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Art & Architecture
Medieval Cathedrals & Modern Churches
Christine Fitzgerald
What was the influence of those magnificent medieval cathedrals on the people?
Because man lives in both the spiritual and temporal world, these same people accustomed to grandeur in the spiritual sphere would try to elevate and beautify everything around them. Their homes, civic buildings, their bridges, their furniture – everything down to the least detail of their lives – was invested with care and forethought.
The entire life of the city turned around the cathedral |
Some might say that this was an exclusive privilege of the wealthy class. This was not so. This desire for excellence was as strong in the peasant and plebeian class as it was in the upper bourgeoisie and in the nobility. It was habitual for each guild to make rules to encourage quality and beauty in their various products, a natural result of seeing beauty, admiring it and then imitating it.
In the late Middle Ages there was a refinement of European manners and customs – in particular, the customs, manners and modes of address – that was “chivalrous,” that is, courteous, gallant, polite. Chivalrous comes from chivalry derived from the French cheval (horse). This was the normal way the nobles behaved in their families, court life and in their famous jousting tournaments that survived until the 16th century.
They understood that man was made in the image and likeness of God and was the temple of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, everyone and everything in his surroundings should reflect God.
Modern revisionist historians depict the Middle Ages as an uncultured, ignorant and brutish era. Granted, there was some of that then as there is an abundance of it now. But the dominant theme of the Middle Ages was order, hierarchy and harmony based on the spiritual and temporal leadership of the Catholic Church. It was she who reconstituted the old West Roman Empire, fractured into pieces by the barbarian invasions, under a new and more transcendent principle: unity in the Catholic Faith which generated a social harmony that came from common religious sentiments.
In the temporal sphere, a natural and just regime - Feudalism – governed throughout Europe, and stability and social peace grew everywhere as fruits of the Catholic principles. This mentality was present in all the peoples that formed Christendom and managed to bridge the natural gap between disparate peoples and languages.
While that unity was being broken in Central Europe by the precursors of Protestantism, Spain and Portugal were just expelling the last Saracens from Granada and taking their first breaths of liberty after almost one millennium of Arab conquest. As a consequence, in the Iberian Peninsula that same medieval spirit - that same mentality of heroism and sublimity that generated Christendom - was preserved from the virus of the Renaissance as a consequence of their continuous fight against the Muslims.
Moved by that mentality those two peoples opened the Era of the Discovery, established the New World and brought to us the Catholic Faith and Christian Civilization.
Today’s revolutionary churches
A new mentality, a revolutionary mentality took over Christendom. The medieval mentality generated an architectural symbol in the cathedral; the revolutionary mentality engendered Progressivism in the Catholic Church and inspired the modern churches.
Arka Pana Church (Poland), blessed by Card. Woytyla in 1977 |
What messages for history have been left in today’s churches? A cold concrete is often the exterior, and hole-like windows at the top of the church give the impression of being underground. The stained glass – when there is any - resembles broken shards of glass. Some churches are built in a circular style - no longer built around the Tabernacle, but around a ‘presider’s chair.’
Colorless, empty, gray and cold, these churches have nothing to do with God or His Holy Catholic religion. They are the churches of a new religion, one that is disconnected from the Church of the ages.
Cardinal Oddi himself wrote that Vatican II represented a revolution within the Catholic Church. This progressivist Church, with its Novus Ordo Mass is the Church for the New World Order. There will be one world government and one world religion, a Pan-religion amalgamating all beliefs.
It is easy to conclude that the true Catholic Church will not be that Pan-religion. The New World Order will preside over a society that is pagan, gray, cold, insecure and miserable – like the churches it inspires. That is the plan that was set in motion at Vatican II.
The message in the things around us
There’s more in the plan. Looking around one can see the downward spiral in everything around us. Instead of stories of heroism, innocence and the marvelous, the new generation is inundated with things that are low and monstrous. The cartoons they watch are increasingly filled with preternatural messages, their dolls are punk and revolted. Schools are reporting suicides; drugs and sex are the order of the day. Children are bonding with gangs rather that building a normal relationship with the family.
Every aspect of our modern culture could be analyzed only to find similar disastrous trends.
Above, a rock show at Lourdes Sanctuary, New Years 2007; below, youth making the satanic sign at a rock party
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The beautiful order and harmony of Christian Civilization is gone and, with it, stability and the joy of life that, to be balanced, can only be found under the shadow of the cross of Our Lord Jesus Chirst.
Is there something to be done? Yes, fight the Revolution in society and Progressivism in the Church.
Here are some practical suggestions. Be serious and study. If you are reading this you are already on a website that has much good and reliable material to study. Then speak out. You will receive oppositions. Then, study further.
Make a heroic effort to back away from the novelties of this era, television, rock music and especially the news, analyzed almost always by someone who is following the revolutionary agenda. We are spoon fed what to think from the media. The chaos in which we live proves the great showmen that pretend to know everything do not in fact resolve anything.
Make changes in your family’s customs. Elevate the way you dress, your meal manners, your way of speaking and treating each other.
Most important of all, wrap all that you do in the faithful recitation of the Rosary. Our Lady told us it should be our weapon, and it is powerful. Many seemingly hopeless cases in history have been suddenly and miraculously won by the prayer of the Rosary. Have confidence in her promise at Fatima that in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph and a new civilization will be granted to the world.
The only thing necessary for the Devil to triumph is that good men do nothing, or say nothing. Do not give him this victory.
Posted July 7, 2010
Related Topics of Interest
Reading Medieval Architecture
The Cathedral: Symbol of Paradise
The Nefarious Power of Television
Courtesy: An Essential Element of the Catholic Home
Manners Make Life Easier
Churches of Hell
The Third Secret
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