Christians well know that the much-decorated statue of the Church, as it now stands, is not of pure chiseled marble, but of clay, cemented together by blood and tears and hardened in the fires of hatred and persecution.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I know it is a somewhat delicate matter to refuse a gift, but in this case the statue is so atrocious that every endeavour should be made to keep it out of the church.
In the West there has always been the attempt to try make the religious building, whether it's a Medieval or Renaissance church, an eternal object for the celebration of God. The material chosen, such as stone, brick, or concrete, is meant to eternally preserve what is inside.
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
People have really strong images of what church is, and it's almost certainly not the same as mine.
Art, that great undogmatized church.
The sculptor who deals with form seeks to imprison beauty in a marble statue that will withstand the ravages of time during millenniums; but a marble statue is cold and speaks to but a few of the most evolved who are able to infuse the statue with their own life.
Jesus is coming back for a church without a spot or a wrinkle. His righteous blood covers the spots and the wrinkles of those who believe unto righteousness, allowing once sinful men to be holy.
The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.
Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.
A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.