Yesterday watched the beatification service… incredibly ornate clothes, and metal ware for mass… and this is the successor of a guy who got crucified upside down. And the leader of a church who worship someone who was exposed to messy brutal violence. Think of it. We’ve got from a young guy 2000 years ago, first on a donkey, then dragged bloodied and naked though city streets to a execution on a cross… to a frail old man in crisp clean white clothes sitting regal and barricaded in a funny looking white motor behind bullet proof windows, surrounded by a dozen men in dark suits. Quite an irony.
This is not a bare attack on Catholicism, other parts of the church have some similar as well of course as all kinds of other strange features.
I’ll get back to earlier comments later.
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4 comments:
Bruce, if your image of Our Lord stops at the Crucifixion then it is you, not the Catholics, who are seriously misaphrending; what happened to Jesus, traditionally pictured in robes of white, ascending to Heaven to rain with the Father? Historically, the more pertinent criticism of the Pope is that titles such as Supreme Pontiff, Servant of the Servant of Gods, Holy Father etc etc properly belong to Jesus Christ.
reign, not rain that should be. Presumably the specifics of the weather are the preserve of God the Father :)
I'm struggling to see why metal wear for mass is a problem. Would wood (!) be more apt? I don't recall Jesus spelling out such details, hence making Traditional and aesthetical sense perfectly valid resources.
food for thought again ryan.
it was the evident costliness of all the paraphernalia i was getting at re metalware, but again i don't deny eg anglican church also has plenty of wealth it cd perhaps share out to help address world poverty..
In fairness, NO christian denomination (certainly not evangelical ones) are strict literalists when it comes to 'Sell what you have and give it to the poor' type verses. I wouldn't say that the Million and a half quid St.Silas spent on the new vanity project hall should have went to the poor or that (for example) Bono is a hypocrite for not giving *all* his millions to charity! And what about the Saving Souls angle; if people are attracted by the grandeur and glory of the Catholic church and become Saved as a result then isn't that very much a good thing? How is that distinct from (say)evangelical Christians spending lots of money on attractive facilities to benefit outreach? Christians aren't called *just* to the temporal (the poor are always with you, and all that). And don't many Christians think that the goal of art is (ultimately, and like everything else) for the Glory of God? Should the likes of Michelangelo have confined themselves to secular art? How does that help the Church? Churches by definition should remind people of the holy and splendid and the Vatican, again by definition, should do this more than most. Pope Benedict XVI was wearing a stole that belonged to (IIRC) Pope Leo XII at the Westminster Service last week. One imagine that the chalices etc used in Papal Masses have a similar pedigree, reflective not of vanity but of continuity and the more respectably theological qualities of the Roman Catholic Church.
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