Architecture

Over at Mere Orthodoxy, Matthew Lee Anderson has some interesting thoughts on church architecture, including a quotation from Chesterton.

He raises (with at least some intent, I think) the excellent point that some aspects of architecture which might seem gaudy or wasteful to us today (such as stained glass depictions or stations of the cross) are serving actual purposes, particularly for the mentally disabled who might grasp faith more easily in a picture than a Proslogion.* I would add to Anderson's explicit note about mental illness that for many centuries it was a practical issue for illiterate people to have pictures they could see so that they could learn the stories of the Scripture and the Saints more easily, without having to read them in books.

It's a good post with good thoughts. Check it out.

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* This sentence sounds so much like Chesterton to me that I went and did a brief internet search to see if I alluding to him. This was not the case, which I think means I'm only aping his style in a vaguely original way!