Austrian religion had a very considerable effect on me, as must be fairly obvious from previous postings. But after thinking long and hard about it, I can't help wondering if it was all to the good. The problem is that everything I experienced seemed so successful. Much of it seemed like a Christian version of This is your Day with Benny Hinn. Or at least it did to me. I'm not used to such successful piety. Nor, for that matter, to such beautiful, elegant, and prosperous piety. No doubt my responses are due, at least in part, to an upbringing in a very distant and different society from that of the heirs to the Holy Roman Empire. But it still gives me pause. In this case, was the good the enemy of the best?
Is it to do with what Voltaire said - 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire'? Despite all attempts by the magisterium to make it fit the image? Perhaps it's a sense that the appearance of beauty, elegance and prosperous piety has become an end in itself, rather than a means to the true end or its effect?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it sounds as if you're not planning to cross the Tiber. That's a relief!
Carl, try the Anglican Church of Melanesia next time. Very wonderously Anglo-catholic, with a great sense of dignity and of humour and not so outwardly successful. Reminded me ofg that wee oasis, St Peter's Caversham, in fact.
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