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setarcos
Guest
Let me give you some advice. By opening up the discussion by telling someone what the state of their understanding is before you present proof to back (in my case how confused I am) it up can only end up being perceived as an insult. These kinds of openings are usually used by those who themselves feel unnecessarily threatened in some manner and can’t help but inject emotion into the discussion from the get go. Trust me its counterproductive. Just try to understand the perspective of the other person then present your perspective. You’ll get much further along to “opening” the eyes of the one you’re trying to convince that you are right. Be charitable though and allow them the possibility that they may be right instead. I think I could accept that you are correct but you haven’t really given me anything which shows my view to be incorrect yet. I’m not even sure from what you’ve responded that you know what my assertions actually are yet. God bless you for giving me your time though.
The wealth of the Church should be found in God not the objects of the world. The institution of the Roman Church should “collect” enough to sustain her ongoing mission to minister to the needy, allow for certain administration duties, and allow for the preaching of the Gospel any collected wealth beyond this is treading the path of worldly expectations. We live in a time in which it has become increasingly difficult for the Roman Church to not have her dirty laundry exposed to all but a select few. The amount of monetary mismanagement and extravagance perpetrated by some within the leadership of the Roman Church is astounding and is counter to what Jesus taught.
Individuals matter since it is the individual whose charity the church relies on. Isn’t the church a collection of individuals? Yet not all individuals give nor give equally in what they give. So it is the individual within the church that collectively empowers the church to be charitable. The Church accomplishes everything she does from the collection of individuals that enable her. You seem to be trying to separate the church from the individuals that comprise her. As for you last statement Its difficult to understand how you think this reflects understanding. First of all your using hyperbole to belittle my statements and confuse the issues. I never said it is wrong for the Church to accept moneys from the government so long as the government hasn’t bought the right to dictate how the church uses it in her charitable work. What I did say is that the Church should be careful with being too openly prideful in telling the world how charitable she is if in doing so she is being deceptive in allowing the world to think that all the charity she does she does alone out of her own coffers. One doesn’t want the reputation of being a deceptive braggart.
That is up to you. Do you think we have answered each other’s questions? Have you concluded I’m still wrong? Are you sure you’ve proven it?
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jcrichton
Guest
Hi!
It is not about “proving” a point; here’s an old allegory: (the bit I can remember)
Three blind men came across an elephant; after analyzing their founding the three gave a description of what the encountered:
a) a tree trunk
b) a fan
c) a hose
…while all three were wrong, all three thought they were absolutely right about the truth of their encounter… had they taken the time to research some more they may have come to a different conclusion… in life there’s more than one way to view things; however, we may remain as blind as these men and insist that our opinion is correct.
With God all things are possible; but man seldom achieves nothing but a finite thing.
You and I are at an impasse.
No matter what you say, I cannot agree with your conclusions.
No matter what I offer, you will not reach beyond your personal confines…
This full circle has come and gone… may the Holy Spirit Guide you!
Maran atha!
Angel
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setarcos
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Let me simplify this down to one question. A yes or no question at that.
Is it better to help fewer less fortunate people so that you may retain the thousand dollar painting on your wall or help many more less fortunate people by selling the painting?
I don’t need no elaborate grey scale answers touting qualifiers and alternate possibilities.
Just answer according to how you feel about the question. YES or NO. Your answers will tell me all I need to know. Is the one action more ethical than the other?
Is it better to help fewer less fortunate people so that you may retain the thousand dollar painting on your wall or help many more less fortunate people by selling the painting?
I don’t need no elaborate grey scale answers touting qualifiers and alternate possibilities.
Just answer according to how you feel about the question. YES or NO. Your answers will tell me all I need to know. Is the one action more ethical than the other?
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jcrichton
Guest
Hi!
Please, this is intrinsically limiting… it’s like saying water is wet or since we all going to die some day we might as well do nothing but wait for death to take us.
It is the same logic of those who keep claiming that guns don’t kill people that it is people who kill people.
Maran atha!
Angel
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Tantum_ergo
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Wait. I thought that you told us, several posts back, that you weren’t trying to say that people couldn’t have a work of art AND also help the poor. You did say that, didn’t you? That people could do both?
