Reccomended Blog.... and I think I cannot reccomend it enough

I was looking into Cincy area churches for a photo trip I may soon take,and stumbled upon a wonderful resource...

 The Catholic Telegraph photography Project has just sky rocketed up the list of my favorite websites.... With photos and details of things long past, it is a window onto an older Cincinnati of which I can only dream... I am probably going to link to this and other blogs for some photos and a post on the splendid German churches that used to dominate the old Cincinnati... Some of these demolished in the name of "urban renewal" or to build an interstate....What in the hell were people thinking?   Did they really make the neighborhood better by destroying such beauty?

Old St Bernard's

So I have been derelict in my web posting..I am trying to get back to speed.  Today's subject is a dear subject, perhaps one that ultimately inspired this site.  I have never been to Mass at St Bernard's and have only been in the building once, after it ceased to function as a Catholic Church.   As is apparently more common in rural Illinois, the church served a township, as opposed to being attached directly to a particular town.  The building still sits along Illinois 17. The Church was a home to the people of Sunbury Township. From anecdotal evidence, second and possibly third hand, I heard of stories of this church in its livelier days. Though the account was limited, it is quite striking.  Imagine this church rising out above snow covered fields on Christmas Eve, the bells peeling for the midnight Mass.  In the distance, bells on the sleighs of the approaching parishioners answer back to church bell....  wonderful thought isn't it.. On first considering the fate of St Bernard a poem started to take shape in my mind.  Here it is

She came to this by practical men
Swift with the paper and nimble with pen.
A dishonest scale has left her alone
Paper and coin outweigh spirit and stone.

Her altar, her very heart, sadly now lost
Few the living souls who tend to her repose
Green steeple red bricks, scoured by wind
Grey roof, a tombstone on which lichen now grows

Old St Bernards by the roadside is left
Of all affections, save memories and ghosts, bereft
She stands solemnly still among Sunbury fields
Forgotten by men, to times advances she yields

Oh that she might yet reply to wandering bells
on a holy and white winter's eve bloom  again.
Yea that we would favor the fiery folly of faith
Not the  pale providence of practical men

Now churches must be closed on occasion I suppose... but their loss or worth just cannot be measured by mere economics  Being "practical" is often confined to  precisely to economics.  Men who make decisions based on economics alone are often being honest to themselves by the narrow rules of coin, but the scales they use to judge things, which see only economics, are dishonest or at least blind... they simply do not  take into account all the factors.  As is the custom  here are additional pictures, there are few of the inside , which is barren, but being cleaned up.

http://picasaweb.google.com/DocMeadows85/82210StBernard#5512406639266313058

http://picasaweb.google.com/DocMeadows85/82909OldStBernardNearBudIL#
The image of the ship of the church crossing rough seas seemed particularly apt on this visit.