This summer, the beginning of July, my parents and I went to New York City to check out New York University. I hadn't been to NYC in years (the last time I was there I was too young to appreciate it) so my mom and I decided to wander Greenwich Village while my dad worked. We probably ended up walking about 8 miles or so after trekking from one side to the other and back and up and down and... You get the point. We were supposed to meet my dad for dinner up town at 46th street so we walked part way (and stopped by Barnes & Noble at Union Square, which happened to be in the recent movie Conspiracy Theory) and then took a cab to check out St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Ever since I'd heard of St. Patrick's I had wanted to go there. Although I'm not Christian I've always loved cathedrals, the holy feeling you get when inside them. So we enter the cathedral and the first thing I see is... a television set. I couldn't believe it. Mounted on the columns running the length of the cathedral were television sets. From a practical point of view, this makes sense. From an religious or even aesthetic point of view, however... So after getting over that shock we started looking at the Saint's alcoves. I can't recall which Saint we looked at first, but something struck me. There was this little box with a slot in the top that said "1 dollar". I was amazed at the audacity. The church was telling people how much to contribute. Isn't this charity? Shouldn't people donate what they can afford or what they want rather than being told? Sure, you can slip in whatever you want, but it is the principle that bothers me. My mom mentioned how they used to just be plain boxes and people knew how much to put in or put in however much they wanted. So we continue on down the side of the cathedral and draw close to the high altar. And who did I see upon it? A priest? A cardinal? The bishop? The pope, even? No, some little kid whose parents wanted a picture of him. Excuse me? Isn't this the high altar? Sure, I'm looking at this from an outside perspective, but it just seemed really disrespectful. Okay, continuing the journey, and the point of this little article. We got to the last Saint's alcove. This Saint I remember. It was the Saint of the Gift Shop. The Patron Saint of T-Shirts. The Saint who looks over people who mark up items 500% and sell cheap merchandise for a fortune. From a Saint's alcove. They had converted one of them into a gift shop.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

My god, what message does that send? "We'll kick out a saint and make more money than $1 per customer, yeah, that's it!" I don't think that a gift shop belongs in a cathedral of all places. This wasn't a house of God, this was a tourist trap. It just disgusts me that so much of our culture is controlled by materialism that we have to put a gift shop in a church. Yes, I probably sound kind of hypocritical since I love my material objects. They make me happy. But I don't think that selling them in a temple or church is appropriate. Religion should be, in my opinion, about non-materialism and the intangible, not a shirt that says, "I went to church and all I got was this lousy T-shirt".