Posted on 10/30/2009 10:20:38 AM PDT by Gamecock
Is this a British thing or are there similar issues in the US?
Alas, we’re probably even worse off in the US. We had more money to do worse things to our churches and more money to build even more hideous new ones.
Things are changing now, but it’s going to take a long time to get rid of the hippie priests in their sneakers and tatty dirty albs and their airplane hangar churches with not even a cross visible.
Yes. It was the "thing to do" during the 70s.
Fortunately, there have been guidelines to rectify the situation (it used to be tradition -- small 't' -- and common sense before).
Also fortunately, they couldn't get their claws into all of the older, glorious, church buildings.
My mom’s church in central Indiana is well...yuck. She’s actually thinking about changing parishes to one just a little further up the road.
Our parish church is quite beautiful (built around 1895): http://www.icchurch.com/ The stained glass windows are really nice. And it’s often quite packed on Sundays. There is another older Catholic church here that is pretty, and then the Catholic church just across the street from me, well, at least they have a good priest :)
I forgot to mention that our church is a landmark in Fort Smith—even people who are not Catholic know I.C. Church from a distance. Several local artists have painted beautiful renditions of it.
Similar issues in the US. Unless there is a conscious effort to recreate some well documented historical appearance, some of them can look pretty shabby, or so charmlessly modern you think you’re in a Toyota dealership. For years, St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill was my parish and it was outstanding for its cracked and peeling greenish paint. To people of a certain age, the chasubles are a joke, and the younger ones don’t know the difference. I think it is a combination of lack of funds (after you’ve paid for the new roof, you might not want to splash out on a professional paint job) and truly, horribly, abysmal taste. Lucky the church that has the wherewithal and an interested someone with cultivated taste to take care of the building properly.
This reminds me of that Baroque cathedral in Oaxaca.
I’ve stepped into several non-Catholic churches with nary a cross or stained glass in sight.
Similar? Oh, yea.
Modern churches seem built with resale in mind.
They are about as sacred as strip mall.
Oh don’t worry, many Evangelical churches are pretty pathetic.
It’s Mother Angelica’s Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama ... dedicated ten years ago.
My second, and, current parish not only has statues of Our Lady and our patron, St. Thomas Aquinas -- with CANDLE RACKS! O M G! And a nice icon of St. Dominic. The original awful glass is there, it's still kind of semi-"in-the-round" but the tabernacle has been moved to a place of prominence and, well, it begins to look like a church!
There's still too much polyester. I bought a nice altar "linen" for our chapel (the old one was was severely fonky). But the Tsarina of the Altar Guild insisted on synthetics because we haven't really thought about how to maintain our fabrics, so they still tend to "maintenance free"plastic. Darn.
The locals call it "Paddy's Wigwam".*
The C of E Cathedral is a beautiful Gothic masterpiece.
.
*Ya, a Prottie is reported to have designed it ;^(
WOW!
What really breaks my heart is how they’ve painted over some of the beautiful artwork on the walls of churches in favor of some plain brown wrapper type color.
The locals call it "Paddy's Wigwam".*
The C of E Cathedral is a beautiful Gothic masterpiece.
.
*Ya, a Prottie is reported to have designed it ;^(
I can see that very well. Yuch.
That thing in Liverpool always looks like it’s about to launch a missile. (Missal?)
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