In my last letter, the emphasis of the triumph of faith was on the Far East but John Guillaumier conveniently fired a salvo sounding the knell of traditional religion in Europe. But I had said I like to hear a symphony up to its exciting end.
It’s a pity that Europe is not heeding St Benedict’s sound advice: “Do not put anything before the love of Christ.” It is possible and important that genuine secular reason goes hand in hand with authentic religious conviction.
The proof of a divine reality can be found in the study of apologetics and hermeneutics. I almost forgot another sacrosanct truth.
I have come across the welcome news that work on the restoration of a set of 29 Flemish tapestries at St John’s Co-Cathedral is nearing completion. Half of them depict the life of Jesus and the eventual triumph of the Eucharist, the two most basic elements of all faith.
On a recent visit to Karlskirche, in Vienna, I was lucky to behold one of the greatest religious spaces in the world depicting the triumph of faith.
This masterpiece by Johann Michael Rottmayr was done at around the same time of our tapestries, surely not later than 1730. Was this a coincidence or a prognosis of the things to come 300 years later?
The end of Matthew’s gospel says it all: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations… I am with you all days even into the consummation of the world.”
Guillaumier’s vehement spiritual denial exposes the enormity of his factual misdemeanors but there’s no denying that at the moment the world is witnessing a huge explosion of religious conversions, especially in China, and I can see no symptoms of a decadent moribund Church.