Catholic camouflage

Recently I saw some interior shots of a modern Presbyterian church. It was studiously Spartan. Imagine the impact on someone used to that who goes inside a Gothic cathedral or Byzantine basilica for the first time. The contrast is overwhelming. 

They may feel cheated. This is what they've been missing all those years. That's one reason it's a mistake for evangelicals to be gratuitously Spartan when it comes to worship. That defiantly invites defection.

I myself basically have a high-church aesthetic along with a low-church ecclesiology and sacramentology. Mind you, I'm selective about high-church aesthetics. I don't care for ostentation. That's not even good art but bad taste masquerading as piety. 

But here's a different point: impressive art is a great way to camouflage vacuity. If you have nothing, you make it look like something through externals. If the wine is just wine, that's offset by using a fancy chalice. If the wafer is just a dry piece of bread, you conceal that by putting it inside a fancy tabernacle, on a fancy altar, with lots of other glittery trappings. If the priest doesn't actually have transformative powers, but is just a bloke like you and me, you mask that by swathing him with fancy vestments. The less you have, the more you compensate. 

The externals, the sensory overload, deflect attention away from the fact that there's nothing there. Layers upon layers to hide the vacuity at the core. Overpowering the senses is a savvy tactic to disarm the critical faculties. 

Or to put this in reverse, if there really was something there, something manifestly supernatural, then all the showy art, architecture, music, gilt and brocade, would be unnecessary. Indeed, if there really was something to it, all the wrappings would obscure it.