While we assert the Church's independence of any one in particular of
these means of self-expression, her indifference to style and mode of
speech so long as substantial fidelity is secured, we must not deny that
some of them are, of their own nature, more apt to her purpose than
others and allow a fuller revelation of her sense; and that in
proportion as her influence is strong in the world she tends to modify
human thought and language, to leaven philosophy and fine art, so as to
form by a process of selection and refusal, and in some measure even to
create, an ever richer and more flexible medium of utterance.

In this sense we can with some caution speak of "Catholic art" in music,
architecture, and painting, so far, that is, as we can determine the
extent and nature of the Church's action, and therefore the tendency of
her influence in the way of stimulus and restraint with regard to
subject and treatment. We do not unjustly discern an author's style as a
personal element distinct from the language and phraseology of which no
item is his own. The manner in which he uses that language, his
selections and refusals make, in union with the borrowed elements, a
tongue that may be called his, in an exclusive sense. The Church, too,
has her style, which, though difficult to discern amid her use of a
Pentecostal variety of languages, is no doubt always the same--at least
in tendency.

Salvation-Army worship is certainly not of the Church's style, but I do
not think, were there no absolute irreverence and scandal to be feared,
that she would hesitate to use such a language, were it the only one
understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were
often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency would be towards
restraint, order, and exterior reverence. Again, the stoical coldness