{"id":6313,"date":"2006-08-24T13:09:11","date_gmt":"2006-08-24T13:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/the-internets-can-make-you-smart.html"},"modified":"2006-08-24T13:09:11","modified_gmt":"2006-08-24T13:09:11","slug":"the-internets-can-make-you-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/the-internets-can-make-you-smart.html","title":{"rendered":"The Internets can make you smart"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was digitally pumelled by some around here for venturing vague, yet (I thought ) cheerful reservations about the Baroque, which then morphed into my typical idle musing about ambiguities of the relationship between majestic art and structures and the corrupt patrons and sometimes tragic history that produced them.  <\/p>\n

With that in mind, I thought I’d point you to a related, but eminently more informed discussion over at Holy Whapping, <\/a>mostly between architects Matthew and Andrew of Whapping, theologian, writer and commentor F.C. Bauerschmidt<\/a> and artist and blogger Daniel Mitsui<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

Here’s a direct link to the comments box, in which Daniel calmly says, in relation to the razing of Constantine’s Basilica, which was replaced with the current St. Peter’s:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Constantine’s Basilica was a repository of a thousand years of art, iconographically and historically one of the greatest Churches in Christendom. It was in bad disrepair, but the motivation for razing it was simply to build something big and modern (in this case, meaning classical and humanist).<\/p>\n

And not to mention the scandal of the Borgia Popes demanding that the rest of the church finance the project – imagine if the Pope decided to tear down the Lateran Basilica and build something Mahoneyesque in its place – and wanted your diocese to pay the bill. I’ve heard that certain finincing methods used at the time provoked a theological squabble in the German states that has yet to be resolved.<\/p>\n

Considering the countless great medieval churches that were destroyed or stolen in the subsequent wars of religion, I have to regard the construction of that building as one of the most colossally wasteful projects in Catholic history. And frankly, it’s rather ugly anyway.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…and it goes on from there…<\/p>\n

Equally as interesting and informative, with great consistency, are the comments boxes at The New Liturgical Movement, threads like the one attached to this post on Communion Psalmody. <\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a big world beyond "Look Beyond," you know. <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was digitally pumelled by some around here for venturing vague, yet (I thought ) cheerful reservations about the Baroque, which then morphed into my typical idle musing about ambiguities of the relationship between majestic art and structures and the corrupt patrons and sometimes tragic history that produced them.  With that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Internets can make you smart - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/the-internets-can-make-you-smart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Internets can make you smart - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}