Suggesting it should be sold is somewhat daft...

quote:

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Originally posted by Pyx_e:
rach , how much did the trip to Paris cost ?

P

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I don't know as it was a present from my Grandmother - point taken however.

Still, I make no claims that a trip to Paris for me is in any way holy or wonderful or important. That is in contrast to many peoples views of tat.

But on another level we are all to keen on throwing things out, perhaps some people like them, perhaps they bring some people closer to God?
If not then melt them down, but they might have some longer lasting use...perhaps...

<Monty Python voice on>

Wasn't there some foolish tat queen in the gospels running around with an over-priced box of aromatherapy essence doing some new-age massage-type thing with her hair?

Slathering the stuff all over the place and causing our Lord's feet to smell like a tart's window box!

<Monty Python voice off>

And all that money could have been given to the poor - as someone so rightly pointed out at the time. But Jesus told him to stop being a kill-joy and to get lost if he didn't like that sort of thing (I may be translating very loosely).

And there's your precedent for going OTT in extravagance out of devotion to Christ.

Not to mention that as a historian I would have an absolute fit if people went around destroying historic devotional artifacts - even baroque ones.

Jesus said on the occasion mentioned 'the poor will always be with you, but I will not always be with you' or words to that effect. I take this to mean that throwing money at the poor is not a solution to poverty; only a change in attitudes will solve that.

Gold and jewels only have value as long as people value them. If everyone were to start unloading their gold and diamonds they would be worthless and wouldn't do a damn thing to put a roof over a homeless person's head or food on a hungry person's table.

The other week. A lovely. And she is lovely. Generally kind-hearted even though she can be a bitch at times. 70 yr old Woman. Worked selflessly for the church all her life. Stood up and delivered a tirade against extravagance and poppycockery in church. When she had finished, she got into her expensive, petrol guzzling, environmentally destructive brand new 4WD with her shy, unassuming husband age 76 (whom I adore) and went home to her executive, architect designed, tastefully decorated residence filled with good things.

I got into my falling-apart lunchbox and drove back to my bare hovel.

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no
theft.

Different people have differing ways of worshipping God. Some find tat a very useful visual stimulus. (Others will find it very annoying and want it un-raveled, or melted down.)

On reflection, we all have to responsible for how resources are used at our local churches.

quote:

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Originally posted by Louise:

Wasn't there some foolish tat queen in the gospels running around with an over-priced box of aromatherapy essence doing some new-age massage-type thing with her hair?

Slathering the stuff all over the place and causing our Lord's feet to smell like a tart's window box!

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And didn't Jesus say 'the poor you will always have with you... but I'm not going to be around much longer'. (New Wood Translation)

The point being, that it was OK because Christ was there in person. But He isn't any more. I direct you to one of Christ's other sayings: 'when you do it for one of these, you do it for me'.

You are obviously a puritan. They expressed the same desires, and for much of the same reasons. But they were wrong, becasue they failed to appreciate the importance of beauty. SO they ended up with not celebration of beauty in their churches. We would all be much poorer if we lost that. And one persons beautiful object is another persons hideous monstrosity. We should not melt them down, becasue as such would be to destroy works of art.

But I would agree, in some cases, with selling them and using the money for the appropriate furtherance of the churches aims. Like, maybe, commissioning some art for the church, and celebrating the creativity of God, because we must not lose that.

And out of the celebration of the creativity of God, we should be moved to work with the poor, to help alleviate their situation.

quote:

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Originally posted by sharkshooter:
Is "tat" short for something? Or is it a British word like "tot"?

Either way, what, exactly, does it mean?

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It's the stuff you find in churches, particularly Anglican and Catholic ones. you know, the camp outfits, the silver communion plates, the altars, the bells, the incense.

quote:

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Originally posted by Hooker's Trick:
None of you tat-melters (not even rachel_o) has answered my question.

Can we consign the golden buddha to the crucible or not?

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Dude, what's it got to do with anything? It's utterly beside the point.