And please show me how selling ‘paintings’ is going to help the less fortunate.
Now here’s the thing. Paintings are not produced by magic.
First the artist himself. He makes a living selling art. You don’t buy art --because you’re busy making sure the Catholic world doesn’t have such things as they are ‘distractions’, so what of the many Catholic artists in the world who create beauty because of their own spiritual call? Was that call somehow bad or wrong?
The artist needs tools. People make those. What happens to all the people who make paints, brushes, etc. for everything from icons to sculpture? You’re taking away their living too.
And then there are the people who gather those raw supplies, the quarrymen, the people who gather the raw materials for pigments, the ones who supply canvas, horsehair, etc. What of them and their families?
What of the wishes of the hundreds of thousands of people who created and commissioned beautiful art ‘for God’s glory’? Do their wishes not count? Who actually ‘owns’ the art works at the Vatican (hint: It’s not the Pope. Nor the cardinals. So who has the right to sell them anyway?)
So what you’re basically saying is that YOU THINK art is distracting and wrong, so it needs to go. And all the wealth should go to the poor.
OK. Now first, who is going to BUY the stuff, anyway? You will have a market flooded with ‘art’ from all the Churches of the world. Who is going to buy them? If they are 'a thousand dollars" who has the money to spend on them?
So most of them will be sold for far less than what they are worth. And then what? They disappear either into the collection of somebody who will either hoard them, or charge money to see them in a museum, or they’ll be thrown away.
And what of the 'riches"? Well let’s keep in mind that all those art works will wind up costing a lot less than they’re appraised at.
Even if, and it’s a huge guestimate, even if somehow every art work in every church in the world, every last statue, holy card, whatever, was sold and/or thrown away, how much would that raise? You aren’t going to be walking around with billions and billions of dollars. But hey, let’s say that you manage to raise, 50 billion dollars. (and that is a huge overestimate, but I’m generous today).
OK 50 billion. That’s huge, right?
Now let’s talk the poor. There are over 7 billion people in the world. At least half of them are poor. But let’s again be super generous and say there are 5 billion poor people in the world.
Great. You can give every one of them 10 dollars. Every single one.
10 dollars. Hey, in some countries that is probably half a year’s wages.
And then. . .what?
In how many days will everybody be just as poor, or poorer? How many of those 5 billion people will be able to take that 10 dollars and get themselves out of poverty?
Here’s another idea.
We just said 5 billion people were poor.
Well that means 2 billion are not poor.
So let’s tax 2 billion people $25 dollars each. That is not going to break even the lowest down on the ‘not poor’ scale. If it did, they would fall into the ‘poor category’ themselves.
Guess what? We have 50 billion dollars again. And we keep all the art work. And instead of having one institution ‘pony up’ we do things fair and square and equal. Everybody pays $25 dollars one time because we all share the planet. We don’t go stealing from private institutions and we don’t steal from people who freely gave according to their desires.
So you have my permission to take this idea and float it by the U.N. and see if we can institute a poverty tax relief that would be more than equivalent to the proposed raping of the Church.
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petra22
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setarcos;14851308s:
This part right here isn’t correct. God’s presence in a church isn’t stronger if the church is more embellished. We have a very simple mission church and God’s presence is just as strong as the most lavish cathedral. After all, God sent his son to be born in a stable… Still that doesn’t stop people of a parish wanting to make something beautiful for God. They do what they can to show their love and devotion and to make something lasting for their children and grandchildren to worship the Lord. It may seem extravagant to you but to them it is a sacrifice they were willing to make. Something beautiful for the Lord, like the expensive bottle of perfume for his sacred head… He gave everything for us and we who love him want to return what we have to him.
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petra22
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What if it’s a picture of Jesus in the Garden, sweating drops of blood for me. Would I sell it for thousands (because it was done by one of the masters of ages gone by for the Glory of God and to bring to life a scene of Jesus suffering and death…). this picture adorning my church may bring my children to understand what Christ did for me, them, us… It may bring them to understand the greatest sacrifice… no, for them I would keep it and have a bake sale to try to raise money to feed the hungry… It’s not the value of the painting… It’s only a little oil and canvas. The world puts a monetary price on it. To me it’s beyond earthly value…My family and others passing by the painting or the statue are being fed spiritually and you can’t put a price on that.
