Day 4 8/5: I like to ride my bicycle!

Today’s lessons in Vienna were focused on the role of religion and how it affected much of the history of the city. In class we learned about the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the church’s movement against the Protestant Reformation that began in the mid 1500s. During this time period the Catholic Church made aggressive moves to retake ground that people like Luther had gained once he split with the papacy. One of the main areas of theological contention between Luther and the Catholic Church was the Church’s use of spiritual aides outside of the Scripture to supplement a person’s religious experience. Whereas Luther proclaimed “solascriptura,” meaning “only scripture,” the Church relied on practices and elaborate items to show their devotion to God. The reason for this difference is that, as Beller writes, Lutherans believe that original sin is so damning that an individual can only receive salvation when God gives him/her the grace necessary to make it to heaven. Catholicism teaches that a person must earn salvation through deeds and not just the reading of the scripture, thus giving legitimacy to the sacraments, praying the rosary, and praying to specific saints. The Counter-Reformation aimed to make these practices more prevalent in Europe. As a Catholic myself, I had never quite understood the reason for the split from the Church. My lessons thus far had dealt with the social qualms that Luther had against the Church, like the use of indulgences, but I had little to no real appreciation for the ways in which the Protestants had/have a real theological disagreement with Catholicism. This lesson caused me to begin to examine my faith in relation to others so that I may come to a more complete understanding of the underpinnings of my practices and beliefs, as well as a better understanding of the faiths of others.
The lesson became even more vivid for me once my friends and I went to Karlkirche, the ornate Roman Catholic church completed in 1737 as a sign of thanks to God for his help in banning the Black Plague from Vienna. It was commissioned by Emperor Charles VI in the time period when Catholicism had retaken its role of vital importance to the lives of those in Europe, and as such it was built with the idea of being a true house of God. As the picture below shows, the Catholics were not messing around when they wanted to celebrate God.
The building combines many styles of architecture, such as ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Baroque, into an impressive and beautiful structure that is as pleasing to the eyes as many of the famous churches in the world. The interior is even more impressive. There is not a single portion of the ceiling that is not decorated by elaborate paintings of saints, angels, and of course the dove which symbolizes the Holy Spirit (although to see this dove I had to walk up the wooden flight of stairs, an act of faith in itself).
The bright gold altar is the center of attention as one looks towards the front of the church, but one cannot help but let the eyes wander to the rest of the gold statues and beautiful paintings. In this way it is indicative of the Catholic faith, because it encourages one to seek methods of connecting with God outside of just the scripture. One can imagine how a parishioner attending mass might shift attention away from the readings and ponder the life on a saint depicted on the wall, which is a central theme and practice for the Catholic faith. I had never realized this but I do the same thing in my own church back home, although it is not nearly as magnificent as Karlkirche. I fully admit to losing attention to my priest so I can think on one of the many Stations of the Cross that are all around me on Sundays. Never before had I thought about how historical trends can infuse themselves in architecture, but now that I have learned about this I will look for this significance in any future building that I visit.
The day continued when we decided to rent a city bike and roam around Vienna. It took us a while to figure out how to rent the bikes; I accidently took my bike out and put it back in, which meant that I had to wait another 15 minutes before I could take it out again. Super fail. After half an hour of being obviously American, we were off. The thing that impressed me the most about that ride was how easy it was to ride as a large group in the middle of a fairly metropolitan city. I have spent a lot of time biking in San Francisco where I would have to take my life into my own hands. In Vienna there are well-defined bike paths and lights specifically for bikes to cross. This is impressive even to a Davis student! After about an hour of getting lost we decided to stop and split a bottle of wine. We purchased a bottle with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on it so we could taste a little bit of home. While we were sipping on the wine a friendly (and probably drunk) Viennese man named Wolfgang comes up to us and with a thick accent asks us where we were from. “California,” we all responded as we pointed to the picture of the Bridge. Upon hearing this he began to do a little jig and sang some song about California. We tried our best to communicate with him and had ourselves a pretty good time.
We decided to leave once other drunk Viennese decided to join in. We did not want to be too obviously American. The day ended when we returned the bikes found our way home to have dinner and relax. A very packed day!