" . . . can art change anyone’s politics? I don’t mean in the sense of persuading ninnies that the CIA killed John Kennedy, but in the deeper and more thoroughgoing sense of effecting a genuine transformation in one’s view of the world.

W.H. Auden thought not:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

Clement Greenberg said much the same thing, less poetically but more transparently: "Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who receive his art." I incline that way as well, but my own view is more nuanced. The insurmountable problem of explicitly political art, it seems to me, is that it is, literally, exclusive. As a result, it fails in what I take to be one of the defining responsibilities of aesthetically serious art, which is to aspire to universality, speaking (at least potentially) to all men in all conditions.

The only way art can do this is by reposing, in Dr. Johnson’s immortal words, on the stability of truth. By embodying and dramatizing truth, it brings us closer to understanding the nature of the human condition. And might such an enterprise be political? In a way, I suppose, though one must never forget that political opinions are epiphenomenal: they arise from experience rather than preceding it. (If they don’t, those who hold them are by definition out of touch with reality.) As for me, I know that my experience of great art has shaped my philosophy of life, which in turn informs my political views. But has great art ever had a direct effect on those views? Not in my experience. Nor can I think offhand of even one truly great work of art that was created with the specific intention of changing anyone’s political views. If you want to do that with your art, you must accept going in that the results will be less than great—and if that doesn’t bother you, fine. Greenberg got that right, too: "There are, of course, more important things than art: life itself, what actually happens to you. This may sound silly, but I have to say it, given what I’ve heard art-silly people say all my life: I say that if you have to choose between life and happiness or art, remember always to choose life and happiness." This may mean choosing politics over art, especially if you’re not a good artist to begin with."
 
Barbara Nicolosi has a fine blog on her efforts at Act One, and her talk to Catholic priests on the importance of Beauty and Art in religious life. 

"Of course, the arts are also inadequate. People told me that the movie The Passion of the Christ was too much for them. Without getting into a discussion of the artistic merit of the film, it is still worth saying that, as bad as all the violence was in the film, it still doesn’t even come near to representing with any accuracy, the horror of one venial sin. (Which seems to subvert my point today very nicely…maybe I should leave?) But I guess the point is, if the arts are inadequate at pointing to reality through symbols, parables and metaphors, how much more is theological language?

The Pope notes in his Letter to Artists, "Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must translate into meaningful terms that which in itself is ineffable…[in so doing] it nourishes the intuition of those who look and listen."

He goes on to make the pretty radical statement - particularly in this moment of ecclesial and artistic "disengagement" - that art is not just an object that proceeds from theological brooding, but is actually a source of theology. "