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setarcos
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My good scholar…It was supposed to be intrinsically limiting! That was the point. I asked a question and wanted a binary answer. Since you’ve established a world view it should be possible to answer the question posed in light of it. I wanted to show how people cannot even answer simple questions in light of their own understanding of their own world view without themselves making the question fuzzy and relative. In my opinion this is because the world view most people have is itself fuzzy and relative in basing an action or answer on it contingent upon many factors, misunderstanding, cultural happenstance, ability to comprehend, reliance on others to formulate your world view etc. etc… Like any organism if it initially feels threatened in some manner it will defend itself even if this means holding to and defending an untenable or illogical conclusion. Your answer is a primary example. Here you attempt to make the question unreasonable or uselessly irrelevant when it is not even a question of logic or correlation at all. It is not a statement of logical defense for my position. It is not even a statement of my position by itself, though one might conclude my position from it but only in light of what I’ve stated before. The answer to this question wouldn’t even be a statement of the “reasoning” behind your answer. It is merely a starting point for beginning to understand your world view.
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jcrichton
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Hi!
The problem with that premise is that it does not take anything else into consideration but what you are aiming to gain…
…again; it’s like stating that since we are all going to die we should do nothing but wait for death… so from point a (birth) to point b (death) nothing in between matters.
Your concept/analogy pins this reasoning to an act that has multiple levels… yet you want the outcome without any impurities (all the accidents/tangents) that must be included.
Take oxygen. It is said that we breath air, not oxygen… so should we engineer a machine to produce pure oxygen… one that would remove all the particulars from the air we breath so that we can get to the “important” oxygen?
It’s not feasible right?
Not because the technology is not there but because of the composition in the air… oxygen matters… but other particulars also matter!:
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You, my friend, want to remove the particulars without any concern for the system as a whole.
Maran atha!
Angel
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setarcos
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That is my point…the monetary “value” of the painting is arbitrary to those who would pay for it. The painting for those who don’t care about its arbitrary monetary value placed on it by others is only in what personal impressions you receive from it. One persons inspiring art is another persons junk. Psychologically if your child is below a certain age, science has shown, they will not view the image in the same way you do. They just will not get it. Above a certain age they will be able to be inspired with or without the painting however the brain is such that by stimulating their inspiration through such things you may be spiritually chaining them to the tangible. The impressions they get from art aren’t from God. They are from the artist. As I’ve said before, the things of God are within you not from the outside. The best way to nurture a Godly spirit within your child is by encouraging “good” action and by their observation of “good” action. The spirituality you think you feel from the picture comes from attachment to the world. The picture was created in the world, has its existence in the world and will be destroyed with the world. Make no mistake, the painting is no different than the fancy new couch you bought to go in your living room. It IS just a little oil and canvas. YOU have made it special through what’s inside of you. Something that was inside you before the painting came along and will remain if the painting goes, but by attaching yourself to the image made by the artist through the artists imagination you’ve linked your spirit with it and its emptiness. If it should become destroyed or lost the sadness you feel spiritually is the emptiness you’ve attached yourself to. If you can detach yourself from the image and someone is willing to pay for it, sell it and turn the money into a charitable action. Your children will learn infinitely more about Christians by this action than by seeing it hanging on your wall. I understand most people Can’t do this because of their attachments, I’m one of them. Its hard. Most people will make all kinds of excuses for why they need to retain such things. Most people aren’t perfect. Its an ideal. Christ said " if you would be perfect sale all that you have and follow me" and the guy he was talking to couldn’t do it. Most of us are that guy. This concerns us as individuals however as an institution with administerial duties the leadership of the Catholic Church has no need of nor should amass wealth beyond what is necessary to perform its duties. Christ taught on a hillside. We don’t need all this pomp and embellishment within the Church. These are things of the world. A world which is ending with Satan. ALL this will end, it will be destroyed! These statues, these paintings, these outrageously huge Church buildings…will be gone. The more one attaches oneself to them as a source of spiritual inspiration the spiritually emptier one becomes inside.
