Where is the Liturgical Clip Art?

I am a believer in the use of worship (participation) aids to encourage assembly participation in the “singing of the mass”.  Not just any worship aid, but a very well thought out and professionally created worship aid with notes and music—not just a sheet with words. 

It is my goal as a minister of music to create worship aids that look professional, are pleasing to the eye and easy to read.  Any seasoned director of environment and arts will tell you that everything in the church, the vestments, the artwork, the flowers, etc. should all have a certain richness that draws the faithful into prayer.  On special occasions (during the Season of Christmas and Easter) I also have the worship aids professionally printed on 8 1/2 by 17 (folded) paper.  My regular Sunday worship aids are always legal size (8 1/2 by 14) folded in half.  I find that using 8 1/2 by 11 paper (folded) requires me to shrink the music and words of the hymns down too small.  I can’t imagine someone with bad eyes squinting to see the words and notes to a hymn on a standard piece of paper.

This brings me (finally) to the topic of this blog post.  Where can one find acceptable liturgical clip art to use in a worship aid?  I’ve searched the Internet high and low and with a few exceptions, I can not find good quality clip art.  The graphic at the beginning of this post is from Hermanoleon Clipart which I dare say is about the only Internet site I’ve found that has Catholic clip art that conveys prayer and worship.  I used this particular graphic for the cover art work for my Pentecost worship aid.  Much of what I see on the Internet is non-Catholic in nature and although some of it is high quality, it doesn’t meet my criteria or doesn’t represent our Catholic form of worship.  The worst clip art I found on my Internet search was of an animated cross with legs and arms and a “happy face”.  I can’t imagine what the creator of that graphic was thinking!

 
My all-time favorite Catholic clip art is  from Liturgy Training Publications called Clip Art for the Liturgical Year by Steve Erspamer, SM.  An internal search of the LTP web site for clip art may find you as frustrated as I was.  If you click on “customer service” and then “software” you’ll be taken to this location where they do refer to the aforementioned software but don’t really tell you how to order it.  The second graphic I used for this post, “Peace to You”, is an example of the art work on the Clip Art for the Liturgical Year CD. 

What are our guidelines for creating worship or participation aids?  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops actually published a documented called “Guidelines for the Publication of participation Aids“.  It doesn’t really mention much about clip art or artwork in a worship aid, but towards the end of the document, it does list various resources for graphics used in creating a worship aid.  My advise would be to use quality graphics that call you to prayer, and try not to use to many graphics in your worship aid because it tends to clutter things up and distract from the professionalism of the aid.  I normally just use one piece of clip art for the front of the worship aid.