I fully admit that I am not a member of the Roman Church. Nor even a practicing Christian. Only a humble aesthete – and aspiring scholar of the wide-ranging and fascinating variety of Human Belief Systems.
But by golly, NOBODY can create cyclopean and terrifying horrors like dem Cathlicks. See my earlier (like, six years earlier, thread about Enormous Scary Statues).
Personal favorites: In the New World, Detroit’s National Shrine of the Little Flower…brainchild of the monstrously disgusting anti-Semite Fascist Father Charles Coughlin. (Click on “exterior” photos)
In the Old, I’ve got to go for El Valle de los Caidos the personal burial ground of the monstrously disgusting anti-Semite Fascist Francisco Franco.
Mind you! I AM NOT equating Roman Catholics with monstrously disgusting anti-Semite Fascists. Only that these two wackybirds created some goddamn dandy Terrifying Huge Things. Aesthetically speaking.
Nominations for abominations designed and built by very nice people are more than welcome.
Graggggh. If you ain’t got the power anymore (cue David Bowie), let Frank or Rico do it. I gotta get in once more whiskey and get to bed so’s I kin get young Banjo up at six for basketball practice.
My vote goes to the mosaic of Jesus in the National Shrine in DC. He looks so fierce and unwelcoming (the position of his hands/arms looks to me like he’s barring the congregation from entering heaven) that when I used to attend service there, I’d purposely sit behind a pole or off to the side to be spared the sight of him.
That picture doesn’t give you a sense of the proportion of the thing, either – Jesus is HUGE. You can make out his size a little better here.
Big Joe is a bell in a Catholic church in Cincinnati. It weighs 18 tons and has only rung once. When it did it was so loud it broke every window for blocks around. Since then - 112 years now - it just sits there, this huge useless thing.
I’m currently in New Mexico, and let me tell you, nothing says “scary Catholic” like Mexican Catholic. Unfortunately there’s not many giant things. Do they have to be giant? How about if my links work, do they have to be giant then?
I was just at a cathedral here, and they had the absolute scariest Jesus on a Cross I’ve ever seen. Of course, I can find no pictures online of it. I’ll work on it.
And then, of course, there are the Penitentes. I’m just waiting for the time I take a wrong turn and happen upon one o’ those rituals.
Still, as weird as the Mexican Catholic thing is, I’d have to say that the very weirdest Catholic thing I’ve ever seen is St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, where they keep the heart of the guy who built it in a box that you can go visit. Heart-in-a-box. Yeah, I needed to see that.
For the record, I was brought up Catholic, but I make no claims to any religion now.
A heart!?! That’s the weirdest thing you can find? Back in the Middle Ages, a popular relic used to be Jesus’ prepuce. As proof of his divinity, Jesus used his loaves and fishes powers to make hundreds of copies of his foreskin. Even nowadays, I think some churches have saints’ wangs and such in the reliquary.
I’m surprised the OP didn’t mention Christ the Redeemer.
I dunno, to me, the heart of someone who died in 1937 is just plain weird. It’s weirder than the various ancient bits and pieces of saints that you see in some churches. I mean, you stand there in front of this glass box with his heart in it, and then you go see photographs of the dude. Freaky.
While not “giant”, I still have to give Santa Semana pilgrims honorable mention on the scary front. (If you’re from the U.S. and didn’t just know they were Spanish pilgrims it’d be really easy to get other ideas as to who/what they are.)