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setarcos
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Good neighbor, I didn’t say it was right. My meaning was that it would seem that most people are attracted to the shiny bobbles displayed in these huge and embellished churches as if its a display of Gods favor or presentation to God for his glorification. You said it, a simple mission church is just as acceptable for worship and fellowship. So if the embellishment isn’t for God who’s it for, and if it is for God then look at Acts 7:49. Its natural to want to make something beautiful for God but what would God find beautiful? I suspect that what someone thinks God finds beautiful is actually what they find beautiful to themselves. However I’m no scrooge…I would believe that God would find the sentiment beautiful if a child wanted to make a picture for God for instance. The picture itself is just that though and nothing more. God don’t value paintings or statues or craftily made crucifixes. He values actions, sentiments, and the good in mans hearts. If you have to make a sacrifice, teach your children or grandchildren to sacrifice their time and labor to helping their neighbor. The old man who can no longer mow his lawn or the elderly woman who cant scoop the snow off her walk, or teach them to befriend the new kid in school who everyone seems to be picking on. God would find these things infinitely more pleasing than spending 2 weeks carving a crucifix to hang on the wall. As for the perfume which has been mentioned twice on this thread, I’ve covered that in another post. The perfume served a practical purpose. It wasn’t used as a mere sentimental gesture.
May you know Love all the days of your life…
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petra22
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I understand what you are saying but I see people can do both, appreciate art and holy objects and do good for the poor. Are you familiar with our Lady of Guadalupe? She left a beautiful picture on the cloak of Juan Diego…what was that for? who was that for? It was for her children, all of us. Are you familiar with St. Faustina? Jesus told her to have a picture painted showing blood and water flowing from his merciful heart. Why was that and who was it for? It was for the children, all his children.
When I was a child I looked at beautiful pictures. Maybe I did internalize them and they are from the world and of the world. I saw a picture when I was very young of a mother and father holding their little child and they were looking a a picture of Mary and her Immaculate heart. That picture has stayed with me for MANY YEARS, giving me a goal of a perfect family. I didn’t get it that way but it was still a good influence on me. Many pictures have shaped my life. They also encourage me to be generous… God gave us our five senses. He wanted us to fill up with good things. Its ok if you and I don’t see eye to eye on this. Blessings to you, too!
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setarcos
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I think we all know about the perfume poured on Christ’s head by now. Thank you though for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I am not posting on this thread about a specific Christian denomination or Church, within Catholicism or outside it. I am talking about any “Church” or religious institution which incorporates such things into their worship. I am touting the benefits of a simple church with little embellishment is the better plan. The truer and more pure path to communing with our fellow Christians and God. Catholicism is the focus on here for the simple reason that this is a Catholic site. As for the avatar, I picked it from those offered on this site because I have an interest in the era involving knights and chivalry and it looks cool.
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jcrichton
Guest
Hi!I think we all know about the perfume poured on Christ’s head by now. Thank you though for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I am not posting on this thread about a specific Christian denomination or Church, within Catholicism or outside it. I am talking about any “Church” or religious institution which incorporates such things into their worship. I am touting the benefits of a simple church with little embellishment is the better plan. The truer and more pure path to communing with our fellow Christians and God. Catholicism is the focus on here for the simple reason that this is a Catholic site. As for the avatar, I picked it from those offered on this site because I have an interest in the era involving knights and chivalry and it looks cool.
