Cheap Church Cheap Faith

Cheap Church Cheap Faith June 1, 2015

extMy latest article at Aleteia defends the building of beautiful churches–beginning with the one in our parish for which we are soon to break ground.

We are just about to break ground for a beautiful new church in my parish in Greenville, South Carolina. Whenever Catholics plan to lay out a significant sum of money to ensure their worship is beautiful, invariably someone will complain that the money should be spent on the poor.

This is known as “Judas’ Argument” since it was Judas Iscariot who said the rich ointment used to worship Jesus should have been sold and the money given to the poor. That’s a snide put down. In fact there are very worthy and good reasons for Catholics to build beautiful churches.

First of all, the Catholic faith is incarnational faith. We believe that the Son of God took flesh of the Blessed Virgin and entered this physical realm of human history. That transaction within history registers as the expression of God’s everlasting beautiful made real and visible in the world. A beautiful Catholic Church proclaims the beauty of God made visible.

Go here to read the full article.


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