Believing in... (believe, recall, attend, catholic)

[brightdoglover]

Friend of mine (age 65) was discussing the theater of the Catholic church she attended as a child, and points out that the robes/incense/music/etc. evolved when people were illiterate and had little flash in their lives ("smells and bells") and likely the theater of church was their only exposure to anything like that. She also said she can't imagine why anyone would believe any of the religious stuff, Catholic and otherwise, and said, "It's like believing in comic books." !

[mordant]

It's easy, in the midst of the sensory overload of the Information Age, to forget how compelling the soaring cathedrals and pomp and circumstance of the high church were to people when everyday existence was mean and low.

You don't have to go to the church, or that far back in history, to see this effect. I recall reading about people fainting with emotion at concerts of marches put on by John Philip Sousa in the 1920's, for example. That was just before "talking pictures" and radio had established themselves and set us down the path to being jaded over entertainments that would have amazed most people just under four generations ago.

I imagine that if you had never seen anything like the local cathedral, its icons and relics, and most learned men were clergy, it lent tremendous authority to the church and made questioning its teachings all but unthinkable.

Alas for the church, it does not stand out in that regard anymore; quite the opposite, really.

[purehuman]

That's very interesting brightdoglover, I like the way your friend thinks.