I wanted to share a few images with you:
(bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=MKYJzuSv&id=0DEE916F13B3D2C325FB11462FF3619017C51980&thid=OIP.MKYJzuSvQU6BkYe6PF8kegEsC_&q=christian+paintings+in+the+catacombs&simid=608002504195181045&selectedIndex=1&qpvt=christian+paintings+in+the+catacombs)
(bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=R0zntxHX&id=1D2EA715CECC7CCBE5173570EF532C7E90DFFD01&thid=OIP.R0zntxHXKquel3I6_P9g6QEsDI&q=Pictures+of+Early+Christian+Art+Jesus+Christ+of+Catacombs&simid=608054361629722424&selectedIndex=2)
(bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=xBdtPgsr&id=B76E7E0867C853F657FE33048396D928312429B1&thid=OIP.xBdtPgsrBuJnDvJHWD6ecwEsDl&q=Early+Christian+Catacombs+Art&simid=608014366918051548&selectedIndex=63)
If it is as you claim, then the Church in deed went astray from the second Jesus left the earth as Christians began to use symbols and eventually ornate artistic representations to adorn their meeting places:
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Early Christian art and architecture or Paleochristian art is the art produced by Christians or under Christian patronage from the earliest period of Christianity to, depending on the definition used, sometime between 260 and 525. In practice identifiably Christian art only survives from the 2nd century onwards.[1] After 550 at the latest, Christian art is classified as Byzantine, or of some other regional type.[2]
It is hard to know when distinctly Christian art began. Prior to 100, Christians may have been constrained by their position as a persecuted group from producing durable works of art. Since Christianity was largely a religion of the lower classes in this period[citation needed], the lack of surviving art may reflect a lack of funds for patronage, and simply small numbers of followers. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christian_art_and_architecture)
Maran atha!
Angel
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setarcos
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Um, several times I make mention that I’m referring to any church. I’m constantly referencing the Roman Church because this is a Catholic website? I act accordingly on protestant websites as well and they accuse me of being Catholic?! What am I to do? One way I can tell if I have a valid point is if the responses I get are more emotional than reasonable. I cannot force anyone on here to change simply because I think I have a valid point. You’ve made your choice. I’ve given my opinion. God bless your path.
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setarcos
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Neighbor, being crass is unbecoming of a Catholic. I’m not on these threads because I think you are “idiots”. I don’t enjoy speaking with “idiots”. I consider you my peers with which I wish to share my thoughts. I emphasize the Roman Church because that is where most of you are at. I specifically made the statement that I’m not confining my beliefs to any one Church because I got the impression that a perception of picking on the Roman Church would eclipse my reasoning. I get the same reaction on protestant sites in which I am accused of being Catholic. What should I do? What I think God finds pleasing I would expect to be universally applied. Does God apply different principles to different Churches? I offered my opinion. It is up to you to decide if it makes sense. Ultimately the path you take is the path you make and it is up to you. Gods blessings be upon you and yours.
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setarcos
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Thank you for sharing these images. I do enjoy early Christian art in its simplicity. I’d like to make a couple points though. First it shouldn’t surprise you that Christian artwork appeared early in her history. Though the earliest found so far is still 200 + years after Christ left this earth. This lack of earlier art may have been because they were still being persecuted and it would have been too dangerous or it may simply have been because the early Christians and followers of Jesus did not emphasize the use of artwork in following his message. These people were coming out of an age of paganism and I wouldn’t expect all pagan traditions to stop cold turkey. Emphasis on the non Jews since the Jews weren’t big on decorating, not that they didn’t do absolutely any mind you. One tradition was decorating their tombs. The romans were good at this. Especially among the elite. Another point is that much of what we consider early Christian art or symbology had a purpose other than “art”. This was a people being persecuted and a lot of the artwork was actually coded messages to their fellow Christians. Also these works were not generally revered like you see in todays Churches. They weren’t incorporated into their worship to the extent we see today. By the way…depending on what you mean by the Church going astray I’d say the Church did stray from time to time from her very earliest. For instance, Jesus admonished Peter for his wrong thinking shortly after his so called “commission”. As Jesus showed us by telling the man to sale all that he had…nobody is perfect. It was true in his time on earth and its true today. The early Christians were just as enamored with these things as the latter Christians. As soon as enough power was gained Larger and larger and more elaborate architecture for their Churches began and the biggest and best artwork was being commissioned. This didn’t and still in my opinion doesn’t make it right in light of the world in which we find ourselves in.
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setarcos
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Greetings, since this IS a thread you started I also feel that it is most pertinent that I respond to you.
First let me thank you in taking the time to try to understand my position before stating yours. Since you’ve addressed some of my points I shall do you the respect of addressing some of yours.
I never said that the Church was simply an institution; however I am primarily concerning my assertions with the institutional parts of the church, that is the administerial part and those necessary parts used in carrying out these functions.
Agreed, man is a corporeal creature who is inextricably tied to the tangible in his experience. Those experiences made tangible to us by God are good and true. However like man’s spiritual experiences which can be evil and God warned us to test so can the tangible experiences be evil.