This is exactly the kind of attitude the puritans had and ... grrrrrrr. !@#$%^&*()

God deserves the best of everything we have. We crown kings and bedeck queens at their coronations.

Are you suggesting that along with the Buddha, we chuck out the Crown Jewels and melt down the Crown? Often vesting things and people in expensive and beautiful garments/tat is a mark of honour and respect.

In the slums of London in the late nineteenth century it was often that the tat in Anglo-catholic parishes spoke more loudly than words to the illiterate - who then could understand the Divine Majesty, and how worthy it is indeed of worship.

Grrrrr.

quote:

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The point being, that it was OK because Christ was there in person. But He isn't any more.

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On the contrary, I think there is much more to this than this one literal way of looking at it.

I find the words

"The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me"

very interesting.

I would have thought that the point of the resurrection and pentecost and communion was that we do have Christ with us always in one way or another. He gives extravagantly to us and we look for extravagant ways sometimes to express our own love and sacrifice.

And the point of a lot of the 'tat' Rachel is mentioning eg. monstrances is that they are used for displaying things like the host which people think that Christ is REALLY present in.

Symbolically to people who hold such a belief, I think they would see it as doing just the same thing as Mary, to a Christ who for them is also REALLY there, or as close as they will come to it this side of heaven.

Now whether you hold that belief or not, I think I'm right in saying that this is a part of the thinking behind those things.

Christ also makes the point of saying that she has 'done a beautiful thing for me' in response to the sanctimonious utilitarian kill-joy comments of those around him.

In some poor places the greatest things of beauty they have are the glorious churches and church furniture for which the widow often sacrficed her mite as well as the local nobility showing off how open-handed they were.

So go on - take 'em away from where the poor can enjoy them and flog 'em to sit in some rich man's collection where he can take them out of his bank vault to impress his fellow collectors from time to time.

(you'd get a lot more for them that way, than melting them down)

You point out the 'what you do for the least of these' saying but think that the reason both sayings are in the gospels is to teach us to do both things: to love beauty and generosity and to offer our very best to God AND to care for the poor and those in need.

A church which does one and not the other is probably failing.

A church which does neither - bleurrrgh!

quote:

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Originally posted by Nunc_Dimittis:

God deserves the best of everything we have.

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I agree. But isn't there some prohibition against "graven images"??

And how could a Buddha even be considered as anything having to do with God - isn't this a Christian board?

(Wood stops stirring and puts on his serious face.)

quote:

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Originally posted by Nunc_Dimittis:
This is exactly the kind of attitude the puritans had and ... grrrrrrr. !@#$%^&*()

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You say that as if it were a bad thing.

Some of us quite like a lot of Puritan thinking, remember.

(Wood reaches over and brushes off the dust from his collection of Banner of Truth books )

quote:

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God deserves the best of everything we have. We crown kings and bedeck queens at their coronations.

Are you suggesting that along with the Buddha, we chuck out the Crown Jewels and melt down the Crown?

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Well, I would. But then I'm a leftie. They don't call me 'red Wood' for nothing.

Actually, they don't call me 'Red Wood'.

But anyway...

quote:

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Posted by Louise:
...the point of a lot of the 'tat' Rachel is mentioning eg. monstrances is that they are used for displaying things like the host which people think that Christ is REALLY present in.

Symbolically to people who hold such a belief, I think they would see it as doing just the same thing as Mary, to a Christ who for them is also REALLY there, or as close as they will come to it this side of heaven.

Now whether you hold that belief or not, I think I'm right in saying that this is a part of the thinking behind those things.

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Basically, this is where we need the understanding.

To someone not experienced in this theological position, you have to appreciate just how bizarre it sounds to have the presence of gOD - sorry, God I mean (damn you, caps lock!) - more immanent in, say, the elements or the water in the font than anywhere else.

I think this is the key to understanding this. I haven't helped here (I was enjoying stirring too much), but basically, just as we on the protestant side have to understand that the tat is not a form of idolatry (which is where Sharkshooter's going off base) or a misuse of the wealth of the church, and - the important part, this - that it comes from a developed and valid theological position, you on the Anglo/Catholic side also need to understand that what you see as the cavalier treatment of holy goods and the 'wrong' performance of communion also it comes from a developed and valid theological position. It's often characterised as superstition; but it's theology. It's just a different theology.

