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To: imardmd1

“Are you ready, Vlad, for that kind of spirituality? It’s not the surface things that count, FRiend. Spirituality is not visible or tangible. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, going wherever He wishes.”

And there we see problem again with your understanding of spiritual reality Here, I’ll put it in bigger letters so maybe you’ll see it: NO ONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT THE “SURFACE THINGS”. NO ONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT WHICH IS ONLY ‘VISIBLE OR TANGIBLE’. Well, maybe you are, but I’m not. This is exactly what I mean by the idea that you apparently don’t know what spiritual means. You, apparently, are reflexively, like Pavlov’s dog, barking out the Protestant bias against anything spiritual that doesn’t agree with your almost Cathar-like disdain for the physical.

Let me remind you of something: JESUS IS PHYSICAL. He is “visible”. He is “tangible”. Are you denying He is spiritual? Is He just a “surface thing” to you? I bet you’ll say, “Of course Jesus is spiritual” - even though you essentially just denied something could be spiritual and “visible” or “tangible”. According to your logic the crucifixion is not a spiritual event because it was “visible” or “tangible”.

The Eucharist is spiritual. Blessings are spiritual. The Eastern Orthodox way of praying is spiritual. And all of those things are also “visible” or “tangible”.

“And I know He’s in me.”

But according to your logic there can be no actual “visible” or “tangible” effect. You negate the very power of God to operate in the “visible” or “tangible” world.

By the way, the real reasons “true Protestant Puritans put away the fancy robes, headdresses, gargoyled architecture” was long ago explained by no less a Protestant authority than the 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)


273 posted on 04/14/2017 5:59:18 PM PDT by vladimir998 (Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)
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To: vladimir998

Non sequitur, for the alleged logic was not his, but was instead strawman of your own construction.

The man was an architect, not a "Protestant authority". He was an Episcopalian (of the 'High Church' sort) and lover of England's past Gothic [building] traditions.

Cram allegedly said;

That could not be honestly applied to the Puritans themselves.

Cram again;

It should be considered here that as an Episcopalian, the man quite likely identified himself as 'Catholic', as the Church of England long has, and still does, while his own prejudices as an architect also prejudice his words. He can be dismissed. Just look at this hideous thing;

What he misses acknowledging in his screed (preserved by "Radio Replies" because it's hateful against Protestants?) is the rejection of the old architecture was not rejection of what elements of spiritual truth and beauty could therein be contained, but was rejection of the poisons which had over the centuries become thoroughly so well blended with the beautiful, that to find the beauty once again in purer, less adulterated form, one would be persuaded that they should abandon the "State" Church altogether.

That some abandon God altogether, does not mean that if they were still held bound to State Church (even upon pain of death, as had become the 'Catholic' way) they would have much of anything other than outward formalities and regulations they must subscribe to, remaining inwardly un-converted unto their own times of earthly demise.

279 posted on 04/14/2017 6:54:59 PM PDT by BlueDragon
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