Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Andrea Bocelli, Anish Kapoor, and the Pope walk into the Sistine Chapel...

But this is no joke. On Saturday, the Vatican invited 250 of the art world’s Very Important People to its digs in the Holy See for a little face-time with Benedict XVI. The aforementioned Bocelli and Kapoor, as well as Ennio Morricone, Arvo Pärt, and other literary and artistic luminaries, put in appearances. The general mood in the artist camp was one of awed reverence; the general dress code, black. Nobody wants to clash with the supreme leader of the Catholic church.

Were they right to feel so flattered? In theory, the Vatican’s decision to extend the olive branch to the arts apparatchik couldn’t have been more admirable. Interactions between those who peg themselves as God’s messengers, and those more inclined to say with Diego Rivera that “I’ve never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso,” have historically been not-quite-ideal—to put it mildly. (Remember the Inquisition?) Benedict himself picked up on this, drawing on the language of motivational management literature to emphasize the need for “re-establishing a dialogue,” and inviting artists to inject their work with a renewed dose of spirituality.

It became clear relatively quickly, however, that the presumable motive for the meeting—a discussion of how best to “communicate beauty”—masked an exercise in negative aesthetics. No tourist will ever mistake the Vatican for the MoMA; the church’s vision for a new art seems mostly to be an art that won’t offend said church.

Benedict certainly didn’t self-censor as he condemned contemporary artistic representations of beauty as “illusory and deceitful.” He went on to argue that such art “imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.” (Tough words for those of us who didn’t know we were enslaved in the first place: could the papal library stock Weber and Nietzsche?) The spleen was perhaps only to be expected from a bishop who, prior to donning the mitre, frequently provoked the press barb “God’s Rottweiler.”

The precise victim of his vitriol, though, remained exasperatingly ambiguous. The Vatican has engaged in fairly frequent shake-ups with thriller writer Dan Brown, including last year’s totally straight-faced denunciation of “The Da Vinci Code” as an “offense against God.” (The spats tend to come off as amusing largely because the church takes him far more seriously than the rest of the world does.) Yet it’s hard to imagine Brown—or previous bête noire J.K. Rowling—creating a work of such potency as to produce the existential symptoms the Pope fears.

The question of whether such a work exists at all is a valid one. If it does, the church has remained mum. As insistent as it is on passing judgment, the Vatican remains troublingly resistant to singling out any genuinely serious modern art or literature to criticize. Hand-waving vaguely at “contemporary representations of beauty,” or straw-manning Ron and Harry, is far easier than starting a real debate about what role religion can play in the arts. So far, the church’s reaction to complex—if provocative—creative products like Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” has generally been one of recoil; works of art that don’t aim to provoke have elicited no comment at all.

Even if it had taken aim at any truly idea-rich art, the church would do well to be wary. Nearly every time the clergy has tried to peg something as “illusory and deceitful” in the past, it’s been forced to engage in copious backtracking—picking out “good art” is always something of a dice toss. For proof, the Pope would simply have had to look up. Michelangelo’s altar fresco “The Last Judgment,” a fundamental background work in any study of western art history, loomed over Saturday’s proceedings as the literal backdrop for Benedict’s welcoming speech. Yet during the heady days of mid-17th century Italy, around the same time that Galileo had his feet held to the fire for his dangerously newfangled Copernican views, Michelangelo was accused of creating work more fit for a public bath than a place of worship. One artist was even hired to paint a loincloth over the offending genitalia.

Perhaps that’s what’s worth keeping in mind: that the distance from olive branch to fig leaf is only yea big. Aiming deliberately for spirituality or beauty may be missing the point. Often, it’s actually the most “sacrilegious,” boundary-testing works that most stretch thinking—and ultimately strengthen belief. In some sense, Benedict’s get-together did acknowledge this; if art can “enslave” us, it can also save us. (The Pope even floated the idea of a booth at the Venice Biennale next year: one can only wonder the contents of the goody bags he’d pass out.) But it takes a startling lack of faith to argue that contemporary creative acts are isolating and worthless simply because they don’t contain the overt moral messages that scan with the church’s higher-ups.

At any rate, given a raucous three-hour bus ride to New Haven, sleepless night of party-hopping, and booze-fueled all-day tailgate at The Game, it’s safe to say that piety wasn’t at the forefront of the typical Harvard student’s mind this Saturday. Thousands of miles away in Vatican City, the Pope’s gesture may have superficially seemed like a gesture of aisle-crossing good will—but, in its own way, it was just as profane.

Jessica A. Sequeira ’11, a Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.