A few weeks ago I was digitally pumelled by some around here for venturing vague, yet (I thought ) cheerful reservations about the Baroque, which then morphed into my typical idle musing about ambiguities of the relationship between majestic art and structures and the corrupt patrons and sometimes tragic history that produced them. 

With that in mind, I thought I’d point you to a related, but eminently more informed discussion over at Holy Whapping, mostly between architects Matthew and Andrew of Whapping, theologian, writer and commentor F.C. Bauerschmidt and artist and blogger Daniel Mitsui. 

Here’s a direct link to the comments box, in which Daniel calmly says, in relation to the razing of Constantine’s Basilica, which was replaced with the current St. Peter’s:

Constantine’s Basilica was a repository of a thousand years of art, iconographically and historically one of the greatest Churches in Christendom. It was in bad disrepair, but the motivation for razing it was simply to build something big and modern (in this case, meaning classical and humanist).

And not to mention the scandal of the Borgia Popes demanding that the rest of the church finance the project – imagine if the Pope decided to tear down the Lateran Basilica and build something Mahoneyesque in its place – and wanted your diocese to pay the bill. I’ve heard that certain finincing methods used at the time provoked a theological squabble in the German states that has yet to be resolved.

Considering the countless great medieval churches that were destroyed or stolen in the subsequent wars of religion, I have to regard the construction of that building as one of the most colossally wasteful projects in Catholic history. And frankly, it’s rather ugly anyway.

…and it goes on from there…

Equally as interesting and informative, with great consistency, are the comments boxes at The New Liturgical Movement, threads like the one attached to this post on Communion Psalmody.

There’s a big world beyond "Look Beyond," you know.