I admit I have been remiss at posting, but this is a labor of love so one should not attempt it halfheartedly. I have recently returned form a trip through Covington, Kentucky and southwestern OH. There were several churches of note, but today we will focus on St Philomena. The church sits aside Stonelick Creek, not to far above OH 50. It sits on Stonelick-Williams Corner Road, one of those wonderful hyphenated OH roads, which by their name very succinctly inform one which two hamlets the road connects, but which always accomplish the connection in a seemingly indirect and decidedly rural fashion. The parish is an old German foundation, with the present structure dating form the 20s. While some of the family lines have recently died out, others are still present at the parish and in fact sit in the same seats as their fore bearers. ( Yes the pews do in fact have the names discretely appended.) Unfortunately, the high altar has been removed. Strikingly though, after talking with one of the locals who showed us the church, we learned that more than a few are dissatisfied with the results of 60-70S "renovations". There is a push to move thing back to the way they were, or failing this, to replace some of the more offensive features, with improved wooden furnishings, in some cases hand carved by a parishioner. The present wood altars replaced an unsatisfactory Formica altar. The windows are simple colored glass, with religious symbols in medallions, fitting for a small rural church. The statuary, particularly St Philomena, is well done. I will also include some photos of photos showing both the original interior, and the parishioners building the present day structure.
http://picasaweb.google.com/DocMeadows85/10210GStPhilomena#
http://picasaweb.google.com/DocMeadows85/72310StPhilomenaStonelick#
It is actually the oldest parish in Clermont County. For more information, you can also check the website for St Philomena and its partner (cluster) parish of St Louis.
http://home.catholicweb.com/stlparish/index.cfm/about
The present structure was actually built around 1900, not the 1920's. It is a wonderful church, where one feels the presence of God in a community, because a community is not a group of people who happen to be attending Mass at the same time on a given Sunday, but rather a group of people who are bound BY TRADITION to the church and to each other THROUGH TIME. If you destroy tradition, you destroy community, and ironically this is exactly what the modernizers did while invoking community as their goal and measure.
ReplyDeleteIt is truly heartening, how people are trying to restore their churches to the way they were before the modernizations. This seems to be a general trend. The problem is that aesthetic decisions are a do-it-yourself project, and the results depend on how good the taste of the current priest and of the parishioners who volunteer is. This varies.