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To: JustMytwocents70; AnAmericanMother; NYer; Cicero; wideawake; dangus
I thought St. Anthony of Padua in Ambler looked pretty nice when I visited. Things can always be done better, and I find all these new Churches lacking in decoration when compared to what I think was the pinnacle of the past 60 years of Philadelphia new church building - Resurrection of Our Lord on Castor Ave. in Rhawnhurst, completed in 1956. This is easily the most beautiful modern Church I have ever seen. If people took tours of the Gothic masterpieces among Philadelphia Churches, this would have to be on the list.

I wish they had pictures posted showing the English style decorative painting of the ceiling and high walls. The dimness of these ones, while it captures the stain glass well, doesn't do justice to the interior.

If only more modern churches were built like this! it must have cost a small fortune though. The parish serves about 11,000 Catholics.

61 posted on 03/21/2006 8:43:13 AM PST by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Hermann the Cherusker

St. Anthony is nice! I like the private chapel. They were able to salvage the steeple, the tabernacle, stations but sadly not the altar from the fire. However, and I hate to nit pick, some things could be better.

pics are very beautifull! I was happily surprised when I visited Saint Bartholomew in tacony for the first time over 20 years back in 2003. It still looked the same!

My wife, brother and myself have gone for mass there on Christmas eve the last couple of years. Choir needs some work though.


77 posted on 03/21/2006 9:55:43 AM PST by JustMytwocents70
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
They still have the communion rail at St. Anthony of Padua?

Why don't they ripe out the marble and sell it for scrap?

Replace all marble with whitewashed plastered walls.

Get rid of the ornate stain-glass windows and replace them with "attractive" stain glass windows that like this:


85 posted on 03/21/2006 10:05:59 AM PST by Robertsll
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To: Hermann the Cherusker

I'm voting for the renovated Cathedral of Sacramento (CA)! The renovated Cathedral of Savannah is great, too; the latter was beautifully restored after an earlier bishop had apparently attempted a wreckovation, btw, so there's always hope.


86 posted on 03/21/2006 10:09:53 AM PST by livius
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To: Hermann the Cherusker

Now THAT is a splendid church!


87 posted on 03/21/2006 10:10:44 AM PST by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment))
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
If only more modern churches were built like this! it must have cost a small fortune though.

Construction of new churches still cost a "small fortune." Why not spend a few more million and make it beautiful?

For 200 million dollars, this...

... was replaced with this:


91 posted on 03/21/2006 10:25:06 AM PST by Robertsll
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To: Hermann the Cherusker

Beautiful church. I have seen a few like that, but many more that have been desecrated.

I went to one of my grandsons' first communions, to a Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and saw something similar recently. A huge church, like a basilica, all marble and beautiful statues and stained glass windows. An enormous number of little boys and girls with their families, everyone dressed up, waiting to receive First Communion or Communion.

No demographic problem there, like there is in the posher suburbs. And when it was over and we were all filing out, a whole new crowd of children and families came in the other door. The church was as big a basilica, but it turned out that they had to have two services, because the communicants and their families couldn't fit into the church for just one Mass!


93 posted on 03/21/2006 10:35:58 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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