BUT: As much as people seem to like to think so or claim it, the protestant dislike of tat stems from the strongly held conviction that God is not any more present anywhere, and does not offer specific blessing to objects, rather blessing the people who comprise the church herself.

What you see as a desecration of holy ground, Nunc, is nothing more than a treatment of what is seen as just a building for the purposes of what is essentially fair use.

In my experience (note, Nunc: in my experience), when this rides roughshod over the equally strongly held beliefs of Christians who hold the AC viewpoint, it stems less from malice than from a basic lack of knowledge as to what the AC position actually is, or (as mentioned above) a dismissal of it as superstition, which also shows a lack of understanding.

I vote for giving Rachel a break. Partly because I sympathise, but also because:

If (and I am also guilty here) we'd actually calmed down enough to explain why the various groups in the church do what they do rather than getting pissed off, we'd have gotten a lot further.

I'm kind of at the end of my tether with this, as those of you who have been paying attention should well be aware.

Look. We can't argue from our own experience here. Partly because many of our experiences are bad (again, I have to namecheck Nunc_Dimittis here. Look, I'm not picking on you, honestly, Nunc - it's just that you make such a good example), and partly because if we really wanted to get a full and unbiased view of the church, we'd have had to have been in every part of it for 2000 years.

(For those of you reading in black and white, when I say 'the Church', I mean the total communion af all believers, past, present, and possibly even future, regardless of denominational affiliations).

I seem to remember someone promising a reasoned and sensible apologia for AngloCatholicism. Maybe one of our A/C friends who's capable of holding a reasoned discussion could do so.

Then maybe we could begin a reasonable dialogue instead of fighting, hmm?

Or maybe it's too much to ask.

It's a representation of a particular human being who was believed to have attained the state of enlightment.

Buddhas are for meditating in front of, not directly worshipping (at least not usually - there may be exceptions where buddhism is mixed up with older beliefs).

But that's irrelevant, love your neighbour and do unto others as you would have done to yourself.

If you don't approve of people desecrating churches or burning bibles, then don't go around suggesting the destruction of things important to the faith of others.

quote:

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Originally posted by Wood:
...just as we on the protestant side have to understand that the tat is not a form of idolatry (which is where Sharkshooter's going off base)

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quote:

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Maybe one of our A/C friends who's capable of holding a reasoned discussion could do so.

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And you say you've stopped stirring it!

I award you, Sir, a large jewel-encrusted wooden spoon, to replace the ol' flaming sword , of course.

I am not talking about graven images or the merits of Buddhism.

Let me try to re-phrase so that we're all on the same page.

rachel_o asked whether or not we should melt down the valuable artefacts of the catholic faith in order to feed the poor.

If rachel is serious (and not just winding up the catholics) I would like to know why we should stop at the monstrances. Why not also melt down the golden Buddha to feed the poor.

Or the treasures of the ancient Egyptians. That golden mask of Tutankamun isn't doing any poor people any good in Cairo. Shouldn't we melt that down, too?

And if not, why not?

And don't try to back-burner me because the question is awkward. Why is catholic gold more useful to the poor than buddhist gold or ancient egyptian gold?

I come (originally) from a church tradition that is so low it has almost fallen off the scale (hence the moniker), but I want to know why people at the other end of the scale think the way they do (especially as I now attend a church with tat so spectacular that in the past it has been loaned to the Victoria and Albert Museum for a special exibition).

It's no use simply dismissing the idea of getting rid of tat as "puritan", because my reaction will be to think "Goody, so that's what we should be doing!"

Bringing in the Crown Jewels or golden Buddhas isn't, to me, relevent as they don't belong to an organisation, of which I am a member, that professes love for God and man as principles above all others.

Saying that we musn't destroy these things because they are art I would certainly agree with, but it doesn't explain why these things should not be transferred (sale, gift or otherwise) to museums where they might well be seen by more people than they will in church.

