But it is not confined to the illiterate. All of us respond to beautiful things in a way that is quite different from the way we respond to a text or a verbal proposition. That's why so many FReepers use pictures in addition to words. And in a grander way, that's why Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" has fascinated millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people who otherwise would not be much interested in a bare text that says "God created man."
I am a RCIA teacher, and I have long said that one weakness of our (parish) RCIA program is "Too much Prose, not enough Poetry."
I love the True. I love the Good. And we shouldn't ever neglect or short-change those who are most moved by the Beautiful.
The Sacred Scriptures speak much of the Glory of God. And Glory is not just a five-letter word. It is an encounter will brilliance and splendor that blows your mind.
After Vatican II, the iconoclasts came out in full force. So we got flat prose, childish music and bad modern art. Revolutionaries tend to be puritans. The New England Fathers frowned on poetry, except the psalms, and banished chant for cacaphony. Virginians who traveled north remarked on the singing in congregational churches where everyone sang the words as they pleased as that was not pleasing to the musical ear.