The Faith and the Stones Are One.

It has been quite a spell since I have posted, but I am starting again with a modification.  While I want to keep this blog focused heavily on church architecture , I will add a little more rumination on tradition and its travails in the Church. At first glance, these two subjects might not seem to be related.  I would argue that they are related at a deep level, in that wreck-ovation and increasingly church closures, sales, and demolitions are a result of the reversal of the fortunes of the Church in the west, and that this reversal is itself  a result of doctrinal and liturgical confusion .

The quote from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, made when he was still only a priest illustrates this connections

“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."

Fewer, yet more fervent will be those spirits who love her, and fewer the monuments that testified to the faith of those who went before us.  And as we see the Church humbled the more and more despised  by the world around us, many realizing that the buildings are not essential, will state that "they are just bricks" with all the jejune sincerity a young lady "wisely" spouting the maxim "The more stitches, the less riches." in A brave New World.  They will miss, however, the deep significance of architecture and of place.  As it says in the psalms

"You will arise and have compassion on Zion,

for it is time to show favor to her;

the appointed time has come.

For her stones are dear to your servants; 

her very dust moves them to pity."

Psalm 102:13-14