Friday, March 01, 2013

What did the church ever do for me?

I might have issues with organised religion - especially since reading Pagan Christianity - but that didn't stop me wandering around Rome and Venice with a permanently awestruck look on my face. You can't fail to wonder at the skill of the builders and the art of the craftsmen who created such fabulous monuments that have survived for centuries.

Whatever you may think about Christianity, religion or more specifically Roman Catholicism, the powers behind it did a great service to culture when they commissioned the greatest artists and architects of the times. Even if it was often more about power and 'I'm having a bigger one built than you did because I'm greater than you are,' than about glory to God.


St. Peter's Basilica

In the Vatican Museum

St. Mark's

4 comments:

CherryPie said...

I really must go and visit these places.

Furtheron said...

Stunning architecture and art but I can't help feeling it has very very little to do with the Christianity I read about in the New Testament. This is just the Roman Empire in the guise it eventually morphed into.

Liz Hinds said...

You must, cherrypie.

Absolutely, furtheron.

Jay at The Depp Effect said...

I haven't been to Rome (yet), but Venice had the same effect on us. Completely awe-struck. OH has gone from saying that he was agnostic to admitting that he is atheist and declaring a positive antipathy to the organised religion, in particular the Roman Catholic church, and yet, he too loved going into the churches and gazing around.

I am not atheist, but I find myself more and more alienated by organised religion myself. And yet .. as you say, the church certainly did us a service in cultural terms!