Out of Beauty, Ugliness

Be assured the sacking of the temple is not confined to the Anglicans. Gerald Augustinus of The Cafeteria is Closed is touring Catholic churches in Europe and sending back damage reports with pics. Observe above a gorgeous Jesuit church in Austria, recently vandalized. It gets worse: cast your eyes to the right of the cofferdam-altar (which for sheer hideousness gives even this altar a run for the money) and survey the wondrous cross.

Yep, it's made of Lego blocks and sports ickle-wickle twuck. And just what does ickle-wickle twuck signify? Diogenes parodies the contempt-filled answer the poor bewildered sap may expect to receive from the perpetrators when asked, "Just what in the hell is this?"

Far from being blasphemous, the truck-cross is a recovery of one of the oldest and most venerable strands of orthodox Christian devotion. The 4th century Doctor of the Church Saint Hilary of Poitiers referred to Christ as "the vehicle of God" -- Dei currus -- since He transports fallen Mankind back to the Father through His redemptive act on the Cross. A well-known American Negro "spiritual" hymn speaks of the "sweet chariot" which is to carry the singer "home" to the bosom of the Father. Artist Liese Hochhuth used a toy truck in order to recapture the ancient image in a way meaningful to children -- and those not afraid to become as children -- in our own world of today.

Diogenes, of course, is employing the use of satire but in doing so he illustrates nicely what is really behind the impenetrable blather of progressives, both within and without the church: utter contempt for truth and beauty, notions progressives consider relics of the blinkered bourgeoisie, contrary to dialectics and a hindrance to the new order. And so it goes with them: to create the new society the old one must be destroyed and with it conventional perceptions. To get away with it, progressives insist what they are doing is noble; beautiful even, improving upon the original. Whether the masses believe it or not, as Diogenese points out, hardly matters. What does matter is the fostering of tension in the people over their old-fashioned views which will, over time and with constant repetition of the progressive platform, create such uncertainty in their minds they will no longer question, let alone express outrage over, the continuing transgressions against what they hold dear.

That, dear reader, is how the Episcopal Church in thirty short years got turned inside out as a Christian institution and will, in short order, cease to be one. The Catholic Church is similarly afflicted with progressives and they certainly have left their mark. Fortunately for Holy Mother Church, however, she has a pope: John Paul II managed to contain the damage and Benedict XVI actually seems to be reversing it. Let us pray it is so.

Let us also pray for the courage when lies are presented as truths, ugliness presented as beauty, to loudly, vigorously and vehemently protest it. That, as John Paul II showed the world so magnificently in Communist Poland, is how tyranny is eventually brought down.