Creative new uses for St. Vibiana Cathedral
The recent holding of a fashion show in St. Vibiana Cathedral, as reported by the Los Angeles Times (click on this post's title), illustrates the tragedy involved when we close our churches instead of keeping them.
The people who run our archdiocesan offices do not seem to get it, so let me spell it out: A healthy Church, thriving and spreading the Gospel as God wants her to, does not close her cathedrals, churches, seminaries, convents, schools and other facilities; she repairs them as needed and she opens new ones.
A healthy Church expands, not contracts. A "positive development" is opening (and reopening) seminaries and churches, not shutting them down.
But that would suppose we hadn't let liberal Catholics spend the last 45 years demoralizing the faithful, causing them to lose their faith and chasing away potential converts by running down our Church and claiming we need to "remodel" and "update" the Church that Jesus gave us 2,000 years ago.
And it would suppose we hadn't let liberal Catholics, including hierarchy and clergy, decimate the numbers of the faithful by telling them it's just fine to defy the Church and use artificial contraceptives to stop having children.
A healthy Church has Mass, Benediction, Adoration, weddings and baptisms of lots of new babies in its cathedrals, not sterile, ephemeral fashion shows.
P.S. Just to make my position on St. Vibiana clear once more: We could have saved it as a parish church and a core repository of archdiocesan heritage and spirit, and still built a new cathedral elsewhere. Some call that unrealistic; I say the most unrealistic course of all is to close and sell off our patrimony.
posted by Quintero at 10:24 AM
7 Comments:
"A healthy Church has Mass, Benediction, Adoration, weddings and baptisms of lots of new babies in its cathedrals, not sterile, ephemeral fashion shows."
Now t hat is a quote for the ages.
Guess you've never been downtown. Save the cathedral as a parish. Who are you kidding? You are naive or stupid -- or both. How do you account for the FACT that the new cathedral packs them in every Sunday, when the old cathedral had maybe 100 people on Sunday, tops? Duh. Count the people.
Cheer up, Quintero. Mahony could have sold the place to Muslim groups who would convert it into a mosque.
Don't believe me? Take a look at this:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B3F2FF50-2C44-4EDF-A6EB-356A2CCDFA80
Dear Travis,
Yes, a quote for the ages, and for it we can thank the liberals who have created countless surreal situations that demand such commentary.
Dear Anonymous 2:35 p.m.,
Don't worry, ole Q knows all about the attendance they had. There are ways to revive a parish, and they could have been tried in a fixed-up St. Vibiana.
St. John Cantius Parish in downtown
Chicago was a moribund parish but is now thriving, and even booming with vocations, thanks to the traditional Catholicism a new pastor instituted there. See
http://www.cantius.org
Dear Joseph,
Yes, thank you. Ole Q knows about some church-to-mosque cases here and in Europe. What a tragedy.
There is no parrish left arouond St. Vibiana's. Would you leave it to decay or would you demolish it. it is a superb piece of architechiture that should be shared by the entire community. What's wrong with having events there?
You need to relax. The Inquisition, though it didn't end til 1945 is over. And the church itself.....has not fared well with so many sex scandals about the priests, that it has driven this Catholic away. A fashion show? Why not?
And Quintero...in case you haven't noticed the conservative church has embarrassed itself all over the world. Don't blame the liberals (as usual!).
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