Why the fuck does a church have a $2,000,000 solid gold tacky box anyway?
Pretty cool to decapitate the statue too. I like their style. Go big or go home.
Why the fuck does a church have a $2,000,000 solid gold tacky box anyway?
Pretty cool to decapitate the statue too. I like their style. Go big or go home.
Remember all those times when people on the left talked about how fierce anti-religious sentiment has historically limited the appeal of leftism and turned workers who are religious away from leftism?
I have no sympathy with the Catholic church and its many crimes. I don't approve of the horrible exploitation that enabled some ghouls to pay for this on the first place. But I respect other people's religion and hate to see a place of worship violated, just as I hate to see a publicly available work of art destroyed to the benefit a few organised criminals.
If gold should be used for anything beyond technical applications it's stuff like this: Works of art that are available to the public. Melting the tabernacle down will not bring justice to the people who were victimised to enrich the guys who paid for it and it will not alleviate the suffering of those currently being exploited.
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I appreciate what you're saying - I have Christian friends, and would hate for them to be discriminated against for their faith - but I'm not sure I can agree with you.
The tabernacle is not just a work of art; it has a religious function. It contains the eucharist. It doesn't need to be made of solid gold to have that function. In that sense, the Puritans were on to something (although the Buddhists probably did it better).
In some senses it's no different than any other piece of art, except that you have to be Catholic to appreciate it. That hardly makes it very democratic, though; if it were a museum piece, or a public statue or piece of architecture, I'd agree more with you.
Churches and the art within them are in most cases open to the public, many times free of charge unlike museums. Nobody will give you a hard time for entering one to look at art or architecture, or just to sit down and relax in one of the few public spaces left where nobody demands you buy something.
I disagree that you have to belong to a religion to appreciate the art associated with it. If you couldn't, then nobody would care for Egyptian pyramids or Roman temples today. People in Asia are moved by Bach's religious music, people in the west admire the calm and beauty of Japanese zen Buddhist gardens.
All true, but only half-way. Anyone can go into a church, but I can't imagine many Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, or even (especially?) other Christian denominations frequented it, being a Catholic Church.
Additionally, comparing this to people visiting the pyramids isn't quite the same, because we only appreciate them for their size and construction. Their original meaning cannot be understood by us, because we have grown up in a world so incredibly different from theirs. Similarly, I can appreciate the work that went into the Taj Mahal, but I will never understand its significance in the same way that a modern Indian Muslim would, and certainly not in the same way that a subject of the Mughal empire would have.
The same is true of Bach's music too. Even modern Christians cannot really understand what Bach was getting at, because the world was such a different place when he was composing; he was a Lutheran from the 17th century. I still listen to his work and marvel at it, but in an incredibly different context. I cannot appreciate it as someone from the same time period would have.
This isn't to say that there's not something universally impressive about all of these things, but it is to say that not being a Catholic will significantly change your perception of this incident. Only when removed from its place of ritual can it really be admired on its own terms, equally and by everyone.
I hear what you're saying about the lack of public spaces though, and I agree with you in that regard.
I really don't think that's true. People who are not Catholic go to Notre Dame or St. Peter's. People who are not Christian go to the church of the holy Sepulcher
nah you don't and shouldn't respect people holding on to identity and culture that did all that stuff. You don't respect pat-socs don't respect fucking catholics who stay catholic while knowing full well what that organization is.
Every organized religion has caused , as institutions and historical movements, huge insane amounts of suffering and corruption. Billions of people are still religious and have interactions with those instutions as an avenue for their faith in our current hellworld (or hold close to the idols and formalities of those organized religions)
Its insane to think that socialists who try to build a mass movement and still far from existing in a revolutionary society should come from a place of "not respecting X relgious person who is still X despite what X did or does as an institution or historicaly" and from a place of rhetoricaly celebrating and promoting the destruction of their idols and places of worship .
Push for liberation theology, promote healthy communal and personal expressions of religion, point out to the corruption of organized religions and their horrible history. But disrespecting the religious and celebrating the destruction of churches and temples before any of this has taken hold is deeply dumb,edgy and cruel
People really are like "let's just repeat our past mistakes without learning anything" here.
The topic of someone desecrating a big Orthodox church comes up to Lenin before the revolution when trying to win people over. Next day's Bolshevik propaganda and papers:
"LMAO GET OWNED PEASANTS THIS IS EPIC!! DEATH TO THE CHURCH!! WE WILL BRING EVERY ONE OF THEM DOWN"
this isn't 1950, everybody knows about the abuse and the coverup. if you won't do a schism over that shit then fuck you.
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The mistakes the soviet union made especially in central asia. They were stupid and did only harm. I do not know about the Orthodox Church, but the efforts concerning islam did not help anyone, help built socialism or prevent reactionairy thought.
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Not to say there weren't problems with the way religion was organized in those areas, but the effort to completly destroy it only backfired.
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no. they should schism over it at a minimum. they've schismed for less.
They have schismed for less and still, what kind of religious movements and institutions were created by that?
Catholics do a schism and then what. Another institutionalized faction of Christianity is created under capitalism with some dozen million followers with its own churches , regressive paradigms and rhetoric, corruption,scandals, idols etc. Whould you now respect those religious people or wouldnt celebrate the destruction of some statue in their church? Is the point to continue that outlook and rhetoric until people arive at liberation theology by schisms
i'd ignore their baseline fruitcakery until they start abusing people and covering it up again and then i'd resume saying anyone who knowingly remains a member of an org is complicit.
if we improve material conditions people will leave religion on their own, we don't need to suck up to their magical beliefs or pretend we give a fuck about "holiness" or the sanctity of 2 million dollar breadboxes.
it's not repeating the mistake of systematically oppressing religious beliefs to criticize them for maintaining association with international child rapists and their accomplices.
What a wild take, calling a religion with hundreds of millions of followers pure evil and calling all of these followers reactionairy for following it. Go touch some grass
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:brainworms: is why. [specific :LIB: podcast guy that i haven't listened to in years] is mid but he's right that if Denny's the restaurant chain did what the church did it would be illegal to take your kid to a Denny's assuming they didn't go out of business entirely.
what's a schism?
When an organization splits over an internal disagreement. Christianity has has various schisms over the centuries: the split between Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox church, the split between Protestantism and Catholicism, Protestants fracturing into various sects, etc.
sorry that was rhetorical
Uh-oh, I smell a c/strugglesession brewing!