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.
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