The issue with Catholicism is that it believes it cannot be wrong in anything. While Protestantism may be focusing too much on the invisible, Catholicism has taken the opposite path in focusing too much on the visible. I am not against the visible revelations of God. Nor am I against a God whose revelations are sometimes invisible to us.
You are wrong here. Creation fell in tandem with mans transgression. See the RCC #400. The visible creation you are surrounded with today most certainly can be a distraction and in point of fact is vying for your attention all the time. Pick your visible poison, all parts of a fallen creation……wealth, pornography, gluttony, a desire to horde beautiful things for oneself, the desire to just own, the noise of modern society etc. etc… Even our spirituality can be distracting us from the good if it is directed elsewhere. The spirit is not synonymous with the good though good can be found in the spirit.
We worship God in the spirit. There are two ways to grow closer in communion with God, through the tangible made a tangible good through Gods revelations to man and the intangible through personal reflection and self-examination and communion with your fellow Christians on Gods revelations of the invisible. Anything else is a lie or a superfluous distraction of the world. Early Christians held their gatherings in fields or simple dwelling places. The world since has only distanced itself further from God not closer and the evolution of where we gather to worship has itself devolved into unnecessary worldly decorations and distractions. While the sacraments are a grace from God, the $10,000 dollar commissioned mural or statue that adorns your church is not and kissing the feet of the statue or kneeling before the mural is little more than an attempt at filling a spiritual emptiness inside you by empowering a lie, an artist’s personal interpretation of his personal impressions of his personal God. By definition if you need these things in order to be inspired to communion with God then you are using them as a crutch on which to hang your spirituality. You are not holding communion with God by kissing the feet of statues. These are empty hollow gestures.
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setarcos
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Your merely trying to justify having these things. As I’ve said before, scripture tells us the kingdom of God is within us. Your need of these things in order to help you “focus” on worshiping and communion with your God is a testament to your clinging to the world not an attempt at shutting the world out to focus on God. You’ve merely transferred your distraction from one noise to another to focus on, neither of which has anything to do with worshiping God. At best they become a distorted vision of what should be a personal communion between God and yourself. I’m not against beautiful music, or art, or architecture for that matter except when they are used as tools for communion with God unless otherwise commanded by God. These things are not for God; these things are for the enjoyment and communion of man with man and are in themselves neither evil or good except for the impressions they give to the receiver. God neither needs these things nor desires them as an expression of worship as he has expressed in scripture, Acts 7:49 for instance, especially if a greater good has to be sacrificed in order to achieve them. What would you have the good Samaritan do, go ahead and use the money he was given to buy a statue to adorn the new church or use that money to pay for the medical expenses of the injured man instead? Which is the greater good, The necessary or the unnecessary? There will always be someone else to help and we can only do what we can. What if the Samaritan had thought, “ I cannot use this money to pay for his expenses since I have already helped another and it is the Churches turn to get decorated. It would be only fair.” The image that the “Church” presents to the world should be the Christian ideal. Is it the Christian ideal to elaborately decorate our Churches despite the expense and use unnecessarily expensive architectural preferences to build our churches even though our fellow man still suffers?
I
I don’t know where you got the idea that I am against the visible. It’s good to realize lessons from the visible. To enjoy the beautiful and find comfort in the visible but realize this, the visible now is not what God intended. Any beauty you see in the visible now is a shadow of the Eden God had created man to live in. If we look close enough we will always find the ugliness behind the beauty in this world, the decay, the death, the tooth and claw and spilled blood, hidden, waiting to shock one back to reality. Most of us for this reason are content not to look too closely. We don’t need an image to think about Jesus’s humanity. You are human are you not? Look within yourself.
I
God doesn’t give his grace to us through a statue or a picture. His grace is not contingent upon your ability to receive it with help from an image. You pray for strength and God willing he grants it. Your strength comes from God’s grace within you. You allow the delusion of believing you cannot be strong in your faith without being reminded of God by some statue or picture. Free yourself from this worldly thinking. God speaks to you all the time…not just when your attention is focused on any particular unnecessary image.
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