Posted on 10/30/2009 10:20:38 AM PDT by Gamecock
Recently I attended a Catholic service in a church, and a diocese, which shall remain nameless. This is not because there is anything scandalous to report, but because Im about to compare it to a 1970s department store.
Then, after Vatican II, its interior was modernised. But were not talking savage reordering here: just the usual wall-to-wall carpeting of the sanctuary, removal of the altar rails and unforgivably, not least because it makes a nonsense of the high altar the removal of the tabernacle to somewhere.
Sometimes you walk into a modern Catholic church and think: this is really just a community centre with icons.
But then, in the 1970s, younger customers deserted it for chain stores, so someone gave the shop a makeover in brown and cream formica panelling complete with snazzy logo. And the regular customers said: Ooh, its a bit trendy for my tastes, not the same, I cant get used to it but they did get used to it, because the staff were the same and nowhere else sold that colour of stockings that Mum liked.
It was the same story in the sacristy. The priest was wearing a double-breasted polyester alb whose top half resembled a chefs outfit. I didnt know such a thing existed. The door of the wardrobe was open, revealing a jumble of highly coloured cheap chasubles (also polyester) that could have been mistaken for the womens clothing rack in an Oxfam shop.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
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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