Pointing out that these things have helped draw others into the church seems a good reason to keep them, but in these days where images of fine art and other beauty are widespread, does it still hold good, or is conspicuous wealth on the part of the church more likely to be a hinderence to faith than a help?

Saying that the church should keep these things because they have been given by individuals to the church appeals to me as far as those items acquired in that way are concerned, but what of all the items that the church as an organisation has bought?

quote:

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Originally posted by Wood:
I vote for giving Rachel a break. Partly because I sympathise, but also because:

If (and I am also guilty here) we'd actually calmed down enough to explain why the various groups in the church do what they do rather than getting pissed off, we'd have gotten a lot further.

I'm kind of at the end of my tether with this, as those of you who have been paying attention should well be aware.

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Absolute BULLSHIT. If you don't want to piss people off, you don't start out with tradition-trashing garbage such as this:

quote:

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At that point, all those shiny things will become holy in my eyes. Until then, they are not in the least bit holy.

So, come on all you Tat Queens - tell me why this stuff shouldn't be melted down, before I go on some kind of mad rampage.....

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OK, I'll start from the top...

quote:

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Originally posted by louise:

Wasn't there some foolish tat queen in the gospels running around with an over-priced box of aromatherapy essence doing some new-age massage-type thing with her hair?

Slathering the stuff all over the place and causing our Lord's feet to smell like a tart's window box!

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Yes, Jesus did approve this action, in one very specific situation, he also said:

For God said, `Honor your father and mother' and `Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, `Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to `honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition

(Matthew 15).

If our traditions are to put riches over the compassion of our Lord for the needy, then we have a problem. I don't think that one proof text is about to solve this issue.

quote:

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Originally posted by daisymay:

This raises the question whether Rachel's Tat in Paris is actually being used for love of Jesus. If it's just hanging around, then I agree with Rachel; it's better being melted down and saving a few lives. Sometimes old tat is ugly anyway....But maybe when it was being made, it provided an income for a craftsman?

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My Tat in Paris was doing the excellent job of being sat around whilst being stared at by Japanese tourists, who (like me, cos I'm a silly, sinful fool) had paid good money to come and see it. This true of both the tat in churches and the tat in museums. This drove me particualrly crazy in the case of those boxes which are used to keep saints bones in. Don't know what they're called. In Notre Dame , they had taken out the bones, replaced them with wooden or plaster replicas, and put the (rather tacky) boxes on display. Now where is God in that?

May I point out here to everyone that I only used the melted down comment as a provocative line to get discussion going. I know that it would probably be a better money raising ploy to sell things off as they are.

quote:

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Originally posted by Arietty:

Well if it is to be melted down and sold it will be sold to someone who could be giving their money to the poor instead......so what does that solve?

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I don't see the general secular populace as having miuch of a duty to worry about Jesus words. The church however, is a different matter. If someone who would always have used their large amounts of excess cash on themselves wants to buy gold etc fair enough. One hopes that God's people will aim for something better.

quote:

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Originally posted by RuthW:

And I would say that this museumed tat doesn't have to be in use to justify its existence. It's art. And even if it's bad art, it has historical significance.

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Fair point. OK - I restrict my demands to excess tat owned by churches.

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:

Gold and jewels only have value as long as people value them. If everyone were to start unloading their gold and diamonds they would be worthless and wouldn't do a damn thing to put a roof over a homeless person's head or food on a hungry person's table.

Second, I can safely assume, then, that you have nothing that doesn't meet the immediate needs of food, shelter, clothing? After all, everything beyond that is superfluous.

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Oh dear. I am too small and scared to argue with Erin. Nonetheless......

1) I don't think the church owns the majority of the world's gold and gems. If it starts selling some of it, the world gold/gem market is not about to crumble.

