Church properties- would like replies to a curious thought

[newcatholic2010]

Hi I was received into the church last year at the vigil mass and this has been playing on my mind. I have felt since being received that I have grown closer to my faith in the sense that love it with all my heart.

Since I was a child I studied the history of Christianity in school history lessons with various events such as the french revolution, the reformation, the split from Rome by Henry VIII in school etc. As a result Ive never had a liking for the Church of England even before I wanted to become Catholic. I currently live in the UK and I have seen so many ruins of abbeys or churches that were originally built by the catholic church (many of the older ones were) and are now being used by the church of england…eg: temple church or Westminster abbey in London or are just standing in ruins.

The fact that I see these abbey ruins especially I feel a little sense of anger inside of me that this has happened to them. They in my eyes are supposed to be places of worship yet they are being paraded for commercial tourist purposes. I often like to use the example of the Templar castle in Tomar, portugal which is now a tourist attraction yet I feel it should belong to the church as it was built by them (although the order doesnt exist anymore).

Part of me feels such ruins which are not just in the UK but also in France and other countries should be rebuilt or given back to the catholics as it was theirs originally however i know this isnt happening anytime soon and some of them are in government ownership, but it should be given back!. Is it possible for someone such as the vatican to try and get these ruins back?? could they be rebuilt to their original greatness??.

The idea that man has ruined such places of god in society does give me a feeling of anger that its happend. The present ongoing ordinate I feel is a great thing to occur in history, to try and get the anglicans to come home…I pray they all will along with the church property that originally was ours!..not theirs.

Ive not been sure who to ask regarding these feelings which have been inside of me. Im glad ive been able to get them out on something such as this. I hope to hear back from someone soon

thank you!

 

[kentuckyliz]

I’m not sure the church wants a bunch of ruins back.

The ruins are an important testimony. American Protestants think the Protestant Rebellion was about religious freedom.

They don’t see the seizure of church property by the royals and nobles…and the destruction of that which belonged to someone else. Puts the lie in the sunshine for all to see. The greed of the princes figures in hugely into the Rebellion. Great land grab.

Tintern Abbey is a great place–very powerful.

My English Catholic grandmother used to tour the cathedrals with her family…and whisper under her breath, “Stolen property!”

The C of E is so mad about the ordinariate, they are willing to let ancient churches be destroyed rather than share parishes and property with the Anglican Catholics. That’s a crime against history but it fits the track record from their very founding.

 

[ChadS]

In the case of England I think the history may be a little more complicated than as Catholics we might like to believe. Many of those abbey and church ruins were ruins for a very long time, long before Henry the VIII thought of getting fast and easy money.

As for the CofE, Eamon Duffy in his “Voices of Morebath” shows how the parish priest remained there for his entire life. He shepherded the church when it was Catholic and helped to chart its path during the English Reformation and as part of the CofE. I suspect there are many examples of this throughout England at this time. There are also many examples of Catholics that died for the faith.

To simply call it “stolen property” misses a great deal of history and its complications. Perhaps though in honor of this complicated history, it might be right for the CofE to allow the churches that want to join the ordinariate to bring the property with them. It’s really a shame when there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of churches with structures that date back to Norman and Anglo-Saxon times and have glorious architecture and sit half empty while Catholics worship in these post-modern box shaped churches that don’t even look like churches.

ChadS

 

[The_Old_Medic]

In England, the destruction of the Monastaries was not because of religion. In fact, Henry VIII kept a totally “Catholic Church”, he just broke it off from the main Catholic Church and made himself the head of it.

The Monastaries owned almost half of the wealth of the Kingdom. They owned hundreds of thousands of acres of land, had massive amounts of Gold and Jewels, and most of the Monks and Nuns were doing anything BUT live in a state of poverty.

They were destroyed primarily to get at the riches they held. The monks and nuns were NOT forced to give up monastic life, just to actually live a life of poverty. But realistically, most of them never made any attempt to continue on with their consecrated life, once their comfortable monastery was gone.

Unfortunately, in some cases, there was an attempt to hide the wealth. They put gold and jewels into burial places inside churches, into niches in the walls and then covered them over, etc. Once this was discovered, the soldiers that came to confiscate the wealth began breaking the churches apart in their searches.

Once the monks or nuns were driven out, and all valuables were taken, the locals would come in and strip the churches and living quarters of anything that they could use in their own dwellings. This especially included roof materials, rafter timbers, flooring, etc. Without roofs, the buildings deteriorated very quickly.

The land that those places owned was sold off, mostly to local nobles and aristocracy. This brought in millions of pounds to the Royal treasury.

The Catholic Church would not take those properties back if they were offered. They cost a lot of money to maintain in their state of “arrested decay”.

 

[manualman]

It’s like an onion though, there’s another layer to be unpeeled each time you finish one. Those fabulously wealthy monasteries and convents that owned such a high percentage of the real estate of England at the time were some of the BEST landlords in history. Look into it further and you find a complex community in which the people paid rent in proportion to their means, the religious communities provided health care and education and essentially functioned as the social safety net. Things like the horrible unhuman poverty scenarios shown in “Oliver Twist” came about AFTER the royals seized Church lands and booted out all the peasants to fence it off and grow profitable wool. Landless peasants flocked to the cities and were treated as virtually subhuman disposable appliances.

While the vagaries of fallen human nature certainly made their nasty mark before the CofE was formed, I’d argue that the fruits of all those seized lands were far MORE hoarded and greed exploited for the benefit of the few afterwards than before.