Ethicsa

[MARSKA]

OK- I am still digesting my 2023 and 2024 experiences. I ask a question - how do you feel about the ornate religious structures? I struggle. Although beautiful, did not ordinary people have less because the church had more?

 

[VNwalking]

The desamortización de Mendizábal in the 19th C. didn't arise in a void.

And certainly the ordinary (and not so ordinary) people of Mesoamerica had less, because of all the gold flowing into Spain. Far less, with effects to this day. I think of that every time I see an ornate golden retablio.

We can't change the past (it's hard to know even in the present what to do about obscene wealth disparities). So being reminded of inequality and theft by the art and architecture that came from that? Yes. But it doesn't appreciation of what is beautiful.

 

[Gobsmacked by the World]

We each approach this in our own way, from our own perspective. I am not sorting the different perspectives into a hierarchy.
It is true that most 'ordinary people' ( I quibble with that term) had less in order to create and I believe that this was good. In order to create a tribute to God, sacrifice is necessary, regardless of the religion. Even without religion, Kafka's parable about the necessity of the construction of the Great Wall of China comes to mind, as a means of binding all together. Their sacrifice is what elevated them from being ordinary.
The architecture which our civilization will leave behind is brutal enough to make Stalin cringe, and I do not see 'ordinary' people living lives of great dignity. For that matter...three hundred years from now, will anyone marvel at my efforts, as I do when I see the Burgos cathedral?

A more common feeling that I had seeing the cathedrals in Spain was one of sadness.
Moving through the cathedrals and monasteries, I felt that the language of what was involved is now barely intelligible and I could only pick up the vapors of what had been before. In Samos, the monastery there had at one time been a World centre in the field of theology and and philosophy with a famous library. Now it is just a galvanized corpse of what had been before, with perhaps a half dozen monks as groundskeepers. Who knows what undiscovered works lie in its library. In my weaker moments, I feel that the beliefs that created our civilization will soon be as indecipherable as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Sorry for going down my own rabbit hole. I've had either too many, or not enough, ciders, LOL.

 

[Paladina]

I would be concerned more with current inequalities in income and living conditions for which the Church is not primarily responsible. Few pilgrims travelling to Spain are likely to venture off the trail as far as the squalid encampment of Cañada Real. I am acutely aware that the Madrid hostel that provided me with a few nights’ affordable and very welcome lodging might be put to better use in housing the homeless in more dignified, safe and sanitary conditions.