According to Real Clear Religion, who, it should be noted, use the headline “most beautiful churches” but throw in a few mosques, temples, and synagogues for good measure. It’s a bit tedious to click through one by one rather than scrolling, but there’s quite a nice selection, including Sainte-Chapelle, above.
What’s your favorite — among RCR’s picks or your own?
Relatedly, in my town, there are two “competing” Catholic churches, one of which was established in 1902, but when it outgrew its church, decided to use the school gym as its primary worship facility, maintaining the church itself for the lower-attendance masses only. The other, my own parish, was established in the 1950s, with a large, stately, Romanesque building, with a bell tower (with a real bell!). (There’s a third parish on the north side of town, too.) The gym-worshipping parish is also known for being more liberal in many ways, and has always had a more contemporary choir, but, among families who live along the “border” there are quite a few who deliberately choose the “real church” or who, alternately, feel that the “gym church” is proof of their devotion to using their money for more worthy things. (A decade or so ago, they discussed, and rejected, a building project that would have given them a proper worship space.)
What do you think? What does your church look like? And how important to you judge it to be, to have a “worshipful” worship space?
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