Europe's cathedrals sublimely evoke the absence of God. They are temples that have decayed into museums. Tourists, not worshippers, fill their naves, driven by curiosity, not faith. One does not pay alms anymore but admission fees. The altar is roped off, not because it is sacred, but fragile. The silence of emptiness has replaced the silence of holiness.
Wandering past vacant pews and pulpits among guidebook-toting spectators, I become briefly nostalgic for the cathedrals' sacred past, until, opening my guidebook, I study that past and find nothing sacred. The glittering walls and shrines are decorated with ill-gotten gold, stolen relics, and war booty. The soaring domes and spires were raised to heaven not from piety but ambition, to outdo nearby cathedrals and show that Florence was better than Pisa, as modern Malaysian and Shanghai architects compete to build the tallest skyscraper. The niches are filled with the tombs of the rich, not because rich men were holy then but because they wanted to buy the best salvation for themselves, as today's rich use their millions to nuzzle up to power and buy the best laws and policies for themselves. In the cathedrals' history as opposed to their aura, I recognize the same political machinations, class inequality, greed, and immorality that rule the world today—the trademark signs of man curiously grafted onto religion. Life has left Europe's cathedrals, but God was never there.
A secular and a religious society are equally profane, for a secular society banishes the sacred, while a religious society defiles it with the human.
Mr. Stanley’s Aphorisms and Paradoxes are outstanding examples of the long-form aphorism...
inevitably studded with discrete individual aphorisms that could easily stand on their own.
We were recently in France where we had the opportunity to visit Chateau Gaillard, build under the direction of Richard the Lionhearted. The tour guide was extolling the virtues of Richard and how amazing it is that "he" built the place in less than a year.I could only thing - how much can someone accomplish when he has over 6,000 slaves to do the work. Yeah - same idea. Inequality, greed and immorality apparently never go away.
Your words so brilliantly captured what I felt and experienced on my recent visit to St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna.
Well said.
In 2003 I toured the Cathedral of Sevilla with two friends, a Venezuelan and a Muslim from Morocco. Seeing all the gold and silver that filled the church, the Venezuelan was reminded of how his homeland had been plundered so that the wealth would end up here. The Moroccan, unused to such ostentatious displays of wealth in places of worship, asked me if all Christian churches were like this, and what it had to do with God.
I must disagree with this take on cathedrals in Europe and otherwise.
I lived in Europe for about ten years, Spain, Central Europe, etc. and have visited those cathedrals described here, and to say that they are empty and devoid of religious life or meaning is a bit odd.
Take for example the Cathedral of Seville. Catch it during Semana Santa. Packed with the faithful inside and out for what seems like endless processions.
And try St. Stephen's Cathedral at Christmas. Come in off the streets with the advent sculptures and toys, and kneel down in front of the bank of white candles to the right just before the nave. Winter darkness but for flickering lights.
And it is not a holiday thing. Go to the Cathedral of Leon on any bright spring or summer weekend and watch as the giant censer swings down the center aisle toward the altar.
Ever try to get your Ash Wednesday ashes at St. Patrick's in New York City? Thousands in line and dozens of clerics in shifts besmearing the faithful.
I am a practicing Catholic and, whenever I have visited a cathedral as one, I have seen its life and the lives of the people who worship there. I am also at times a tourist and have seen cathedrals as a tourist. Same space maybe, but not the same encounter. Not that it compares, but what would the author of this post say about Soldier Field if he showed up for a tour on a Tuesday in May? You want to see it right? Go on a Sunday during "business hours" Just like a cathedral.
And, just out of curiosity, did the Muslim form Morocco never see the Blue Mosque? I was invited to attend a service there on a Friday during Ramadan, and as "ostentatious" displays go nothing in the Catholic world compares (and I mean that in the best way). The pageantry is for the Glory of God, not for celebrants, and Istanbul does it right.
So when it comes to European cathedrals:
Look again.
Philip Larkin - Church Going
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
This post is not true. The cathedrals of Europe are filled with the glory of God and home to worship communities of which you are simply not aware and are insulting horribly with your remarks. Incredibly ignorant of the reality, this post makes me feel sad. I can only assume you visited Notre Dame or Duomo or somewhere in the middle of tourist season? Tourists are interested in Christian history and cathedrals and the echoes of religious observance through the centuries still have the power to bring people out of the modern secular world towards God.