The Gassed Life
Ghostly Confessional
(No, I didn't photoshop her in.)
I have serious reservations about the Catholic church. Not being particularly religious in any secular sense of the word, and glad of it, I guess I can look at various beliefs with a more accusatory stance - blaming them for the problems their followers directly experience. This is part ignorance on my part I suppose, but there is also a large part of it which is accurate, and truthful. The church rules(d) through fear, intimidation, and it does it a great job of it. Considering the massive wealth enjoyed by particularly the Catholic church corporate entity known as the Vatican, they do jack shit to better the world. I was trying to work out based on the number of daily visitors to the Vatican museum, and the average admission cost, how much they take in on a daily basis. The lowest estimate I could come up with was about 4million euros per day. 4million euros which no doubt goes into maintaining the massive infrastructure of crumbling churches, but also simply goes into bank accounts to continue gaining interest and simply making money.
At least the Catholic church of old did something opulent with its money, and spent it on monolithic monuments to god, saints, patrons, etc - the modern Catholic church is a husk of its former self in terms of ability, but somehow not in terms of influence and power. This boggles my mind. The only explanation to motivate people to remain so fiercely loyal to an entity so bereft of its own values is they have cornered the market on fear. And that they have. People often confuse this with faith. Faith exists, but on a much smaller scale than fear, in the Catholic church. I'm basing this statement on nothing scientific, simply the discussions I've had with catholics in my life compared to people who follow basically any other religion.
To this end, I present the most terrifying photo I took inside the Basilica in Rome. I didn't even notice the woman when I shot it since she was so shrouded in shadow, but as I understand it confession is frightening enough - now imagine confessing your sins in this environment. Intimidated?
Best viewed large.
Ghostly Confessional
(No, I didn't photoshop her in.)
I have serious reservations about the Catholic church. Not being particularly religious in any secular sense of the word, and glad of it, I guess I can look at various beliefs with a more accusatory stance - blaming them for the problems their followers directly experience. This is part ignorance on my part I suppose, but there is also a large part of it which is accurate, and truthful. The church rules(d) through fear, intimidation, and it does it a great job of it. Considering the massive wealth enjoyed by particularly the Catholic church corporate entity known as the Vatican, they do jack shit to better the world. I was trying to work out based on the number of daily visitors to the Vatican museum, and the average admission cost, how much they take in on a daily basis. The lowest estimate I could come up with was about 4million euros per day. 4million euros which no doubt goes into maintaining the massive infrastructure of crumbling churches, but also simply goes into bank accounts to continue gaining interest and simply making money.
At least the Catholic church of old did something opulent with its money, and spent it on monolithic monuments to god, saints, patrons, etc - the modern Catholic church is a husk of its former self in terms of ability, but somehow not in terms of influence and power. This boggles my mind. The only explanation to motivate people to remain so fiercely loyal to an entity so bereft of its own values is they have cornered the market on fear. And that they have. People often confuse this with faith. Faith exists, but on a much smaller scale than fear, in the Catholic church. I'm basing this statement on nothing scientific, simply the discussions I've had with catholics in my life compared to people who follow basically any other religion.
To this end, I present the most terrifying photo I took inside the Basilica in Rome. I didn't even notice the woman when I shot it since she was so shrouded in shadow, but as I understand it confession is frightening enough - now imagine confessing your sins in this environment. Intimidated?
Best viewed large.