Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1871-08-30
THE ro111Es OF EcCLEs1Asr1CAI sPLENDOR

Our energy, talents and riches IL not de-
voted to practical purposes are, in the
judgment of most men, wasted. While
there are extremes to which we might run
in this respect we think the risk worth
taking in consideration of the good car
tain to follow.
The practical, common sense notions of
Americans is illustrated as strikingly in
the matter of our religious organizations
and ecclesiastical expenditures as in any
other feature of our institutions. Our at
tention has been directed to this subject by
some information contained in Eastern
journals concerning the expenditures being
made in New York on certain church edi-
fees.
A New York journalist has given one
hundred thousand dollars to1odrds the com
Dletion of. a Catholic Cathedral. Now
While we are admirers of beautiful
churches, while we delight in architectural
splendors, and in the pleasures excited by
works of art, we believe all such things
when carried beyond the bounds of reason
absolutely wicked A cathedral erected at
the expense of millions, sapping for gene
rations the purses of its members and de-
priving them in many cases of even the
comforts and necessaries of life, is an offer
ing that cannot be acceptable to the great
Master, whose teachings are to relieve the
destitute and feed the poor, rather than
raise up costly images and jewels to draw
away the weak minded from real worship.
For picture of the extremes to which
| this ecclesiastical extravaganza leads we
| look to Italy. Its immense cathedrals
have been building for centuries and its
great ecclesiastical estates have drained its
people of all their energies and riches and
filed its beautiful vallies with beggars and
| wretchedness. League on league of its
richest land and noblest forest yielding
immense revenues to its ecclesiastical pro-
prietors, but not paying cent in taxes to
the State, belong to the church. In some
great districts the church owns all the
! property-lands, watercourses, woods,
mills and factories. They buy, sell, manu-
facture, but pay no taxes, and hence no
private enterprises can compete with them.
| If we look at the churches, the follies of
their extravaganza are still more appar-
ent, In Venice with hundred thousand
| inhabitants there We're few years ago
twelve hundred priests. y recent traveller
visiting the great Jesuit Church in that
! city thus describes its treasures and embel-
! lishments:
1--WE passed within the doors and it seemed
| the riches of the world were before us. Huge
columns carved out Of single masses of marble,
and inlaid from top to bottom with q hundred
intricate figures wrought in costly verde an
tque pulpits of the same rich materials,
! whose draperies hung down in many pictured
| fold the grand altar brilliant with polished
facings and balustrades of oriental jasper, agate
verde antique, and other precious stones,
whose names even we seldom hear-and slabs
of priceless lapis lazuli, lavished everywhere as
| recklessly as If the church had owned quarry
of it. In the midst of all this magnifcence, the
| solid gold and silver furniture of the altar
seemed cheap and trivial Even the floors and
ceilings cost priceless fortune"
The same writer says of the treasures Of
the great cathedral at Milan:
"There were virgins and bishops there above
the natural size made of solid silver, each worth
| by weight from eight hundred thousand to two
millions of francs, and bearing gemmed books
| in their hands worth eighty thousand francs :
| there were bas-reliets that weighed six hundred
pounds carved in solid silver; croziers and
| crosses, and candlesticks six and eight feet high
all of virgin gold and brilliant with precious
stones; and besides these were all manner of
cups and vases, rich in proportion. 1t was an
|
pie weight, without counting workmanship were
| valued at fifty millions of francs!'
The cathedral itself has been building
five hundred years, is 500 feet long by $50
feet wide, with a central spire over 400 feet
high. The structure is of marble which
belonging to the church estate, cost it
nothing but the mere workmanship thus
, far expended cost over hundred millions
of dollars. Looking at these vast ecclesi-
astical splendOrs and the condition of Italy,
is ii too much to characterize all such ex-
penditures as follies, and wicked? We do
not refer to the extravaganza of Italy as
probable in America, where the good sense
of our people would not tolerate such folly
as long as there were poor to relieve, igno-
rant to educate, misery in its hundred
forms to alleviate, or practical good to en-
courage, but rather to show what is posi-
, BILE, in qualified form at least, where sect:
have ambition and great liberal people
to prey upon. We can only realize the
cost of such follies by approaching the re-
suits they have produced elsewhere. The
, facts we have given tend at least 10 show
the wisdom of those practical notions
which as people we entertain and agains
which we occasionally hear bitter protests
If our churches ara nlain and Our a ri