2) No, I am not a perfect person. I am not living on the breadline. I have, very recently, lived at the point where I couldn't afford anything superfluous however. It's no fun. However, if I gave everything I possess to the poor including this computer which I am so successfully using to irratate you all, I still could not feed, clothe and shelter one man for more than a year, I suspect. However, one out of use gold chalice is probably worth enough to keep the same man for life. I have no wish to start defending my personal giving here - I am a person, not an issue - but even if I were an issue, I would be a separate, and much smaller issue.

quote:

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Originally posted by babybear:

Different people have differing ways of worshipping God. Some find tat a very useful visual stimulus. (Others will find it very annoying and want it un-raveled, or melted down.)

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Another fair point - but how much of this stuff is actually needed. I saw a whole load of chalices for example, all of which seemed wonderfully locked up, and untouched in a side chapel. Are they helping anyone worship?

quote:

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Originally posted by steve:

You are obviously a puritan. They expressed the same desires, and for much of the same reasons. But they were wrong, becasue they failed to appreciate the importance of beauty.

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Oh dear. I didn't know I was obviosuly anything. I like beautiful things in churches. I like giving our best to God. However, Jesus did say something along the lines of "Whenever you do this for one of my brothers, you do it for me" when talking about helping the poor. So if we take a load of this (not actually particularly) beautiful stuff, and use it to help the poor, aren''t we still giving our best to him?

Next point:
Nunc is cleary so cross with me that I don't know how to reply. That's why I started this thread in hell, rather than purgatory, I guess.

I'll give replying a go however...

quote:

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Originally posted by nunc_dimitis:

In the slums of London in the late nineteenth century it was often that the tat in Anglo-catholic parishes spoke more loudly than words to the illiterate - who then could understand the Divine Majesty, and how worthy it is indeed of worship.

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In M(not even vaguely)HO, it would have been better to use the money spent on the tat to teach the people to read, allowing them to (a) make there own informed decisions about God and (b) have a better chance of having a standard of living.

quote:

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Originally posted by nunc_dimitis:
I should add that in catholic thought, anything that has been used for sanctified purpose is not free to be just chucked out or remodelled, but has to be properly disposed of as it has come into contact with the Holy. This is especially true of Eucharistic vessels: pyxes, ciboria, monstrances, patens, chalices etc etc.

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I'm sorry - I just come from a different point of view. My preferred example - although probably not very theologically correct - is that the water freely given to save a man who is dying of thirst is far more holy than anything that has been blessed by a priest, or used in communion, or whatever else is done to make "holy water".

quote:

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Originally posted by amos:
I vaguely remember that there was recently a lot of building and remodelling going on at St. Aldate's in Oxford, at considerable expense. Would not this extravagantly modernized place of worship serve the Lord better as a day centre and night shelter for the many rough-sleepers in Oxford's streets?

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Although I didn't mention this in the "Advice needed on moving church" thread - since anyone who had lived in Oxford would have recognised St A's if I had and I didn't want that - this is one of the reasons why I myself left St Aldates. I am now going to a church which gets the congregation to do its redecorating, and uses its money, in part, to get people off the streets.

Ok. Apologies for the disgustingly long post. I was a bit behind! I have not addressed the Golden Buddah Issue, because I do not feel equal to offending people of another religion whose teachings I do not pretend to know in any form. I am talking, mostly, about hypocrisy in the church - I'm sorry if it came out mostly as attack on Cs and ACs - iot extends to evos etc. I know I am a part of that hypocrisy in many ways - and I hope God will forgive me for this. However, if we all had to be perfect before we could post here, this would be a VERY quiet bulletin board.

All the best,

Rachel.

PS... Bound to have cross posted with someone while typing all this. Profuse apologies again.

R.

[Tidied up UBB code. It is not necessary to add a "bold" tag to quotations in addition to the "qb" tag.]

quote:

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In M(not even vaguely)HO, it would have been better to use the money spent on the tat to teach the people to read, allowing them to (a) make there own informed decisions about God and (b) have a better chance of having a standard of living.

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It isn't just enough to have what (someone else thinks) we need. Sometimes we need a glimpse of what is beyond. For those from a relatively well off back ground, this comes from seeing in people what is beautiful.
For those that are poor, who often see each other binding together to look after each other, they want to see what is beautiful.

