I’d
like to try to explain the objective-metaphoric/metaphysical (see Objective Beauty
and Structure
for more information). I think for our
purposes here I will refer to the objective-metaphoric/metaphysical as the
objective-metaphoric, with the implication of the metaphysical inherent in the
metaphoric. It would be one thing to be
completely immersed in one cultural institution or another, such as family,
school, or church. Sometimes people are
hypnotized by their zeal for self-interest in the name of any of these cultural
institutions. But when within these
cultural institutions we are exposed to more than one perspective, form becomes
free from force and develops into structure, which structure can then be viewed
economically to determine an objective-metaphoric explanation of beauty.
Take,
for example, my perspective of the Catholic religion. I was born Catholic but was not fully
immersed in it, or at least not as much as most parishioners. In the course of time though, I had attended
a bunch of different churches outside the Catholic Church, and studied a lot of
religions through life experience and school.
Ultimately I came to the conclusion that the Catholic religion is the
religion that makes the most sense, principally and philosophically. I had especially started to develop this
observation after I learned about the Protestant Reformation in a Western art
class. I actually understand the
argument that rich people should not receive greater favor from being able to
‘buy indulgences.’ It’s the same way in
our society today; the rich shouldn’t be able to be rich while the greater
majority of people are poor or disenfranchised.
But in rebuttal for the Church, it could have been a marketing strategy,
not only to get more people into mass, but to get more people to help
financially support the church. Of
course the church will ask for money, but it’s not the money that is evil, it
depends on who has the money and what they do with the money that is either
good or evil. Because ‘for the love of
money is the root of all evil.’ It
doesn’t say ‘money is the root of all evil.’
So when the church asks for tithes, it is for the maintenance of the
church, and not because the pope is evil.
What
I disagree with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation about is that the
Church’s selling indulgences is a bad thing.
Bad thing perhaps being an understatement, seeing how Martin Luther
broke the Catholic Church up into Protestantism, and then Protestantism further
broke itself down into denominations. So
there was a concerted effort to show people that the Catholic Church was wrong,
and that people should abscond from it.
Like I said a few moments ago, finding ways to finance the Church and
its maintenance is not a crime or a sin, and even if it was a sin, surely it is
not a mortal one because God understands we are here to work and toil in order
to survive. The Church has to survive
like everybody else; the Church is the house for God, and God intends on leading
the parishioners, but the Church is still maintained by man. The human body is a finite and fallible
structure, and while the Holy Spirit can reach through the smallest crevices,
man is still prone to screwing up, so to speak, since ‘to err is human, to
forgive is divine.’
If
the human body is a finite and fallible structure, then the body of the Church
should be an infinite and infallible structure.
And to address the problems with the priests in the past, all priests
are not pedophiles, just like all pedophiles are not priests. Further, priests are expected to have the
Holy Spirit in their hearts, but if they don’t truly possess the Spirit, even
though they might say they do, delinquencies will happen. When these delinquencies happen, the most we
can do is support the victim and overwhelm the victim with well wishes and
wishes for recovery. The Church performs
a very important service to society by telling people about God’s will for
forgiveness and peace. These are the two
tenets of Catholicism that are the most beautiful to me. It just seems a lot less complicated and a
lot more comforting knowing that it’s okay to be a flawed human and God will
still forgive us, as long as we truly let the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Other religions make claims for forgiveness,
but in practice, these other religions are mostly fire and brimstone
principally, and extraordinarily oppressive philosophically.
I
can say that my views of the Catholic Church are not indoctrinated, because of
my experiences with so many churches and religions. I wasn’t looking for flaws with the other
churches, I was looking for a church to go to, because for some reason or
another, it was hard for me to get into a Catholic church. But after going to all those churches, the
only church I could still really believe in was the Catholic Church.
I
could go into how being Catholic can seem oppressive (but not extraordinarily
so), and how violence underlies the whole religion, but why should I do that if
when I think about it, life in general is oppressive and violent? Even if there were no religions, life would
be oppressive and violent, purely scientifically speaking. So yes, to me it makes sense that Catholicism
is oppressive and violent, but to me that only speaks to the forgiveness and
peace that is taught in mass. Life is
bad, we are bad, but God isn’t bad, so put your faith in Him, and He will
forgive you and bless you with peace.
What can be more beautiful than that?
Life
isn’t easy. We all need a break, whether
it’s now or later. Call God an invisible
sky person if you want, I won’t worry about it.
You are just a man, part of mankind, just like myself.
"He
who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of
God.” John 3:18
My
view of the Catholic Church surpasses the subjective-metaphoric and leads into
the objective-metaphoric because I use the site/force standard on a structure
with form and meaning. The site is the
Church and the force is spiritual, while the structure’s form is the religion
and its meaning is its tenets. Because
of my experiences with the other churches, I was and am able to observe the
function of the Catholic Church from the inside enough to know what it’s about
and from the outside enough to know how it’s different from other
churches. My description of its beauty,
the tenets of forgiveness and peace, are objective-metaphoric and not
subjective. The objective-metaphoric is
a logical deduction based on actual facts of presence, as opposed to the subjective-metaphoric,
which is purely speculative. Therefore,
if for nobody but myself, a greater weight of truth can be lent to my own view
of the Catholic Church.
One
way or another, we are being punished for destroying Earth. Whether we see it scientifically or
spiritually, we are being destroyed, right along with Earth, by forces outside
mankind. It is possible that we are
destroying ourselves, but does it occur to anybody that our self-destruction is
a result of our response to outside forces that are invading us? We are all only human, and part of the human
condition is that we are finite and flawed.
We have a definite physical presence that begins and ends, and we are
not perfect. These qualities don’t have
to be weaknesses, but the force of our destruction makes them like that.
As a
matter of fact, science and religion are not all that different. Science and religion are both structural
systems we use to deal with existence on Earth.
They both aspire to and are inspired by forces greater than themselves;
these aspirations and inspirations are what drive us, in the name of progress,
to destroy ourselves. So whether we see
life scientifically or spiritually, these outside forces that are greater than
us are driving us to destroy ourselves.
And the sources of these forces are one and the same. These forces have just been labeled
differently by different people.
Eventually, our desires for greatness will fail us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment