Beauty

Today we went to Mass at the other parish in town (St. Thomas) as I wasn't up to sitting through the children's Mass at our regular parish. For some reason I was particularly struck by the beauty of the traditional style church. I always like the stained glass, the statues and the icons; but today I was struck that our kids need that. (yes, we are probably going to switch churches, but more on that later.) I grew up with this and remember spending my time learning the Gospel through the stained glass windows and statues when the sermon was beyond my comprehension.

Our regular church has no stained glass, very few statues and is the prayer barn shape. Add light pink wall and no corpus on the large cross and everything seems so bland.

So what happens after a church is stripped of all it Catholic art? Potted plants take the place of the statues. Felt banner art takes the place of the stained glass. Children's art projects replace the icons.

And we get someone to be in charge of art and environment!

Isn't it ironic that when they rip out all the beauty, they have to hire somebody to try and dress it up again.