Ten things that you might notice if you’re a recovering Catholic visiting St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museum, and the Sistine Chapel:
1. Going through a metal detector to see a church seems more normal than you expected.
2. The Popes clearly had a strong (potentially erotic) interest in ancient pagan sculpture.
3. It is possible to be overexposed to gigantic Renaissance tapestries.
4. Even people who have dreadlocked mullets like to going sightseeing.
5. Such powerful waves of human odors wash over you while waiting to view the Sistine Chapel you have no choice but to assume it is impossible to leave the queue to use the bathroom.
6. The only way you could ever get anyone to view a gallery of modern Christian art is to force them to wait in a line that cuts through a room. The Vatican Museum has twelve rooms. Several of the pieces were clearly of the “outsider art” movement.
7. People who take pictures in the Sistine Chapel despite the dozens of signs that say “Photographs are forbidden” might not be able to read.
8. Looking at relics like St. Carl’s toe bone and St. Nancy’s femur and imagining people praying to them made me wonder if these Catholics went to a different Sunday school than me. Because in my Sunday school they taught us that we weren’t supposed to pray to idols and graven images. Actually I guess they didn’t specify toe bones, so maybe that’s open to interpretation.
9. Maybe the church could sell this stuff to a private company and use the proceeds to help poor people. Like Mayor Daily and the parking meters, except, you know, not use the money for kick backs and back alley deals.
10. My cynicism switched turns to off when I’m confronted by artistic and architectural masterpieces, but I can’t help but wonder (cynically) if that was the point of it.
