From: dom martin Places of worship are the only known Portraits of God, inspired by and dedicated to earthly saints. A Basilica of St. Jose Vaz would give God's Portrait yet another welcome patina.
Now for some sound bytes: Does God truly need another Big House when countless faithfuls are homeless, endure hunger or persecution? If Goans can drum up capital for a ?Taj Bankroti?, why not restructure it into the 'St. Jose Vaz Provident Fund', use that power-capital to conserve existing Portraits of God in Goa which are in varying states of neglect and some, on the verge of becoming another variant of the Tower of St. Augustine? Such gesture would be the first time that a brown saint comes to the aid of white saints so that cohabitation may continue. Lastly, we live in an era circumvented by iPhones, ISPs and satellites. A single Goan can set up and maintain a Virtual Basilica where everyone can upload their intercessions to Cloud! :) In any event, don't count me out yet if there is an overwhelming 'pro' consensus, even if my sound bytes at the moment sound like rebounding from a ?ridiculously reductionist? router. ------------- GL responds: Dialoging on Goanet, always makes my head spin, because I never know the direction of the argument and logic. As the last paragraph suggest, Goa's foremost writer, instead of providing the needed leadership, is looking to see which way the wind blows. An argument I hear often is: Why do we need another place of worship (Big House)? Amazingly this comes from the very people who complain that it took 300 years to make Joseph Vaz a saint. I can almost hear the cardinals for the last 300 years saying something very similar, "Why do we need another saint when we already have more than 500 saints; and specially when this priest does not even have much of following in his own native place of birth?" This thread started with "thrashing the magic of Goan" architect Charles Correa and other Goan artists. The dialog appears to end with (paraphrasing), "In today's era of the cloud and computers we do not need structural buildings and artistic displays. We-Goans are progressive and can just live in the cloud." I suggest this logic is what really trashes Goan architects and artists at present and for generations to come. Perhaps that is OK, as none of them have bothered to step into this dialog on this thread. Living in the computer cloud would also mean we do not need to repair and maintain buildings, including those of Charles Correa, that are victims of time and nature. Let's save our crocodile tears. Regards, GL