Yancey (in Soul Survivor) comments on how, without wanting to glorify poverty, he saw the poor often had a strength of spirit that the rich longed for.

I guess it boils down to one group not telling another what is best for them. Speaking as someone from a poor background with a rich man's education.

You must understand that to us who believe in the sanctificability of matter (to coin a very awkward term -- please correct me if there's a better word out there), matter is capable of being made holy (this is a tautology but stick with me a bit). It can be made holy "directly" by a "fiat" of God; or "indirectly" by coming into contact with something that is holy. That something could be the elements of Communion, or the body of a saint, or the altar in the OT tabernacle (later temple).

Those who do not think that matter is capable of being made holy have the whole of the Bible to contend with. I don't have the time nor the inclination to start looking up all the texts where this is the case, but it is an easy exercise with a text-searchable electronic bible, or a concordance. A few examples will perhaps suffice. First, the ground Moses was standing on (before the burning bush) was holy. Second, the incense altars in the temple were holy.

The second point to argue is that things once made holy remain holy. This is perhaps most clearly seen from the holy things of the temple. Q.V.

Finally in the book of Ezekiel we are told, "Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them."

This in turn looks back at Leviticus 10:10, "You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean."

There is a trend of belief, fairly modern, which says that with the new covenant, the distinction between holy and common was done away with. We traditionalists claim this is not the case and ask you "all-the-same-ists" to substantiate your claim.

PS why isn't this thread in Purgatory?

quote:

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Originally posted by Nunc_Dimittis:
Are you suggesting that along with the Buddha, we chuck out the Crown Jewels and melt down the Crown? Often vesting things and people in expensive and beautiful garments/tat is a mark of honour and respect.

I should add that in catholic thought, anything that has been used for sanctified purpose is not free to be just chucked out or remodelled, but has to be properly disposed of as it has come into contact with the Holy. This is especially true of Eucharistic vessels: pyxes, ciboria, monstrances, patens, chalices etc etc.

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quote:

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This drove me particualrly crazy in the case of those boxes which are used to keep saints bones in. Don't know what they're
called. In Notre Dame , they had taken out the bones, replaced them with wooden or plaster replicas, and put the (rather tacky) boxes on display. Now where is God in that?

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They're called reliquaries or shrines.

Like, for instance, the Monymusk reliquary which was used to bless the Scottish army before Bannockburn (although I imagine it's smaller less spectacular and shows more wear and tear than anything in Notre dame). It once contained a relic of St Columba.

The cult of relics and saints - whatever you think of it - was one the most important devotional and artistic developments of the middle ages and is still a live tradition in the catholic church.

I am a Presbyterian. I use neither monstrances, nor relics in worship. But having a nodding acquaintance with several hundred years of European history, I appreciate the importance of these things to others - both the living and the dead. I also appreciate their role in my own history.

Many, many relics were destroyed in the French Revolution. Either loss of the originals or conservation reasons might lead to replicas being displayed in Notre Dame.

Where was God? I would say in the lives of people whose relics were originally contained in the reliquaries. People whose stories of their contact with God were powerful enough that after their death their communities would not let them go, but kept some tangible part of them to give them a sense of contact with that person, with the holiness they represented.

People who believed that a person could be so holy, that somehow part of that could persist in their bones after death - could even somehow be touched and felt and communicated.

It's a pity you didn't take the time to learn the names or any of the stories associated with the saints whose relics were once in those reliquaries.

I've often found such stories interesting or moving.

I also trace my own conversion to a remarkable experience I had at the shrine of St Alban - despite the fact that I was studying Calvinist piety at the time - go figure!

You never know how an expression of piety you dismiss can be affecting other people or touching them or changing them.

Leave churches with different devotional traditions to work out for themselves what is important and what is surplus to requirements.

If you don't even know what these things are called or the history behind them, then may I respectfully suggest that you shouldn't be making judgments about their proper use or whether they should be melted down or not.

'Royalty' - wealth from colonial exploitation? How many people could the Koh-i-Noor educate?

