1999: Jumping Off the Big Boot
by Carl Russo
4.
Some people have posited that the Catholic Church is little more than a sick death cult. I would tend to agree.
Ignoring for the moment the conclusive evidence against Christ's literal existence, their Jesus really got a bum deal. This carpenter was born to suffer! In Italy, all the Jesuses are worn raw to the knee bones while ribbons of blood spurt from between the ribs. It's no wonder that Europe's greatest blasphemy artists (Pasolini, Buñuel, et al.) never fully recovered from their Catholicism.
A church is laid out in the shape of a cross--the ultimate symbol of torture. Inside these fabulous madhouses one may view ornate repositories of skulls or bone splinters belonging to saints, while lying under the marble floors and stuffed into flamboyant sarcophagi are the remains of wealthy patrons. Statues and paintings of saints being rent open by arrows, disemboweled on stakes or having limbs severed are routine.
Granted, the great wealth accumulated by the Church over the centuries has yielded the richest art industry in history. Man's dazzling expression of Heaven's glory is so prolific that the works remain uncatalogued in Italy. The breathtaking beauty speaks for itself, but attempting to see every detailed inch of a church is overwhelming if not impossible. Both the subject matter and its strange origins haunt me.
I visited cathedrals and chapels, including the Pope's lush digs, and have come to the conclusion that the Church is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind.
And I enjoyed every second of it, what with my morbid curiosity and all...
[
Italy: Sicily 1
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Spain, Portugal, Morocco
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France
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Greece
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Italy: Rome
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Italy: Sicily 2
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Italy: Mezzogiorno
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Italy: Sicily 3 & 4
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Italy: Sicily 5
]
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