One of the glories of a big, hulking, Gothic\u00a0cathedral is that it\u2019s a fantastic metaphor for the\u00a0similarly hulking Catholic Church, whom I love\u00a0so darn dearly\u00a0\u2013 in all her hulk. I love this church, I love the Church. Now, there exists a plethora of\u00a0parallels\u00a0that can be drawn between the metaphor-church and the Church Herself; the beauty, the firm foundation, the encompassing shape and size, the ever-present swarm of papists, etc.<\/p>\n
But the reason I\u2019m falling in love with this Church-as-church concept is because of how one destroys a Cathedral. It\u2019s not that the great basilicas and chapels of our faith our\u00a0indestructible, as World War Two and the earthquake in Haiti proved\u2026<\/p>\n
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\u2026it\u2019s that it takes bombs and earthquakes to destroy them.<\/p>\n
I hold that the Holy Roman Catholic Church, like its cathedrals, is the only force in the world today to remarkably resist the\u00a0irresistible\u00a0power of entropy<\/strong>, that universal depressant that demands everything burn, and Eeyore\u2019s house always fall. True, our cathedrals\u00a0may crushed in a fit of passion, but they will never be crushed in an equally mad fit of apathy, and\u00a0therein\u00a0lies the beauty.<\/p>\n The Catholic Church, since her very conception, has made the radical statement that life is good. \u201cCan we enslave people and have gladiator fights?\u201d Nope. \u201cCan we be Gnostics and spend a lifetime viewing our bodies as evil?\u201d Nope. \u201cCan we kill ourselves?\u201d Nope. \u201cCan we use contraception and avoid the possibility of new life?\u201d Nope. \u201cBut it\u2019s really cool, and it-\u201d No, dammit. \u201cCan we get abortions?\u201d Nope. \u201cCan we kill old people who don\u2019t want to live?\u201d Wait, really? No! Goodness, what\u2019s wrong with you guys?<\/p>\n The ever-decaying fads and fashions of today circle and flutter around the Church like blue-bottles around a cow, who \u2013 for her part \u2013 stoically bats them away, without blinking an eye. (Oh dear, I\u2019ve moved on to cow\u00a0similes. Let me get back to the point:)<\/p>\n The Catholic Church does not decay. She does not succumb. When the entire world was screaming at her to accept artificial contraception, when virtually every single Christian denomination allowed its use, she alone stood straight, a marble cathedral on a hill, refusing to crumble. We were\u00a0embarrassed\u00a0of her boldness then, but we are unspeakably proud of it now, bearing unfortunate witness to the evil contraception has impregnated the world with.<\/p>\n Cathedrals resist entropy. The Catholic Church does the same. As our philosophies devolve slowly into relativism, she contradicts the world by claiming absolutes. As our world gets less and less beautiful, she calmly affirms beauty, in her art and in her teachings. When everything else crumbles she rebuilds. And that\u2019s the other wonderful thing about Cathedrals; if they are <\/em>poorly built and do<\/em> begin to crumble and peel, we restore them. St. Francis, St. Dominic; the spirit of the Saints is the spirit of rebellious rebuilding. But it is vital to note that when a cathedral is rebuilt, it is always rebuilt as a cathedral, never as anything less. Likewise, when the Church goes through reform, it is always a reformation against entropy, pulling away the seductions of fashion and bringing the Church back to it\u2019s goal of\u00a0administering the sacraments and performing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, the monasteries back to their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Church moves backwards to move forwards<\/strong>, while the world sprints forwards and then looks around, indignant, wondering how on earth they didn\u2019t realize they were moving backwards.<\/p>\n But there is a point where the comparison fails, and it is this: The cathedral is passive. The Roman Catholic Church is not. The cathedral resists entropy. The Church destroys it. The Church defeats heresies, feeds the poor, speaks truth to power and strives to save the rotting world, by defeating those ideas \u201cas killing as the canker to the rose\u201d. The Catholic Church is the cathedral that lifts it\u2019s grotesque, marble feet and, with creaking, entish monstrosity, stamps and obliterates its enemies. But, alas, some obscure writer already wrote about that.<\/a><\/p>\n Gotta love being Catholic; it\u2019s all so massively small. Argh, see? I just thought up another post! I didn\u2019t mean to, but now I want to explore the marvelous paradox of the cathedral, that it is simultaneously the most intimidating structure in the world and the most intimate, and how that relates to the teachings and dogmas of the Catholic Church. No, no, no, I will resist. I have to study. Till next time!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/b\/be\/Vatican_City_at_Large.jpg\/800px-Vatican_City_at_Large.jpg\")
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