The sweeps have indeed fallen for little St Isidore in Cuba, OH. The parish is not only closed but the building is no more... hence the custom of pictures will be sorely constrained. The manner in which I learned of the demise of the little parish is, however, of note and provides at least anecdotal evidence that the parish once existed. On a swing through lower portion of northwestern Ohio, we effectively finished heavy photographing at St Micheal's in Kalida.... The church seems titanic in light of the size of the town, and it shall have its own post...but we digress. When a parish closes a tie is lost. Yes the universal Church endure until as Francois Mauriac says " ....the last of the priests (who) will celebrate the last Mass in a shattered universe..." and of which our Lord promised the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Still many underestimate the importance of place of grounding. True we worship in Spirit (for such worshipers the Father seeks) but we are made of flesh and blood as well as soul. When Our Lord came he did not come only in spirit but in the flesh and dwell among us. Hallowed indeed is the Lord, but also the places where he dwelt. We too easily dismiss the physical elements of worship and indirectly fail to fully take heed of the Incarnation. Walker Percy summed up the danger of disembodied worship in
Love in the Ruins.
"What she didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning." ~ (thanks for finestquotes.com for saving me from spending an hour finding this quote in my beat up paperback).. Graffiti on the boarded up windows of the old church said "sometimes Satan wins." I do not know who added this postscript nor do I implicate the bishop who closed it as acting in league with the aformentioned apparent victor. However, the closing of a church gives at least the passing impression that Church has indeed retreated in an area.... and as such leads one to wonder if the enemy will let the vacuum remain unoccupied. A church is more than a pile of bricks in a similar sense as the bodies of the faithful departed are more than a pile of bones. Now it of course terrible for people to leave the Church over a parish closing as is sometimes threatened, but we take , I think, insufficient note of the fact that a parish closing, even if deemed necessary by episcopal authority, is in fact a scandal, a stumbling block to the holy faithful, particularly of that parish. To militate against the scandal given, the Kalida parishioners gave the refugees, if you will, from St Isidore a small side area as a memorial to St Isadore, with original statue of the saint, and with two custom made stained glass windows with medallions that depict farming implements and the church building itself respectively. It is these I have pictures of.... I will attach a link on the closing of the church as well.
https://picasaweb.google.com/DocMeadows85/4211StIsadoreTribute#
http://www.limaohio.com/articles/torn-45137-church-cuba.html
http://images.onset.freedom.com/limanews/medium/kt4pvu-kt4pvccuba4.jpg
