Fortnight for Freedom, Day 9

There is something in the progressive spirit of the famed artworks of Sister Mary Corita from an earlier era that implicitly upbraids the conservative counter-spirit of today's Fortnight for Freedom. Take, for instance, her "The Juiciest Tomato of All" serigraph from 1964:

(Click to enlarge.)

She's referring cheekily to the Blessed Virgin Mary, of course. How appropriate that cheekiness was, in a day in which Vatican II was metaphorically throwing open the windows and letting fresh air into the stuffy old Catholic Church.

Sister Mary Corita

The woman now known as Corita Kent, pictured at left as Sister Mary Corita, is enjoying a retrospective, "Sister Mary Corita: R(ad)ical Love," now at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC. It runs until July 15.








The website for the exhibition says of Corita Kent:

As a member of the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles and an influential teacher at Immaculate Heart College in the 1960s, Corita developed a bold graphic language that revealed her impassioned spiritual beliefs and vision of peace and love in the turbulent 1960s.

From the exhibition, here's another of Corita's images:

(Click to enlarge.)

I grew up in the 1960s, when there were truly "impassioned spiritual beliefs," and there was likewise a palpable "vision of peace and love" in the post-Vatican II Catholic Church of the time. Sister Mary Corita's posters were ubiquitous at Georgetown University during the late 1960s, as I well recall.

Here's another:

The upside down yellow text says, "Wine that rejoyces man's heart."

Another:

You can read it as "Open Wide: That the King of Glory May Enter In," or as "Open Wide: The Exits of Poverty to the Children of the Poor." Get it? It's the exact same, essentially basic Christian message stated in two different ways.

Where, I wonder, is the second version of the message in today's Fortnight for Freedom? If the bishops get their way, lower-income women working for Catholic institutions would not be given contraception coverage, and the "exits for their children" would have to accomodate a whole lot more children.