Augustine And Two Fathers Of The Greek Church - 1702 Words

Augustine, and two Fathers of the Greek Church, St. Athanasius and St. Chrysostom (Interior of the Basilica.). Not far away, in the center of the crossed halls of Saint Peter’s and over the high altar sits the Baldachin, a giant bronze and gilt canopy with four twisting pillars. Decorated in olive and laurel vines with nude children at play and chasing swarms of bees to come to rest underneath the canopy at a golden dove, symbolizing, peace, victory in peace, purity and unity, and the Holy Spirit, respectively (Interior of the Basilica.; DiMassa, 202-03). The bees symbolize a thing that works for the hive, its only ultimate goal is the continual success of the hive with no recompense to itself (DiMassa, 202-03). The same can be said†¦show more content†¦My next offensive argument is that the Catholic Church creates a space of hypocrisy by publicizing one theme of morality but practicing whatever they like through alteration or blatant ignoring of religious tradition w ithin the clerical order with the intent on making money instead of upholding doctrine. This hypocrisy extends to religious vows that were blatantly ignored by the clergy in the past, and do so now with more secrecy. It is Cannon Law that â€Å"competent authority of the Church† must take vows of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, obedience, and charity (Catholic Canonists). Meanwhile, in the past as seen by the previously mentioned criticisms of Pope Alexander VI’s use of great wealth to help seize the papacy and the modern â€Å"Bishop of Bling† shows that both the vows of poverty and obedience to those vows are explicitly ignored by those who are supposed to enforce them. As far as chastity goes, Pope Alexander IV had four, possibly more, very public children with a mistress that he was able to legitimize and use for his own political ventures, as well as two other mistresses he had while serving as pope, blatantly ignoring the vow of chastity (M urphy). In more recent days the Catholic Church sex scandal of pedophilic priests and Cardinals shows not only an air of disobedience and sexual immorality, but that the insubordination of the clergy hasn’t stopped since the more â€Å"primitive† days but has