St. Paul's Outside the Walls

So there's four big churches in Rome you're supposed to see. There's St. Peter's Basilica, clearly,  San Giovanni in Laterano, the actual cathedral of Rome, Santa Maria Maggiorie, the biggest of the churches devoted to St. Mary in Rome, and finally, Basilica Papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura, or, as most of us will call it, St. Paul's Outside the Walls.

St. Paul's...

And the walls it is outside

Now St. Peter's is actually in Vatican City, so it's not technically in Rome, I guess. San Giovanni in Laterano is down the way from Santa Maria Maggiorie, 'cause I walked there, following the pope (details to come), but both of them are maybe fifteen minutes from the Colosseum, which is pretty distant from the Vatican. Walkable, but distant. St. POtW, as I will now call it, due to sheer sloth, is like, the next to last metro stop on that line or something ridiculous. It's not outside of Rome, but it is outside the walls built by Aurelius and the dude who came after him, and was damaged when the Sarcens (Arabs) invaded Rome in the 9th century. Thank you, wikipedia. Also, thank you to Hank Green for amusing me on my planned recovery days and teaching me the correct pronunciation of wikipedia at 1:40. (Though not the correct spelling of communication. One year of that.) The point of all that discussion is to show you that it takes a little bit of effort to hop around to these places. Rome is full of churches and I didn't get to see all of them by any stretch of the imagination. Good thing I chucked coins in the Trevi Fountain like no one's business.

I got to take a great picture of the hall, as there was no one around. It's too far, I guess. Sorry this picture has nothing to do with the Trevi Fountain.

St. POtW is a basilica like St. Peter's and like St. Peter's, it holds the remains of an important apostle. Down the stairs between the papal altar and the hall of the basilica you can see the tomb of St. Paul, along with chains that held him at some point in his ministry, which was a wow moment for me. I mean, Paul was the apostle to the gentiles and his letters make up a sizable portion of the New Testament, correctly attributed and otherwise. So even though St. Paul's has an astounding hall like St. Peter's and a large papal altar like St. Peter's, the thing that impressed me the most had to be seen kneeling in front of a tiny square or light.

Here, before I ramble, let me show you a picture I found really funny and then you can close out the post, because the rest of it is just a rambling story. It's a difficult habit to break.

Here's Jesus, with Peter and Paul beside him...

And a really freaky old man beetle getting ready to bite his oddly shaped big toe!

I have this terrible tendency to wander into churches right before a mass happens. I mean, maybe it's not a terrible tendency, and part of it is that I'll do the dome climb for places at the last minute, which means I'm near the top during mass, but beyond that, I just end up in a church at the right (?) time. (I was going to say wrong, but it doesn't do to call the time for mass wrong.) But this time, it was not my fault, as a special mass had been called. Now, I always kinda internally giggled when churches had signs saying that you could schedule your own mass as long as you brought your own priest. It gave me this mental image of someone pulling a priest out of a suitcase saying something like, "Thanks goodness we didn't forget the priest!"

It makes a lot more sense when it's, say, an American Catholic youth group going on a pilgrimage. I sat down in some chairs away from the benches in front of the main altar when I saw people starting to gather since I hadn't looked around all I wanted to and I always like sitting through mass, despite the obvious and frequent language barriers. I was surprised and relieved when the head priest started talking in English and sat through a pretty pleasant service. It was good to actually understand a sermon for once.


Well, I say 'understand.' They were celebrating St. Paul's mass (that could be a total lie, Catholic friends- I'm just going off of what I remember the guy saying) which made sense, since, you know, St. Paul was right there, but the sermon surprised me. He talked a lot about believing in the church, which I'm all for. I support faith in an organization that has great potential to bring good and wonderful things into the world at the base level, and I believe that the Church can be a balm to the world around us, providing inspiration and courage. So I am all for believing in the church, regardless of denomination or creed. But then he said that the church had always been and will always be a source of complete truth for anything you'll ever need.

And I, being terrible at hiding my emotions, sat up and gave the preaching priest a look that I don't think I've sent anyone since an evangelical Christian had the audacity to condemn all scientists in my hearing, in front of a group of trusting children without access to auxiliary views. I feel like I need to bring the increduosity for other people. Yes, I think that the church is a great source of truth in the world. But I don't know that you can trust any human organization as purely as he was implying. And I hate to bring up a resolved example, but in his own time, Galileo was subjected to the church's error. The church can be wrong. All churches can be wrong, and have been wrong. I didn't think people advocated for an infallible organization anymore.

I mean, it's good for youth today to hear a vote of confidence for the church. And the rest of it rang out like a normal youth group sermon, with a wonderful fresh outlook for me on the good of a pilgrimage, though with the ever irksome insistence on girls guarding their affection and boys guarding their eyes. After the mass was over, I took pictures of side altars and headed out of the church, snapping more photos of giant statues and the facade. A service in English made me think again about how much I depend on words to make a service worthwhile for me. It also made me think about how much I analyze every word thrown my way.

Then again, I also analyze every word of Paul's thrown my way as well. Makes me wish I had a better way of thanking him than picking apart goodhearted texts.