Wednesday, August 13, 2014

An odd choice for a church supply company

I have made known some of my pet peeves in the past (e.g. trends in Orthodox photography), so here is another one. There seems to be no end of photos or paintings serving as the background for quotations from the Fathers or Scripture posted on the Internet daily. When someone quotes St. Basil the Great and puts an icon of him above a quotation it makes sense. Heck, it is not uncommon to put the quote IN the icon by use of a long scroll or the like. That sort of thing seems to be the minority these days though. What is more common is some quite egregious dissonance between photo and caption. If A is pretty and B is poignant, then A and B should go together goes the logic.

I found the photo below to be more amusing than unsettling. I would have expected maybe something like Psalm 25:8 (26:8) "O Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place of the tabernacle of thy glory." or maybe Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's reference to Dostoevsky saying "Beauty will save the world." They capture the idea that beauty is important and that someone in a position to do so might think about donating something to beautify his church. The below quote might well give a priest pause in buying that new chalice set or replacing a sun-faded icon. Certainly not the intended effect.

http://orthodoxchristiansupply.com

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