an issue that has sort of bothered me
through the years as you see these
beautiful churches and all this wealth
and gold and paintings and yeah ah blah
blah
she and I you know shouldn't have to go
to the poor people yeah it's an issue
that is a stumbling block for a lot of
people here's a couple things I'd say
one is we can't just say of a church and
mean the Vatican so in our minds comes
the image of the Vatican all that
splendor it's great artwork its
sumptuous vestments all that the church
is this very complex variegated reality
that includes that and includes Mother
Teresa in the slums of Calcutta includes
those missionaries working in in
primitive parts of the world that
includes the nitty-gritty of the
church's outreach to the poor there's
all of this complexity richness you've
got wealthy parishes got very poor
parishes you've got parishes among the
leaders of society you've got missionary
outpost and so on the church is this
huge very dated hole every aspect of
which is saying something it's it's
exemplifying something of Christ so for
example Mother Teresa reaching out to
the poor well there's Jesus there we can
see Christ in his outreach to the poor
how about the Vatican though the Pope
comes in and sumptuous vestments
surrounded by baroque splendor the
Sistine Chapel over there when I speaks
of Christ to Christ who is the Incarnate
Word of God Paul talks about the
infinite riches of Christ all that
richness is meant at its best to give
glory to God and to witness to the
splendor of the Incarnation the splendor
of Revelation we have to see the whole
church here's an image now from GK
Chesterton I like because he faced the
same critique back in the 1910s he said
Thomas More when he was the Lord
Chancellor of England wore the splendid
robes of his office with the gold chain
and all that but underneath that he wore
a hair shirt in fact in the famous Hans
Holbein portrait of Thomas More you can
see it peeking up just under the
sumptuous garments is his hair shirt so
on the outside all the splendor of his
office but then close to his skin was
this penitential hair shirt and chessmen
saw that as as if
native of the church as a whole it does
show forth the splendor of God the
splendor of the incarnation of
Revelation and it wears the hair shirt
and and both of those are on display and
we have to look at the whole church not
just part of it about those great
churches I mean they had to take a
really long time to build and also the
artwork that was in there where did that
come from yeah well you know take a
place like Chartres Cathedral my
favorite Church in the whole world 200
years to build shard and is paid for by
a lot of the you know wealthy families
the royal families of France but the
workers were very ordinary people who
were born and lived and died as sharp
was being built and who gave their
entire lives to build this place
actually a chart if you get behind one
of the main towers you can't see it from
the ground you have to go all the way up
and stand behind it you can see the
splendidly carved figure I remember when
I saw the thinking who did that and why
was some craftsmen they weren't they
weren't heroes in those days they were
simple craftsmen who would have carved
these things spent his whole life
probably doing this thing that hardly
anyone ever see but he did it for the
glory of God and I don't think they saw
the splendor of chard as an insult to
their poverty or as a sign of the
oppression of the wealthy I think it was
their way of giving glory to God so
that's part of it
also Reynold Hillenbrand who was the
rector of Mundelein seminary this is now
back in the 1940s he was famously
involved with the poor and social
justice he said remember the poor need
beauty as much as they need food and
drink so that their souls have got to be
fed as well as their bodies and you feed
the souls of people by showing them
splendid beautiful things that's part of
what the church is up to now has it been
abused sometimes over the centuries sure
have some people abused their wealth of
course but at its best the church I
think uses the splendor of its
architecture and art to give glory to
God and to uplift the souls of everybody