Contemporary Religious Artists Association
"The artistic vocation in the service of beauty"
The CRAA exists to encourage artists interested in creating works of art of sacred beauty.
The CRAA wishes all of our members and their families
rich blessings and creative prayer!
The CRAA wishes all of our members and their families
rich blessings and creative prayer!
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We are the Contemporary Religious Artists Association, an international guild of painters, sculptors, writers, and composers dedicated to seek God with heart and mind, and to glorify God through our artistic work. We explore and expand our creative work in the tradition since early Christendom. We are an ecumenical group created to answer the appeal of Saint John Paul II in 1999 when he called artists to “search for new epiphanies of beauty so that through their creative work as artists they may offer these gifts to the world.”
“A glimmer of that feeling has shone so often in your eyes when—like the artists of every age—captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words, colours and shapes, you have admired the work of your inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some way to associate you. “ |
The CRAA was founded in January 2013, with official Papal recognition in May 2013. Members have exhibited their work in Vienna, Austria and Monreale, Italy, in partnership with the international organization IMAGO UNITATIS, based in Vienna with Pontifical recognition since 2005. Many of our members are also members of the Catholic Fine Arts Council of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. We would like to express our gratitude to Archbishop Joseph Naumann, and the Staff of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas for their support, and for the blessing of Cardinal Christoph von Schönborn of Vienna.
The CRAA is founded on the principles of sacred art as laid out by the fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). The fathers decreed about images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels and of holy men and women:
The CRAA is founded on the principles of sacred art as laid out by the fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). The fathers decreed about images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels and of holy men and women:
The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred liturgical objects. Further, people are drawn to honor these images with the offering of incense and lights, as was piously established by ancient custom. Indeed,the honor paid to an image traverses it, reaching the model, and he who venerates the image, venerates the person represented in that image. (Second Council of Nicaea, 787)
