One of the delights during my recent visit to Missouri was an afternoon tour of some of the country churches of the Diocese of Jefferson City. This church in the tiny town of Frankenstein was a delight Built in the Romanesque style, it is a delightful version of Romanesque scaled down for a small country community Constructed from good, local materials in the 1920s the members of this rural community provided most of the labor to build their church. The... Read more
Have you noticed that nobody loves modern churches? Nobody. I mean NOBODY. Seriously. Have you ever met anyone who sees a church like this and and heard them whisper, “I just love that church! It is so inspiring!”. No. Never. Have you ever gone into a “worship space” like this and heard someone say how awed they were to be in the presence of God? I doubt it. That’s because these buildings were not designed to inspire awe or... Read more
I have written several posts this week about the brutal iconoclasm that took place in American Catholic churches over the last fifty years. I was therefore delighted this afternoon to be taken on a tour of some central Missouri country churches where pastors and people are restoring beauty and dignity to their old churches. The Diocese of Jefferson City is blessed with a large number of historic country Catholic Churches and Fr Jeremy Secrist drove me through the rolling farmland... Read more
Deacon is busy publishing parish letters on the Four Last Things for the Sundays of Advent. Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. But it seems to me that the response of most people in our society and our church is a careless shrug of “So what.” Not long ago I was looking at a picture of Saint Jerome with a skull and the Catholic kids looking at the picture said, “Gross! What’s the skull there for!?” It was actually the right... Read more
This week’s article at Aleteia comments on the Pope’s recent visit to Turkey and quotes Patheos blogger Billy Kangas on what the East can learn from the West and vice versa. Both Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew would agree that the Christian faith is more than simply helping the poor and working to end war and injustice. Repeatedly, Pope Francis has warned against the church becoming no more than another humanistic do-gooding charity. The idea that the Eastern Orthodox and... Read more
Last year there was some wisecracking atheist Christmas billboard which also featured Santa. This year’s edition is now out. It is pictured here, and features a kid writing to Santa saying that he doesn’t want to go to church because he’s too old for fairy tales. This is a hoot. The kid’s too old for fairy tales so he writes a letter to Santa. What next, “Dear Tooth Fairy, I don’t want to go to church because I don’t believe... Read more
What is it that makes us so restless and so unhappy? Some say it is desire. The root of all unhappiness is desire. We desire what we do not have, and we desire more what we cannot have. But what is at the root of that desire? I think it is something else. It is fear. The nameless fear in the middle of the night. It is the fear that haunts our waking hours as a gnawing restlessness that focuses... Read more
Yesterday I commented that when the statues of the saints were removed from the churches in the Protestant Revolution of our time (i.e. post Vatican II wreck-ovation) the communion of saints also vanished. The more I think about this, the more true it becomes. Where, in your experience, have you come across a Catholic church or community that has an avid and vital devotion to the saints and also a church that has no images of saints? I contend that... Read more
This before and after photograph of the St Turibius chapel of the Pontifical Josephinum seminary illustrates what was done to Catholic architecture across the world in the wake of the Vatican 2 revolution. A vital break in the sacred tradition took place which is rightly called a new stripping of the altars. As I travel around the country and see archive photographs of our Catholic churches it is clear that it happened virtually everywhere. Marble altarpieces were ripped out, statues... Read more
In my earlier posts here and here I discussed the practical aspects of having married priests. There is a basic flaw, however in only discussing this issue with a regard to the practicalities. This is because there are simply too many variables to make a strong case one way or the other for or against married priests. What works in one culture may not work in another. What works in one diocese may not work in another. What works for... Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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