France's Dwindling Mass-Goers Means Demolished Gothic Churches

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Mudgely said:
I agree that it is a terrible loss architecturally and historically, but why should the French Government worry about it? It is CC property which has probably enjoyed tax exemption for centuries.
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Because the French government took it. :mad:

Which is more important to France? To maintain its churches and encourage the people to attend, or to waste their money on a modern military that the French people have no intention ever of using, except to drop a few bombs on Libya? Not to mention using French money to subsidize the so-called modernization of Greece and Spain.

The French government is among the last entity on earth to lecture anyone on wasting money, except perhaps for the federal government of the United States.
 
John_Grudzien said:
The way the faith is failing in western Europe, I’m surprised that those marvelous oold churches haven’t gone the way of the Haigia Sophia in Istanbul( Constantinople)! After all, the largest growing so-called religion there is Islam and I’m sure they could always use a few more mosques. Sad but true!!!
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I think it would be more appropriate for a building’s sacred character for it to be turned into a Mosque or a Synagogue than into a pub, as seems very common here.
 
Personally, I love the old churches with their beautiful stained glass and attention to detail. But in Europe, as someone said, those kind of churches are everywhere.
This may be a chance to rebuild a church using some of the elements saved from the old church building and incorporating them into a newer, safer, more practical church building. People in the area can get involved in deciding what to put into the new building and maybe will feel more a part of the parish in the process. They’re so used to seeing the old churches, but something they work together on and have (name removed by moderator)ut on might help to revitalize the Catholics in the area.
Kind of like the new liturgy in the Mass. We’ve been saying the words by rote for so many years that we can forget what we’re saying. But in changing them around a bit, we have to think more about what we’re saying. We’re more aware of what we’re saying because it’s something different.
 
How sad. I do not want to see these beautiful churches being destroyed. But even more so I don’t want to see Mass attendance to go any lower.
 
That 's shocking .can nothing be done to prevent this philistine like behaviour?
 
Hi I’m a British guy living in France and I’m new to this site - I was baptised and confirmed at the Easter Vigil this year (here in Oloron Sainte Marie in the Pyrenees mountains where I live). An earlier poster was right in saying that the churches need to be where the people are; lots of ‘departments’ of France (counties/states) have lost over half their population in the last century due to movement to the cities. We have a beautiful cathedral here in Oloron, a UNESCO world heritage site, but the Bishop is now in Bayonne and the cathedral usually half empty. Incidentally, there are still around 14,000 priests in France, approximately 1 per 5,200 people, so the French picture isn’t quite as bad as all that!

God bless :signofcross:
 
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