AmericanPapist Comments
Larissa's board is pretty sweet all right -- I'm kind of partial to Rafael's tagging. Cool!
Okay, if you're not in a mood for grumpy post, folks, skip this comment.
If the point of this project is to find interesting religous art that will fit in a rectangle area, fine, terrric. But the rectangle in question here gets what? it get's stood on, folks. Do we really want to stand on Jesus' face, or on a representation of the Trinty?
I feel kind of creepy about that. Heck, I even walk around, instead of over, school seals in the floors of academic institutions, let alone some designs in the floors of some churches.
IMHO, certain sacred images or words just don't belong on floors, or bathroom stalls, or skateboards. No matter how hip it looks to some.
Grumpy post finito. You may now return to pleasant thoughts about celebrating the pope's visit to the USofA.
If that's the case, then I suggest you don't visit St. John's Co-Cathedral if you ever find yourself in Malta. The floor of the main sanctuary is made up entirely of the tombs of the Knights of Malta. Every square inch. There's no way you could walk through it and not step on someone's tomb. And you can't get to the side chapels or to the cathedral's museum without going through the main sanctuary.
Personally, I don't think a skateboard designing contest is the best way to honor Pope Benedict. It would seem to have been a more appropriate gift for John Paul II of blessed memory than for our current pontiff. DC's video contest may be lame in contrast but I think it would be more appreciated by Papa Benny than a skateboard. Just my 2 cents.
You're probably right Lirioja, but I'd like to think that Papa Benedict would get a smile out of this even so.
Liniorioja: not quite. First, tombs are tombs of people, not artistic images of God. We walk over graves all the time in cemeteries (though we should respectfully avoid it where possible, without looking goofy doing so). Anyway, the inconveniences caused by such church burials some centuries ago is probably behind the present prohibition on doing the same now.
My reason for specifically pointing out the tombs in St. John's Co-Cathedral (Malta) is because the tombs are all decoarated with each knight's heraldic device. I should've pointed that out in my original post. You're right; we do step on tombs when we visit a cemetery. But we rarely tred on the headstones. Imagine the whole floor of a church that's nothing but tombstones bearing the seal of the Knights of Malta (and often family seals as well as these were all aristocrats). Perhaps there are now regulations against this sort of thing but back then the knights would fight each other (not literally, I hope!) for a tomb in the cathedral.
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