This post is, not surprisingly, a too common identification of the faith with significant ornament and accoutrement. Is that not the challenge to faith and church? If we continue to assume that the barriers to thought are really THE thought; that the icons ARE the reality they represent, we are in fact denying ourselves access to the core of faith. Yes, we need reinforcements, myths, icons, symbols, rites but to affirm them as the essence, or even absolute, as we "mature" is to avoid faith. 
If I die alone, in the desert, naked I will have nothing, nothing but Jesus. Jesus will be all, everything.