspective, especially the scroll held by St Mark of Ephesus. If I am wrong about this, I will stand corrected (but until then I'll be sitting).

One may argue that these and other icons are examples of religious causes . . .

Granted, if an icon is meant to promote a cause that is inherently against Christian morality - or could be seen to be - then it breaks the canons of iconography.

And the individuals we are talking about are all Western Christians for whom iconography is already something of a foreign art - the Orthodox would say "foreign" because they are not members of the Orthodox Church. Other Orthodox would say that the "lack of grace" in the lives of those cut off from the Church is reflected in their "attempts" at iconography.

A true icon is also a mirror of the soul of the iconographer.

Iconographers must fast, attend Divine Liturgy and Communion, pray and bless their paints, brushes etc. before undertaking to write an icon.

An icon is always an expression of Orthodox faith and worship in the first instance.

And an icon of a Saint therefore should always be an icon of a Saint whose experience and example of personal Theosis is confirmed by the Church either through the formal act of glorification (canonization) or else through the veneration of the people of God whose voice is also the Voice of God.

God bless,

Alex

Dear Daniel,

Point well taken - but icons have promoted all sorts of causes over the centuries.

I've seen an icon of St Mark of Ephesus standing over a prostrate pope with his tiara falling off.

The "Pillars of Orthodoxy" icon is meant to assert a certain anti-unionist (with RCism) perspective, especially the scroll held by St Mark of Ephesus. If I am wrong about this, I will stand corrected (but until then I'll be sitting).

One may argue that these and other icons are examples of religious causes . . .

Granted, if an icon is meant to promote a cause that is inherently against Christian morality - or could be seen to be - then it breaks the canons of iconography.

And the individuals we are talking about are all Western Christians for whom iconography is already something of a foreign art - the Orthodox would say "foreign" because they are not members of the Orthodox Church. Other Orthodox would say that the "lack of grace" in the lives of those cut off from the Church is reflected in their "attempts" at iconography.

A true icon is also a mirror of the soul of the iconographer.

Iconographers must fast, attend Divine Liturgy and Communion, pray and bless their paints, brushes etc. before undertaking to write an icon.

An icon is always an expression of Orthodox faith and worship in the first instance.

And an icon of a Saint therefore should always be an icon of a Saint whose experience and example of personal Theosis is confirmed by the Church either through the formal act of glorification (canonization) or else through the veneration of the people of God whose voice is also the Voice of God.

God bless,

Alex

Yes, abuse of the iconographic art is nothing new; one can find examples throughout history [and I would include some of the icons you cited in a previous post]. The last part of your post is something I could have written. I think the iconographer has a moral duty to be cautious and the iconographers in question have been anything but...

My, my. All this hubub over Robert Lentz. IMHO, his work doesn't even have ARTISTIC merit, much less spiritual. Trust me, he's not putting Rublev out of business!

Reminds me of the big deal everyone made over The Last Temptation of Christ. I heard the movie was so badly done that it wouldn't have made ANY money except that so many people went to see it out of curiosity to find out what all the fuss was about.

I checked out the website where I first saw Robert Lentz's work (Trinity Stores), because I knew it had other "iconographers" on it as well. Sure enough, I found Fr. McNichols there too. I noticed he has an "icon" of Princess Diana - sans halo. That would mean he is following the rule Alex pointed out, not giving a halo to non-saints... But I'm not really familiar with Fr. McNichol's work, so I'll leave it at that.

Frankly, I find Dan Paulos' work - though his silouhette style is not traditional iconography - of more artistic and spiritual value than Lentz.

Tammy

Daniel -
Have you read the accompanying text to Fr. McNichol's "icon" of Matthew Shepherd?
I can't post the link because it only goes to the home page www.trinitystores.com [trinitystores.com] and then you have to navigate to the page. But here is the cut and paste of the text:

And the picture is not done in the style of his other "icons". I'm not sure he's trying to pass this off as an icon. This site sells "religious art" including icons.

I think Fr. McNichols is trying to open our eyes to the plight of homosexuals and that Jesus died for them, too. Jesus died LIKE Matthew Shepherd. For us to just pass by this gruesome death and not pause to consider the death our Savior suffered is calloused and cold.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Tammy

Dear Family of God,

While I'm waiting for THE MEANING OF ICONS by Leonid Ouspensky, Vladimir Lossky arrive at my local library.

Why don't we do something to identify genuine icons. I bet there are different schools of genuine icons too.

Could someone link to genuine icons and pseudo icons on the web so I may see a one-on-one comparison of a icon and a pseudo icon?

It would be interesting to look at icons that have subtle differences that make them genuine or not.

A pic is worth a thousand words.

Paul

Well Tammy, I must defend Mr Lentz on one point: he is a very fine painter. I cannot fault his technique. It is his frequently odd choices of subject matter that I object to.
Yes, as I recall, the Matthew Shepherd image did not have a halo, but I saw it in a book of icons; thus it seems to me that the impression is given that it is an icon [also the title: "the passion of Matthew Shepherd"]
As I said before the boy's death was horrible and tragic but that does not make him a saint. I'll return to my question: if one can paint such an image of Shepherd then why not Fr Geoghan? And if there isn't a canon against silliness there ought to be [Princess Di?] If we're going to paint icons of every ordinary sinner who dies a tragic death the world will not hold them all.

Paul- I don't have the addresses handy but if you do a Google search for Robert Lentz or Fr William Hart McNichols you can see what we're talking about. The book you ordered is full of the genuine article but bear in mind that there are lots of false icons which are executed in impeccable technique, it is more a question of adhering to tradition or not that determines whether an icon is worthy of being blessed by the Church or not.

Daniel,
I find Fr. McNichols' "icons" more artistically pleasing than Robert Lentz's. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I agree, with or without a halo, an icon of Princess Di IS silly... And if not a canon, isn't there a rule of thumb in iconography that the subject of the icon should be Catholic or Orthodox??? She wasn't either one. I think I saw an "icon" of Ghandi on a website somewhere... Might have been Robert Lentz' work!

I don't know what religion Matthew Shepherd was, but IF Fr. McNichols IS trying to pass it off as an icon, I have to agree with you that it is inappropriate.

Well, there's no accounting for some people's taste: I personally do not find Fr McNichols' work pleasing, even aesthetically, while I like Mr Lentz on purely artistic terms. Yes, Gandhi was done by Lentz [as was Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein[!], Harvey Milk, Mother Jones, Steve Biko, and Mama Cass [okay, I was joking about Mama Cass...]]

Dear daniel n,

I guess I don't get it!

I've seen McNichols works. Some look orthodox to me. Some look like a new style with elements of the traditional. The only Lentz icon I know is "Christ the Bridegroom" which looks orthodox to my thinking.

You mentioned "adhering to tradition" but you don't define what that means. Am I left to my own gut feeling to recognize a real icon?

I am looking for an objective standard for icons.

Thanks for your patience.

In Christ,

Paul

I think reading "The Meaning of Icons" will clarify much to you. Lentz's "Christ the Bridegroom" icon is orthodox, what drives me crazy about the guy is that he does perfectly traditional icons, beautifully executed, as well as the wacky ones.