The Vatican

‘An ornament of the earth ....the sublime of the beautiful.’

Sublime.

‘Impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration’

Veneration.

If I was to describe what this building is designed to make me feel it is this.

Veneration

To revere. To look up to. To feel inferior. To bow before its glory.

I’m not sure I like it. I’m not sure that this makes me want to believe.

The thing is, is that I believe in something. The world is not as simple as a block of atomic mass. There is more than this, a different form of energy out there and inside we yearn for it, just like we do for food and water and love, and only when we find it can we be truly happy – in heaven, nirvana, or whatever you want to call it. Yes, we have tried to replace it with reason, or money, or pleasure but these have not provided us with answer, rather leaving us empty and confused, rich in thought but poor in spirit. I am sure it is why so many of us are desperate for meaning but have no idea where to look. The problem is that the Church is doing its utmost not to help out.

As I step into the Vatican Basilica with its austere stone and enormous size I instantly feel intimidated. The interior is enormous, bigger than any cathedral I have visited, and it feels empty and cold. As a mere human I am minuscule, meaningless and, my senses unable to take in all that surrounds. I pass the shrines to lost popes to the chair of St Peter and I want to kneel and bow to the floor. Then, when I step up to Bernini's omniscient golden canopy, I feel so pathetic, so insignificant and so consumed by guilt and sin that I am paralysed. My life is awful. I am an awful person. I must strive to be better.

I don’t like feeling like this and I don’t want to stay long. I spent three hours in the Uffizi, I could spend my life in the Cathedral Santa Maria Novella, but in St Peter's Basilica? Half an hour – at the most.

I get it. I understand that one does not come here for a theme park ride. This is a place to express faith and a life of service to God. There is a presence of the Lord. It is sublime and awe-inspiring. We pray to a higher being.

However, for someone who does not have that unanimous sense of belief it is not a welcoming path. I do feel that God is part of me or wants me to stay. This is a Church should and a Church celebrate God in our lives, not make us feel alienated. We are one, privileged community blessed by His creation. There is nothing here to makes us happy or complete. God is at the front, looking down at us. He is not amongst us, completing our journey, reaching into our soul.

He should be. God is in the mountains and in the lakes and in the skies but he is also in the dirt and in the puddles and the flies. He is not on a celestial throne.

If this is truly the home of God then where is His world?

Sistine Chapel

Right here, that’s where. A whole of lot of it and more besides.

The Vatican museums are, according to the curator, 'the site in which the Catholic Church finds its identity. Or as Pope Benedict puts it – 'The Way of Beauty.' Or as I would put it 'Proof of the existence of God.'

Proof of God?

Yes, The Way of Beauty is truly a collection to behold, representing pretty much the entire history of art, sculpture and...well, everything in Western thought. Some of it as we all know and expect – Rafaello, Masaccio, Michaelangelo, Titian – some you wouldn’t – Matisse, Klimt, Graham Sutherland. There is simply no comparable collection in the Western World and it is a vital experience for anyone who wants to understand why things have come to be as they are today.

I know, I know what many of you will be saying, but let me speak in defence of the Church here. The past is a hard concept to grasp. Civilization is an easy word to say but to understand what it means? It is cosmic in its enormity. So yes, as I walk around gob-smacked by the relentless magnificence of the pieces I feel the usual questions coming into my mind – should the Catholic Church really hold such an incredible collection...such a an incalculably valuable collection of art within the walls? What all the people dying because they cannot afford one bag of rice? Do they not preach that we should use our riches to help those who are need.

Yes, this is a very rational perspective but to believe in God is to appreciate something more than this, and to understand why art is important. If these painting are not kept here then where should they be? Can you really equate the Sistine Chapel into monetary worth?

It is only a sceptical, secular person who asks about value of such pieces. I was such a cynic but now from this adventure I am starting to understand. This is how God exists in the human world. Not through dark altars or Gothic nightmares, but through wonder and imagination. Such beauty would not exist without a concept of the divine and it is from this that we have come to be the people we are today. To understand your present you must see your past and when we look at the past we see that God was everywhere. Now, whether you think it is 'true' or not is besides the point, it is part of you no matter what you think.

Like the look of that girl down the road? Where do you think the concept of beauty came from?

Getting up to go to work? How do you think we came up with a sense of duty?

We think that we act now as liberated secular individuals but to say God, or the concept of God, has no effect is naïve in the extreme. To understand this properly takes a place such as the Vatican and to quantify this with a monetary value is to miss the point entirely.

Inside the Chapel

Okay here is how stupid I am. I didn’t even know the Sistine Chapel was in the Vatican. I knew what it was, what it looked like, that Michaelangelo painted it, that he took him 20 years, why he did, the history, the politics, the repressed sexuality, I knew a lot, but did I know that it was in the dark recesses of the centre of the Catholic Church? No I did not. I think if it as a work of art in itself rather than a chapel. A Church is not about art and beauty is it?

If I was the Pope I would stream every sermon I give from the Sistine Chapel. There is no doubt, no doubt in my mind that it is the greatest artistic creation in human history – the grand finale of all that scratching on cave walls and brushing oil onto canvas. To enter its walls is like finding the home of a higher race of beings with Christ remaining as their leader. The paintings are so ludicrously ambitious and harmonious that they do not seem to come from our world – yet at the same time they do. You know they do because they make you feel so much inside. Something extended or fictional could not do this. Somewhere in your heart there is a recognition of this as the perfect representation of ourselves. Michaelangelo's is the perfect art in the way Plato had his perfect horse. All else is an extension of this. My soul opens into the world.

I leave the chapel and step out into the street of burger vans and souvenir stalls and a horrible realisation overcomes me. It is impossible for anything like that to be created again.

We are supposed to have evolved into more sophisticated and intelligent beings, so why am I looking at a cheap pizza joint and a traffic jam? The world is still beautiful, I know this, but us? What happened?

I wonder if our certainty in scientific method and Darwinian thought has lead us into a cultural purgatory. There is no longer the belief to begin an endeavour of such lofty ambition. Life is not about reaching the divine. It is about being the fittest for the purpose– winning the contest – being the strongest at the end. It is not about spending ten years painting a church ceiling.

We are what we believe. That is why God is dead and that is why no-one will create such a beautiful work again. The secular world rationalise it. For what purpose would it be fit?

Evolution might seem like the right answer but it has made us ugly. You only have spend time in Rome to see the difference.

As I walk back into St Peter's Square - triumphant plinth, saints on pedestals – I see again the coercion. Heaven and earth. Us and you. God and humankind.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

If I was the Pope I would make it simple.

'We are not right about everything.

There is no absolute answer.

But one way leads to divine beauty.

And the other to a pizza parlour.'

You have a choice. You can believe in the number 42.,you can believe in God or you can think you are god yourself. However before you decide, I recommend you spend at least half an hour in the Sistine Chapel. Then go to McDonald’s.