By Randall Smith.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Friends: God calls to His people through many means, even within His Church. Professor Smith, who teaches theology - one of the harder disciplines - is without doubt correct that many people have to be well on the way to Christianity even before they get to theology proper. Given the situation that we're in, we need to be laying out all avenues for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. At TCT, we take that to be a central part of our charism. The Thing is many things and more than things. Please, join us in this great work. Make your contribution to The Catholic Thing. Today.

Now for today's column...

There are many reasons people come into the Catholic Church, but a common one is their experience of its beauty: the beauty of the art, the architecture, the music, and the liturgy. Too often, those whose goal is "evangelizing" ignore the beauty expressed and embodied in the Church's artistic tradition. Why?

There are few more effective tools for encouraging people to take the Church seriously than hearing the angelic sound of Monteverdi's Vespers of the Blessed Virgin or Josquin des Prez's Missa Pange Lingua; appreciating the superb paintings of Fra Angelico and Caravaggio; or contemplating the transcendent beauty of the Cathedral of Chartres and the Duomo in Florence. Experiencing any of these would be a good first step, but there is so much more that this step would be like dipping your toe in a vast ocean stretching out beyond the horizon.

I teach theology. I believe in the importance of helping young people gain an "understanding of the faith." But I can't do what great art and architecture can do to inspire the awe appropriate to the transcendent mysteries of our faith.

A STEM colleague of mine couldn't understand why the university required so many literature courses. He was a devoted Catholic and a daily communicant at Mass, who understood why we had theology courses, but not why we had so many required literature courses.

I told him that I preferred that our students take more courses on Dante, Chaucer, and the poetry of John Donne than simply taking yet another course to satisfy a theology requirement. "No, no, no," he said. "All they need is a course on composition and writing." He saw no need for any formation of the Catholic imagination to help move the passions and fill the hearts of our students with the glories of the Christian artistic tradition.

Even many "conservative" Catholic institutions spend precious little time introducing their students to the artistic treasures of their tradition. "Let's read a few more books," seems to be the guiding principle. Reading is great. But people in universities, professors and students both, can get "lost in their heads." We need to be "brought back to earth" - not in the sense of becoming less idealistic and more "pragmatic." This rarely brings people "back to earth" in the right way.

A better way arises from a deeper appreciation of the Incarnation. And there are few better ways to help students understand the mystery of the Incarnation - of what it means for the Word to become flesh with its mysterious marriage of the eternal and the material - than to introduce them to the beauty embodied in the best Christian art and architecture.

We wonder why young people leave the Church. Could it be because we haven't connected them emotionally and spiritually to her beauty? Young couples come back to beautiful churches when they want to get married. They travel to places around the world and visit the great art and beautiful churches.

When universities want to recruit new students and build a sense of devotion to the school, they make sure to take them to the beautiful traditional buildings on the campus. Those are the ones the students will proudly keep coming back to visit. They will bring their friends and say things like, "I had several classes in that building," knowing that their friends will consider them fortunate...