"The Puritan influence is foreign to Catholicism — just as the idea that smashing altars, defacing Madonnas, and breaking stained glass as a religious act is foreign, and indeed heretical, to Catholics.
Hmmm. Someone's forgetting Jesus in the temple!
"The Catholic Church, instead, offers a celebration of beauty;"
Beauty? How very pagan.
That would be ...
um ...
...
you.
Jesus overturning the moneychangers' tables has nothing to do with iconoclasm, in any of its foul instances.
God's love for us is beautiful. His sacrifice of His only Son on the cross is beautiful. The Holy Sacraments are beautiful. His promise of Salvation and Everlasting Life is beautiful.
That would be you.
The Temple was a famously beautiful building, but Jesus did not destroy the art or the gold. He did prophesy that the Romans would do so.
What he objected to was the presence of moneychangers in the Court of the Gentiles, which made it impossible for Gentiles to pray within the Temple grounds ... not to the beauty of the structure. There is nothing wrong with dedicating the best we have to the service of God.
Do you have a purpose in life beyond being a rude fundie?
You don't think the example of Christ's life is an example of beauty?