Monday, November 8, 2010

What is Wrong with this Picture?

Photo taken at a Rome parish in Trastevere.

Here there is no classic ideal of harmony and proportion: no rhythmic union of form and idea, of color and emotion in a living union. 

Postmodern architecture, which has always been in revolt against the mainstream of Christian iconography and symbolsim, has no place in our churches.

Christian art is to be seen as an orderly mathematical or geometrical harmony, the exteriorization of the intelligible order of the Divine Mind.

15 comments:

  1. It looks like the oratory on the 'Starship Enterprise'.

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  2. John, you keep showing these liturgical abominations in Rome. Why isn't the local bishop cleaning up the mess there? Is he clueless?

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  3. No wonder only about 20% in italy go to Mass, and I just found out only 14% in once Catholic Spain.
    The Pope's ceremony in Spain were the same we might have see JP II doing. Same banal Vatican II contemporary music, ugle vestments, lay people on the altars, etc.
    No papal pomp, no magestic traditional music, no sense of holiness.

    The Novus Ordo does not ingender the spirit of sanctity, holiness, or Catholicity....thus we have this horrible decor in the Church in Trastvere...which looks like a bar, or a bathroom.

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  4. I need a bucket to puke in. This is not a Catholic church as far as i am concerned, not for nothing but I believe that Paul Vi, JP II had the two most destructive pontificates in modern history,

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  5. May I ask from which parish this photograph is taken?

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  6. Italians for the most part like this kind of art.

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  7. I don't beleive that our blessed Lord would make himself present on this altar or in this "chapel" no matter what the intention of the celelbrant-priest was during an attempt at Holy Mass here. Looks like furniture rejects from IKEA in the 1950s. It's really bad. And the tabernacle does look like an early version of a microwave oven.

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  8. That's a Tabernacle? Disgraceful. But the lucite/plastic is definitely 1950's. Ghastly.

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  9. Scontatutto! Su il risparmio!

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  10. John, you really need to be showing these gems to the Holy Father because he obviously is unaware. Only someone unaware would allow this liturgical perversion unless of course he has become so accustomed to it that he no longer reacts. In that case there is nothing wrong with this or other examples since they have the Papal imprimatur and, hey, that's all that matters even if the tiara is in mothballs. But I do feel your pain.

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  11. Honestly, I'm wondering whether or not that "item" in the background is a place to keep the reserved sacrament or a frozen pizza. I feel the later would be more appropriate!

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  12. This is one UGGGLY 'church'!
    In Trastevere, did you say? The oldest-settled section of Rome? Unbelievable!
    Mah....!

    Barb in NY

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  13. " The oratory of the Starship Enterprise.." I have to agree with that one..

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  14. Congratulations to all on this site, and its founder, for reducing the quality and sincerity and neccesity of faith to the level of interior decoration. The church is everwhere and the celebration of the sacrament happens in battle tents and ditch water ghettoes and neo-classical spatial harmonies are hardly necessary for people who need god.

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