Any decoration in churches acts as a distraction from God, and therefore a plain simple building is best. Many people, anyway, find simplicity most beautiful. But no beauty can compare with God's creation, even damaged as it is by humanity.

The poor-friendly churches in 19thC London were not all high CofE; the Salvation army was thriving, the Ragged Schools grew. Evangelicals were at the forefront of social action. Even now there are Mission Halls in poor areas where people help each other. Evangelicals are not all the way HTB is stereotyped, as prosperous middle-class.

The disciples were not all utilitarian kill-joys; Judas made a fuss because he was dipping his hand in the bag and so he was missing out; maybe some folk today make a fuss because they would miss out feasting their eyes on church wealth, and wallowing in their own.

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...because I do not feel equal to offending people of another religion whose teachings I do not pretend to know in any form.

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But you think it's a-okay to offend people in a religious tradition that you only THINK you know in any form.

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This seems to come from a puritan angle. This is what I was taught and role-modelled. God deserves the best, and so we give ourselves to God, who has already redeemed us. We are enthralled to God, and so everything we possess is God's and not ours to dispose of as we wish. We are obliged to share with our brothers and sisters whenever they are in need, or just for the sake of sharing. We must use worldly goods prudently; no indulging in gold, jewels or frippery for our persons or the church.
'Royalty' - wealth from colonial exploitation? How many people could the Koh-i-Noor educate?

Any decoration in churches acts as a distraction from God, and therefore a plain simple building is best. Many people, anyway, find simplicity most beautiful. But no beauty can compare with God's creation, even damaged as it is by humanity.

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Ah-ha!!! Thanks for expressing the Calvinist view of the world so clearly, daisymay (even though I am gagging with fury and absolute nausea).

I think it is fairly clear that preferences in theology and worship stem at least partly from personality. You see, catholics (C and A-C) do not find tat distracting but uplifting and even the vehicle of encounters with God of the most amazing proportions. Conversely, I have to really let go and pray for patience when attending, for example, my parents' Orthodox Presbyterian church which has little visual stimulus to worship (and what it has is sacramentally abominable - the pulpit in the middle, huge and overshaddowing the tiny altar to the left and the meagre font on the right with its enormous Bible).

However, I can understand other people preferring a bare, unadorned, whitewashed fourwall square wooden structure for their worship - my best friend is such a Reformed Calvinist. She is also very prudish and straight up and down, not given to showing her emotions, and not too good at empathy.

On the other hand, many of us catholics are Mary Magdalene types; MM was the instrument of my conversion, and I know several other shipmates identify very strongly with her for various reasons. I am very emotional, and very imaginative and a little flamboyant.

So I guess what I am saying is that allowance is made both in the gospels and in the church (eso in the Anglican church) for people of different personalities. On the one hand, Mary with her nard box and on the other Martha buzzing around. Not to mention the doubting Thomases, the sons of thunder (James and John) and others of which the first apostles were types in many ways.

Of course, if we are spiritually aware enough, worshipping anywhere and anyway shouldn't be an issue. But even in raising a question about melting down and disposing of that which is important to other people, an issue is made.

I need to ask WHY Calvinists/Protestants think that everyone must necessarily agree with them on the issue of church adornment. WHy do we all have to agree that everything beautiful should be done away with in the name of feeding the poor?

I believe as I have indicated that there is more than one way to feed the poor - they need to be fed body and soul... And beauty is part of that, as well as an acute sacramental awareness of Christ, both in the world around us, and in the Eucharistic elements.

And those places that do have tat: do not ever accuse them of not giving to the poor. In the !@#$%^&*() Diocese of Sydney, where most of the parishes are Evangelical, the general comfortable middle class attitude is "give the money to Anglicare; we don't have to do anything about the poor."

Bollocks. The only churches in the city which are doing anything to help the poor are the catholic places - [b] who have loads of tat [/].

And rachel_o, I tell you the A-C slum priests helped the poor by opening their eyes to the vistaes of glory, aiding them financially and serving them in their troubles financially, with food and shelter and in other ways - and you go and tell me, "well they jolly aught to have taught them to read."

