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St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, LA


I loved the face of this angel. In person he looked straight into my heart. But I did not feel like he was a Catholic, more of a Greek god.


I loved his arm. Broken, repaired with marble? It looked like a wound.


The Confessional. It looks like a guillotine.

When I was younger I was enamored of Catholicism, like the sensualist Modernists were. The dark, perfumed sanctuary decorated with decadent art. The suffering, the drama.

However, my feelings are different now. I almost didn't say this, but this is my journal. I can say what I want to. I don't like Catholicism, and I never will have an immature sensualist fascination with it again. Guilt hung on my heart like lead as I looked at the stations of the cross high above me, images of Jesus suffering cartoon-like at the hands of villains. Then, dismay. I muttered some disparaging things but didn't say a hundredth of how I felt.

My heart is free. God made it so. I felt those pitiful faces and bowed forms in painting and sculpture attempting to bind it in misery. I hate guilt and self-imposed mortification. I hate some things I used to love. I see them differently now.                

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