Biased BBC’s Alan notes;
“The Church has always been astonishingly wealthy with vast resources from its taxes upon the people and income from its large estates, more than enough to build the fabulous architectural triumphs of the Cathedrals. It might therefore be something of a moral dilemma for someone like Giles Fraser, the once Dean of St Paul’s, and BBC favorite, to lecture us on the sin of being rich. After all he has jumped ship from his previous employ to join with the new, equally rich, Priesthood of the Liberal Media.
I mention this merely because whilst watching (ironically enough) the BBC’s ‘How to build a cathedral’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00b09rb/How_to_Build_a_Cathedral/) they quoted St Bernard of Clairvaux.
Not only does St B. inform us that concerns over the merits of financial wealth as opposed to spiritual riches were of major concern many centuries ago but that the Church is certainly not immune from criticism.
‘The church is resplendent in her walls and wanting in her poor. She dresses her stones in gold and lets her sons go naked. The eyes of the rich are fed at the expense of the indigent. The curious find something to amuse them and the needy find nothing to sustain them.’
The BBC et al have the bit between their teeth at present about wealth and inequality as if it was a new dilemma…..was it Andrew Marr who told us the Victorians were in a more equal society than we are now? You must be kidding….Dickens anyone? Nothing like a stunning, wilful blindness to reality when you have a point to make.
I link to St Bernard’s quote because I’m pretty fed up with sanctimonious rubbish about the ‘new’ inequality and super rich in society and it’s also just a brilliant piece of scathing vilification that no well paid Guardian columnist could ever aspire to…..intellectually nor artistically.
Bernard was the chief spokesman for Cistercian values. Monastic life was to be austere and disciplined. Food, buildings and even worship were to be kept simple. Monasteries were to be built away from population centres, thus shielding the brothers from distraction and excessive contributions.
BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX: APOLOGY
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/bernard1.asp
‘I say nothing of the enormous height, extravagant length and unnecessary width of the churches, of their costly polishings and curious paintings which catch the worshipper’s eye and dry up his devotion, things which seem to me in some sense a revival of ancient Jewish rites. Let these things pass, let us say they are all to the honor of God.
Nevertheless, just as the pagan poet Persius inquired of his fellow pagans, so I as a monk ask my fellow monks: “Tell me, oh pontiffs,” he said, “what is gold doing in the sanctuary?” I say (following his meaning rather than his metre): “Tell me, poor men, if you really are poor what is gold doing in the sanctuary?”
We know that the bishops, debtors to both the wise and unwise, use material beauty to arouse the devotion of a carnal people because they cannot do so by spiritual means.
I shall speak plainly: Isn’t greed, a form of idolatry, responsible for all this? Aren’t we seeking contributions rather than spiritual profit?
The church is resplendent in her walls and wanting in her poor. She dresses her stones in gold and lets her sons go naked. The eyes of the rich are fed at the expense of the indigent. The curious find something to amuse them and the needy find nothing to sustain them.”
Good Lord! If we aren’t embarrassed by the silliness of it all, shouldn’t we at least be disgusted by the expense
Bishopthorpe Palace recently had a major refubishment, no provision for York’s homeless though.
Indeed, but we’re going to Wembley soon, so that should make up for it !
As for the BBC’s “How to build a Cathedral” – well they should know – they’ve just constructed one in Salford.
Filled with bearded druids spouting left-wing drivel from the pulpit enlightening their flock.
And should £147.50 from each of the congregation not willingly be placed on the collection plate each year, then it’s damnation, fine and imprisonment.
That’s how riches of embarrassment are run by the State Broadcaster.
We live in a leisure age where real hardship became nonexistent for the vast majority of the citizens and subjects of the Anglosphere. Hardship in all its forms was reintroduced along with the rest of the socialist swinish nonsense, a narrative to replace reality, until it became self fulfilling.
Medieval times were times when people genuinely suffered privations, early death, infant mortality and what we would probably class as ills of a developing country.
We live in an age very similar to Late Antiquity- even the art and architecture of the twentieth century which is so “modern” and soulless was all done before in the 5th to 8th centuries- even abstract art.
My point: luxury begets decadence as an axiomatic law of nature. Decadence in turn leads to exploitation by the savage and the conspirator.
And so it is today.
Luxury begets decadence which leads to… collapse, decline?
Good points above Messrs York and Comics!
The BBC are decidedly unaware of their own beam in the ye, as you say….Salford and Westfields as well as the Olympix.
They cannot read across from the old priestly class-privileged and licensed to give the pew fillers what God actually meant…Latin and compulsory tithing etc.
Call it Britspeak now, license tax, cultural monoculture re diverstity, wimmin and Islam…and they`re just the latest bunch of cults we know them to be.
The idea of a Marr, a Snow or a Dimbleby getting this obvious parallel is way too far-fetched for them all.
The Great Gods Nike, Olympia and Ariel…as well as Mammon and Mithras of the EU…we`re to bow down to them…and the Sanhedrin slimeballs like Paxman and Toynbee don`t like heresies like ours…tough!
It seems that the BBC left a few important factors out of the equation in their reporting of Galloway’s victory in Bradford. The following might explain the huge surge in support – but of course according to media pundits at the BBC ethnicity or religion had nothing to do with it.