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Originally posted by Nunc_Dimittis:
I think it is fairly clear that preferences in theology and worship stem at least partly from personality.

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I think that's a massive oversimplification.

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However, I can understand other people preferring a bare, unadorned, whitewashed fourwall square wooden structure for their worship - my best friend is such a Reformed Calvinist. She is also very prudish and straight up and down, not given to showing her emotions, and not too good at empathy.

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And you're saying that your austere reformed chapel only attracts uptight prudes, right?

Give me a break.

Similarly, I've met some really unimaginative A/C types. Doesn't mean they're all like that.

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I need to ask WHY Calvinists/Protestants think that everyone must necessarily agree with them on the issue of church adornment.

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I could send that one right back atcha.

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WHY do we all have to agree that everything beautiful should be done away with in the name of feeding the poor?

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Because, in the Protestant view, it's just stuff, and often we Protestants just don't understand what it's there for. We've been through this. Were you paying attention?

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And those places that do have tat: do not ever accuse them of not giving to the poor. In the Diocese of Sydney, where most of the parishes are Evangelical, the general comfortable middle class attitude is "give the money to Anglicare; we don't have to do anything about the poor."

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Nunc, while I'm sure that the Diocese of Sydney is an earthly extrusion of the Tenth Circle of Hell itself, it is not the only evangelical group in the world. Basing your opinion of evangelicals on those of one denomination in one city in one country in the world is SO flawed. Give it a rest, already.

Look: in other places - Plymouth, England, for example - the opposite is true.

I'll agree with you on this: that no one has the right to characterise a group as being better or worse in their Christian ministry purely by dint of being in that group. It is SO much more complicated than that.

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And rachel_o, I tell you the A-C slum priests helped the poor by opening their eyes to the vistaes of glory, aiding them financially and serving them in their troubles financially, with food and shelter and in other ways - and you go and tell me, "well they jolly aught to have taught them to read."

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Nunc, you're right here, and I must join you in giving Rachel a slap on the wrists.

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I challenge you to follow through with your own statements, and sell all you have and live amongst the poor, helping them, before you start harrassing those who are already out there living the gospel and carrying it amongst the needy.

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Which exhortation we could all take on board.

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Open your eyes, girl.

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Careful when you say things like that: you might have to open your own as well...

Again, while Erin is right, that Rachel shouldn't have started the thread in the way she did, I still think we should give her some respect for sticking around and arguing it through, rather than doing a 'hit and run'.

I think about the tat surrounding the ceremonies of the Royal Family for example. It used to be a symbol of greatness, for people to look at in wonder, but to the modern eye many of the wigs, knickerbockers and capes just look plain ridiculous and get laughed at. I wonder if this change in attitude is reflected also in attitudes to the church.

Old robes lovingly made and of deep significance to the community, or just comical and silly?

But of course fashions change - because the church is so far behind the times, just as the evangelical attitude of get rid of it all and use the money to feed the poor finally takes hold, all that tat will suddenly be in vogue again, the poor will want to be lifted out of their misery by the church's mystery, splendour and wonder, and the church will be wrong-footed once more. Think of the expense of restoring it all again once it has been got rid of!

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Originally posted by Chorister:
BTW Wood, Plymouth, England is not without its (evangelical, etc) problems, either, which is probably hidden from all except those who have lived there long-term and experienced it first-hand, so maybe not such a good example.

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Actually, you're right. Although its evangelical problems are, if I remember right, Plymouth's problems are of a very different nature.

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the city is divided into those who think tat is the best thing since sliced bread, and those who think that their only mission in life is to convert those who think that tat is the best thing since sliced bread into the only TRUE way of believing!

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The churches there must be bloody effective if the whole town is divided into two Christian camps whpo spend their whole day arguing about ecclesiology & church furnishings!

I suspect however that most people in Plymouth could not give a stuff about it, but might wonder if they came across such a dispute in what way it was meant to further the relationship of the unchurched (i.e. THEM) with Jesus.