What a waste of money. How many hungry and poor and needy people could have been helped? Whenter the good Lord asks us what have we done, our answer should never be that we built a really fancy building in His name.
I’m disgusted but I am pretty protestant too.
“What a waste of money.”
Building a beautiful place for the Divine Liturgy is NOT a waste of money.
“How many hungry and poor and needy people could have been helped?”
None. The money that built this church was donated for the building of this church.
“Whenter the good Lord asks us what have we done, our answer should never be that we built a really fancy building in His name.”
Why not since at that “fancy building” there will be prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and charity - for the same poor people and their benefit FOREVER.
“I’m disgusted but I am pretty protestant too.”
Right, and Protestants have a problem with beauty in general:
No less a Protestant authority than the Protestant Ralph Adams Cram once wrote:
“From the outbreak of the Protestant revolution, the old kinship between beauty and religion was deprecated and often forgotten. Not only was there, amongst the reformers and their adherents, a definite hatred of beauty and a determination to destroy it when found; there was also a conscientious elimination of everything of the sort from the formularies, services, and structures that applied to their new religion. This unprecedented break between religion and beauty had a good deal to do with that waning interest in religion itself. Protestantism, with its derivative materialistic rationalism, divested religion of its essential elements of mystery and wonder, and worship of its equally essential elements of beauty. Under this powerful combination of destructive influences, it is not to be wondered at that, of the once faithful, many have fallen away. Man is, by instinct, not only a lover of beauty, he is also by nature a ‘ritualist,’ that is to say, he does, when left alone, desire form and ceremony, if significant. If this instinctive craving for ceremonial is denied to man in religion, where it preeminently belongs, he takes it on for himself in secular fields; elaborates ritual in secret societies, in the fashion of his dress, in the details of social custom. He also, in desperation, invents new religions and curious sects working up for them strange rituals . . . extravagant and vulgar devices that are now the sardonic delight of the ungodly. ... If once more beauty can be restored to the offices of religion, many who are now self-excommunicated from their Church will thankfully find their way back to the House they have abandoned. The whole Catholic Faith is shot through and through with this vital and essential quality of beauty. It is this beauty implicit in the Christian revelation and its operative system that was explicit in the material and visible Churches and their art. We must contend against the strongest imaginable combination of prejudices and superstitions. These are of two sorts. There is first, the heritage of ignorance and fear from the dark ages of the sixteenth century. I am speaking of non-Catholic Christianity. Ignorance of authentic history, instigated by protagonists of propaganda; fear of beauty, because all that we now have in Christian art was engendered and formulated by and through Catholicism; fear that the acceptance of beauty means that awful thing—’surrender to superstition.’ It is fear that lies at the root of the matter, as it does in so many other fields of mental activity.†(Radio Replies, vol. 2: 1052)
If you feel called by Christ to aid the poor, then do it. These people are - by building beautiful churches so the poor have somewhere to go and pray and where they can be helped. They’ll accomplish more for the poor than you will I bet.
Remember what Jesus said to those who held your belief. Pharisees criticized when He was anointed with costly oils, saying that the money would be better spent on alms for the poor. "The poor you shall always have with you," He said.
While it's true that we can seek and worship him anywhere, the hearts of men and women are elevated when we are ravished with pure beauty, whether that is the visual beauty of art and architecture or the aural beauty of glorious music. In each of these arts we attempt, however crudely, to do our best for the Lord, to imitate the glories of heaven as we attempt to imitate Him in our conduct. The artists and architect are all singing together, "This is my best, Lord. You gave me talent, You gave me the opportunity to develop that talent; now I give back to You the best I can do, in worship."
A building like this one inspires joy, humble reverence, and gratitude that such things can exist, and we can behold them. This attitude of awe is the proper way to approach worship. So the building does a service in filling worshippers with the state of mind conducive to communion.
If you have never had the experience of being thrown to your knees by beauty, whether that be the designs of Bernini, the sculpture and painting of Michelangelo, or the godly art of Bach, you are in the minority.
I love that church. It is beautiful, colorful, and PERSONAL with images of Jesus and saints. Definitely helps to meditate on prayer and the whole purpose or foundation of religion - love for God, prayer to Him, relating to Him in a personal way.
As I recall, someone asked the same thing of Jesus.
Don’t poor and needy artists have to eat? Perhaps God called them to create artwork so that they might eat, rather than simply sending them to soup kitchens or to do something we know He’s capable of -handing out baskets to everyone that provide an unlimited supply of loaves and fishes; providing manna and quail. Instead of this direct provisioning He gives us vocations. Think of the mosaic artist- whether tiling a bathroom floor or applying a gorgeous mosaic on a basilica wall, God both provides for the artist’s daily bread but also uses the artist’s labor for Himself and to meet the needs of others.
I am a protestant... are you not familiar with the Lutheran theology of vocation?
http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var2=881
That's a silly thing to say. The money wasn't buried under the church, nor did it vanish into space. It was used to pay the workers who built the church. It provided jobs for a large number of people. The only difference is that without the construction of the church, the money would have been spent by the donors, and provided jobs for a different set of people.