It was a masterpiece and it was his secret. Until this moment. In the 1984 film Amadeus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart found himself suddenly and unexpectedly in the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and his court. The Emperor leveled his eyes at the young composer and the following exchange ensued,
EMPEROR JOSEPH II Mozart, are you aware I have declared the French play of Figaro unsuitable for our theatre?
MOZART Yes, Sire.
EMPEROR JOSEPH II Yet we hear you are making an opera from it. Is this true?
MOZART Who told you this, Majesty?
Mozart was frantic…and irate. This opera – perhaps the greatest opera he would ever devise – had been leaked maliciously by an enemy. And this treachery was further compounded since it was the Emperor who revealed it to him. The French comedy, The Marriage of Figaro, had been banned for fear that it would incite class hatred. Under the glaring eyes of the Emperor and the haughty smirks of his court, Mozart stumbled and stammered working quickly to defend this work of beauty against royal dictate and devious sabotage. In spite of Mozart’s earnest assurances that the opera was apolitical and a “frolic”, the Emperor and his court grew impatient. As did Mozart.
MOZART (testily responding to a court member) Come on now, be honest. Wouldn’t you all rather listen to your hairdressers than Hercules? Or Horatius? Or Orpheus? All those old bores! people so lofty they sound as if they shit marble!
VON SWIETEN (court member) What?
VON STRACK (court member) Govern your tongue, sir! How dare you?
Beat. All look at the Emperor.
MOZART Forgive me, Majesty. I’m a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not.
I’m a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not. When watching Amadeus, the cackling, impudent and oversexed Mozart seems strikingly unfit to be capable of creating such utterly sublime music. And yet he did.
St. Peter was called from his fishing nets and the briny sea to follow Christ through the hills of Israel. One can only imagine the innumerable truths Peter heard and miracles he witnessed that escape record in the four Gospels. He was called the Rock, told that the Church to be built upon him would never be overcome and that whatever he bound and loosed on earth would be likewise bound and loosed in heaven. And yet, Peter was also called Satan, corrected for his short-sightedness and indiscipline and accused of betraying his Christ not once, but three times in one night. Assuredly, mercy and grace would wash away Peter’s sins and he would live faithfully and die heroically. As it were, Peter was a vulgar man in the original form of the word – common, unrefined, belonging to the masses – , but his message was not.
Hilaire Belloc rarely minced words. French by birth, this passionate English Catholic was deeply faithful and notably without guile. In trying to grapple with the human administration of a divine Church, Belloc spouted,
“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
And yet when his closest friend G.K. Chesterton was received into the Church, Belloc unreservedly declared,
“The thing I have to say is this…The Catholic Church is the exponent of REALITY. It is true. Its doctrines in matters large and small are statements of what is… My conclusion – and that of all men who have ever once SEEN it – is the faith.”
The Church is filled with popes, priests and parishioners who daily seek repentance and rely wholly on the steadfast Grace of God. And while it has become a delicious pastime to relish the doctrinal disputes and rank hypocrisies, the synod squabbles and the scandalous statements, this should come as no surprise. After all, like Mozart, St. Peter, Belloc and the entirety of the Church, we are all vulgar (in the larger sense of the word) – common and unrefined, sinners and hypocrites…but our Faith is not. Weak practitioners do not make an imperfect Faith. It simply means we are imperfect. Vulgar.
There are three truths (among many) that I have considered again and again since entering the Church. First, that man is fallible. Second, that man is redeemable. And, third, that man is dependent on the Grace of God to be lifted from the first state to the second. So often it seems we wallow in the first truth and sadly forget about the other two.
So I have a confession to make.
I am a vulgar man. Yes. Yes I am.
But I assure you – I assure you – my Faith is not.
