Give me something like this over the junk above any day!
Posted on 07/28/2005 8:25:37 AM PDT by fortunecookie
As you enter the building from one of our two parking lots, you enter our newly constructed Gathering Area that serves as our “concourse” leading either to our parish center and offices, or to the worship space. Accessible from the Gathering Area is the place to hang coats and hats, the restrooms, babysitting room, and a multi-purpose room.
(Excerpt) Read more at churchofresurrection.org ...
The only thing I like is the baptismal pool. I think all RC's should start baptizing by triple immersion (as the Orthodox Christians do). The rest is just modern architecture that I can't get too excited over.
Give me something like this over the junk above any day!
My mother was raised Byzantine by a formerly Orthodox mother. I have to agree with you. There is a beauty and mysticism in the Orthodox and Byzantine rites. It seems as though the AmChurch, at least, is working overtime to erase as much of that mysticism as they can. I can't get over how excited they are about their renovations. I live near enough to NE Ohio that I've been to a few of these churches. It never ceases to amaze. I, too, like the mosaic in the baptismal font/pool.
The second photo you posted is just gorgeous! Do you have the pleasure of attending Mass there?
Act 17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
Act 17:24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
Act 17:25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
Act 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
Act 17:27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
Thank you, it is beautiful. And inspiring.
ping
So, does it resemble a traditional Crucifix when everything is in place?
I don't know. But it seems as if they are taking everything that Catholics hold as important for a 'worship space', a church and making it the opposite. Now, the space itself could indeed be a plain room. I have attended Mass at a hotel where a folding table was dressed with a white linen, adorned with a Crucifix, and it was celebrated by a good and holy priest, one of the most powerful Masses I've had the privelege to attend. But the basic tenets of how and why we believe what we believe are subtly challenged and turned a 180 in this space, it seems to me. We look to Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, we use the Stations of the Cross to remind us of his journey to that sacrifice. This seems absent here, and purposely or not, relegates the importance of Christ's sacrifice to a lesser position. Now, of course, we joyfully worship the Risen Lord, but we don't discount his sacrifice made out of love for us.
See my #14. It is indeed fitting that the Navajo have a place to worship. As described in my 14, it could be as barren as a hotel conference room, but still filled with faithful worshippers. But there is more to it than that. It is about potentially distorting the faith and focus of the worshippers.
ROFL. Tooo true!! Now I can't get that image of Han Solo out of my head!!
The 14 stations really caught my eye. For hundreds of years, we have followed the original stations as a way to follow Christ. Now? Energy and mood of the encounter? Colored glass can accomplish this as an aid to prayer more than a depiction of Christ carrying the Cross? My goodness... New agey off the charts. And it seems to be sweeping even the most previously staunchly Catholic areas. The last 15 years here of battering and changing and changing back have left too many people too weary to fight back or even care. I guess that's the goal, because now they can sweep in with their new spirituality and rescue them from the mess they created.
Then there are the four priestess wannabees waving their incense on the altar, the woman helping to spread the altar cloth, the chairs without kneelers, and the ugly, ugly art. There is much, much more - the tabernacle, the altar....
And I love, as so many of us have noticed, the all woman Mass, where the only male is the priest. You know the kind, girl altar servers, women cantors and women lectors and woman organists and as of late women ushers. Not a man in sight except for the priest. Where are all the men?
And as a former priest at my parish said, maybe not now, but soon. 5 years, 10? Surely in his lifetime. What did he mean? Why women priests, of course. As he encouraged the little girls in our rel ed class to consider the priesthood. But not the boys. I did correct him, complain to the pastor, but no one seemed to care, not even the other teachers.
The tabernacle is an afterthought, a nice little storage box, like something you can get at Walmart. The art is not remotely religious, not inspirational, where is the focus on art as teaching about our faith? Is that the goal? Focus seems, deliberately or not, shifted away from Christ and Catholicism and toward, what? Self? New agey?
It's a tower of Babel and a golden calf. Just when you think, how much worse can it get, you hear something new like this one....
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