The white Pagoda in Hong Kong.
The famous White Pagoda in Hong Kong is nestled in a pleasant hillside of trees; a background of mountains; water from the bay of Hong Kong; it stands like a sentinel that dominates the panorama.
Pagodas are chapels or temples; the White Pagoda is, therefore, a building of religious character. It is renowned for its artistic merit, and represents a typical strain of Chinese religious architecture.
However, in this building one does not sense the supernatural. One does not sense that imponderable, impalpable yet lively and impressive supernatural tone that is evident at Notre Dame of Paris, Assisi, Saint Peter's when the Pope is carried in the Sedia Gestatoria, or in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament in Lourdes.
Nevertheless, in the White Pagoda one sees so many elements of balance, harmony, refinement and class that Catholic worship could be held in it -- at least this is my opinion -- without shame.
How happy we are when we think of a Catholic China where this building would be dedicated and consecrated to the cult of the Queen of Heaven and earth!
To build a tower that stands alone, independent of all support, is a difficult task to carry out with class and good taste, since it is easy to fall into one of two extremes: too stout of a tower gives an impression of brutality and vulgarity; a tower that is too thin looks like a cheap cone shaped pipe.
The builders of this tower -- with love for balance, harmony and good sense -- knew how to avoid both extremes.
The tower's height is perfectly proportional to the diameter of its foundation. And to make the tower "light," each story is smaller then the one below it.
This lightness is highlighted by the finely worked parapets and by the magnificent roof trimmings that seem so flexible that they almost appear to float in the air, ready to "wave" in the afternoon breeze.
To compensate for that the roof trimmings may have of excessively fragile, each floor is a robust octagon, with flat surfaces that connect to arches that have severe, simple and coherent lines.
One could say that considering the octagon alone it contains the precision, strength and weight of solid logical reasoning, while the parapets and trimmings contain the lightness, grace, and nobility of a suave fantasy.
To end this appreciation, imagine that the top story of the pagoda were destroyed by a fire. Try to think of a design that would properly take its place. It would be difficult indeed to find a better idea.
One could say that the roof is a flower whose corolla was turned upside down.
Our eyes instinctively follow the ridges of the corolla, then go to its center, and are delighted to follow the sequence of its progressively upward and smaller rings, staying focused for a final instant before getting lost in the heavens...
This is not the moment to comment on Chinese religion.
Without ignoring that gentility is the reign of the devil, we must recognize that the reign of the spirit of darkness did not reach such an extent as to erase certain love in the Chinese for good sense, beauty, and balance that is evident in the splendid lines of this building.
The same can be said of other ancient cultures. This is what explains the care, preference and appreciation that the Church in mission lands gives to the remnants of these ancient civilizations, conserving, studying and purifying them of pagan filth to eventually instill in them a different spirit and to assume and integrate them in the enormous commonwealth of Catholic culture.
Let's now turn our eyes away from the tall, white, strong and delicate tower in which reason and fantasy are merged with such harmony, to this poor building, that makes one think of a aerolites of crystal that has crashed into the earth, breaking into many pieces, that gives one the impression of something disordered, disjointed and incoherent that happens when an object has been suddenly thrown on the floor.
This violent and disordered ensemble of aberrations is the design for an interfaith chapel at one of our universities.
But according to some people, it would be perfectly acceptable as the design for a Catholic, Buddhist or Muslim place of worship in just about any country in the world.
In this typical product of the neopagan modern world, do we find something that expresses human qualities that are superior to those of the ancient pagans?
Or, does the modern style expresses the contrary of those qualities, and are we staring at a building made in homage to extravagance, disproportion, incongruence and chaos?
If the devil were, with God's permission, to violently shake a chapel, would it not end up like this?
This sad reality serves to ponder an even sadder conclusion.
Modern neo-paganism, the poisoned fruit of apostasy, is an evil one thousand times worse than ancient paganism that deeply deforms the human soul and takes art, civilization and life to a sub-human level in which the Power of Darkness reigns without restriction.
In other words, it is the victory of Satan through the victory of Manichaeism. (Manichaeism is the heresy that denies absolute good and truth, denies the existence of an Infinitely Good God, and affirms the false belief of dualism -- the eternal principles of good and evil exist in god and creatures.)
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