The beautiful Mother Anonymous once served a parish whose church building had a dinosaur in its stained glass windows. The members were quite proud of it, and rightly so. How many church windows can there be that are devoted to the evolution of life?
Still, the Cathedral of St. Ambrose, in a town near Milan called Vigevano, goes the wife's old church one better. It has an actual dinosaur skull built right into it.
This wasn't done on purpose. The cathedral was built in the 16th and 17th centuries, using marble from a quarry now noted for its abundance of fossils. But it was only recently that a paleontologist, Andrea Tintori, identified the skull, which is embedded in a section of the altar rail. Story and pics here.
This is a neat discovery, made a bit more amusing by the hue and cry of Anglicans the world over, claiming that they have dinosaurs too, you know.
2 comments:
This really cracks me up because of something my husband said to me when we were dating. First know that we were at a midwest ELCA college (not ELCA at the time, obviously.) We learned about fossils and stuff in science classes.
My husband-to-be was a refugee from the WELS. He told me that they didn't believe in evolution or all the various theories of how the earth and land was formed, like glaciers and layers of rocks, etc. I asked him, as we were standing in a park, staring at some of the evidence, "How do they explain THAT?"
His answer is that they say that is stuff that God puts there to text our faith.
Maybe if the right wing of the Christian church was old enough, we could find fossils in their church buildings too. Wouldn't that be a test of faith? Oh my.
I have in-laws there are in WELS and I can verify that educated, intelligent people will look you in the eye and say that Satan put those dinosaur bones in the ground to mess with us.
I do believe Satan is messing with us however...
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