l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 by Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest
It's a criticism levelled by many. It's one I've levelled in the past
unthinkingly. And yet I distinctly remember as a child being struck by the
beauty and the holiness of the Churches my mother used to take me to as a
child living in Spain. It stayed with me. And in some way, it drew me back.
There is something about the huge-ness, the awe-someness, the intrigue and
the magnetism of a Cathedral. And thankfully, there are those who defend
the building of same as something pleasing and not dis-pleasing to God:
One of my cousins is a Capuchin priest. He has worked very closely with
the very poor and disadvantaged for decades, and he bristles when people
talk about “frivolous beauty” or “liturgical pomp”, and when they
declare that beautiful things should be stripped down and sold for the poor.
“You help the poor by being with them, living and working with them; being
one with them, because one of the biggest needs of the poor is the
reception of a simple message: ‘You’re as important as anyone; you are
loved and loveable.’ You don’t send that message by making the world
uglier for them.”
Sell everything in a church, strip it down and you buy some temporary
assistance; then the people who sold all that sinful, frivolous beauty go
back home, feeling pretty good about themselves and all the ‘help’ they
gave to ‘the poor.’ But when the money runs out — and my cousin says
money running out is one of the few things you can bank on — then for the
poor who remain, “it’s back to business as usual, but with nothing
beautiful for them, anywhere.”
My cousin is a man with a great deal of common sense and compassion;
living where and how he has lived, he needs both; he is by no means anyone’
s idea of a “conservative” but he feels strongly that comfortable, wealthy
people with generous instincts mostly have no idea what the poor “need”
and that the poor have just as much right (and expectation) to enjoy the
consolation and spiritual uplift of a beautiful church as anyone else.
Moreover, struggling people don’t want everyday things like straw baskets
to be used at communion, because they use everyday things, every day. At
Mass, Jesus deserves beauty and they want to engage him in beauty.
His point is valid. I don’t know that I really understood the power of
beautiful surroundings, created with the intention of praising and
glorifying God, until I visited Rome and considered that the beauty making
me gasp on every corner was created, painted, tiled, built by people who
were very likely what we call “the poor” today — artisans and craftsmen
who worked with their hands; day laborers who lifted and pulled and hammered
and sawed. I remember standing back from the Chiesa Nuova and Gesu Church
— churches built (respectively) by Saint Philip Neri and by Jesuits, both
of whom knew something about living with and for the poor — and
contemplating the sense of satisfaction and wonder that these ordinary,
struggling people must have felt when the buildings were finished: look what
we have done; look what we have made to the glory of God; we have a share
in this; we worship here; this would not have been made, if not for us.
That from The Anchoress, who was inspired by this post at The Crescat
rightly titled "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful":
In no other aspect of our lives do we demand a reason for beauty or
question its purpose. We accept and appreciate beautiful art, music, or a
sunset for what it is and allow it to uplift us. For some reason beauty is
not suspect except when found in the Church. Then it becomes a waste of
money, gaudy excess, and idolatry. Suddenly we are expected to ban beauty in
His own house when He Himself made us with this desire to create and
appreciate beauty? How odd.
And this argument against ritual, calling it meaningless pomp and
circumstance. Ritual gives order and is rarely meaningless. You can find
simple examples of ritual even in the most progressive evangelical home
church which may open and close with a prayer each Sunday. And surely
Catholics do not have the monopoly of liturgical ritual. Orthodox Christians
, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists all have ritual in their worship practices
yet it’s only Catholic liturgy most freely criticized and questioned for
its usefulness. Again, how odd.
One might suspect the real prejudice is with Catholicism and not
general beauty or ritual in liturgy.
BasilicaNationalShrineImmaculateConceptionSome months ago, the wife and I
took our sons and the oldest's girlfriend to the Basilica of the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (the picture to the right taken as we
were leaving). It was glorious (click on the link to see an incredible
virtual tour).
At one point, one of my sons made mention of the amount of money it took to
build such a structure. I didn't have a decent ready-made answer for him at
the time in defense.
Perhaps with this post, I now do. |
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