Guess: is this church a protestant or Catholic church (picture)

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I’ll bet some of them do like it. I’ll be in the minority here and say I love it. I like very plain churches—I find the heavy Gothic imagery many people love distracting. But I appreciate that they love stained glass and ornate architecture. I just don’t find it conducive to prayer.
 
In addition to the distraction aspect, some people see “decorated” churches as wasting money on statues and other fancy ornamentation, that could be spent on something else such as helping the poor.
And there are a whole lot of people - who tend to not be posting in Catholic forums online - who simply don’t take much note of the look of the space where they go to Mass.
 
That one that catholic03 first posted reminded me immediately of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. I suspect the two churches were built in the same era.

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I don’t think preference in this matter is arbitrary. I think it is important and reveals other underlying beliefs about the liturgy and the moral stance of some in the Church. One co.promise leads to another. The more compromises that are made the easier they are to make. So it begins simply with layout and decor. We move the tabernacle housing our Lord to a room down a hallway. We take out statues of saints and paint the walls beige. We put a plain table in the sanctuary.

Then scores of people leave the Church so we add guitar music. We compromise on artwork and music and now the priest is walking around during the homily making joke after joke. Then people start complaining they (still) aren’t getting anything out of church so they try different protestant churches and they really like the Baptist church because of the gospel music.

Then to try and bring people back the Catholic church takes down the crucifix, has only the small processional crucifix in the sanctuary and a 15 foot tall risen Jesus in the front and center instead.

Jesus is king of the universe. When a king called his subjects to court, those subjects often felt fear, not joy. They didnt know what demands would be made of them by their sovereign. This concept is lost in a protestant world where the only concern is about preference, choice, taste, etc.

Submitting to Church authority means submitting to those successors of the early bishops, and therefore to the apostles who conferred Holy Orders on them, and therefore to Jesus Himself who breathed the Holy Spirit on those Apostles. We should rejoice that our friends and loved ones can pray for us and that we can pray to the saints and ask that they intercede for us. Seeing their image in front of us usually helps people concentrate, not the other way around.

I don’t care if i ranted lol
 
Many different spiritualities have created different styles in architecture. In the Middle Ages, St Bernard advocated ignoring decoration and having plain simple churches while Abbot Suger of Paris argued for lit open churches filled with statuary and stained glass that became the Gothic style.

Plain, simple churches are especially suited to monasteries, where simplicity and silence go together. The austerity can go far beyond what is pictured here.
 
Well, what works for you doesn’t work for everyone. And disagreements about architecture hardly imply a refusal to submit to the successors of the Apostles.
 
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You are making a lot of assumptions in your post that certain styles of church architecture, as well as other things, are somehow “more holy” than others or more in keeping with apostolic tradition. I can understand the objection to moving the tabernacle off to the side or out of the worship space, because it is distancing people from Jesus in the Eucharist who should be front and center. But that is hardly the same thing as painting walls beige or using a plain table. Nor does making things more plain equate to making them more “Protestant”. I have been in Protestant churches that were every bit as ornate as your average old Catholic church, and as someone said, monastic Catholic churches have often been very plain. There are also plenty of Catholic churches in impoverished parts of the world that are very plain for cost reasons, not because someone is trying to make the Catholic church look Protestant.
 
Searching1 said:
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You shouldn’t have cropped the picture. It wasn’t as you wrote “sneaky.” It was a lie. You made your parish look far worse than it really is. What a shame.

I suggest you look for the good in your parish community.

Also try to look for the good in your parish architecture. Maybe talk to someone at the parish who is familiar with the design and learn what there is to like about it.
 
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Actually, I think it looks nice with these curtains behind. Maybe some images above the curtains could make the wall less “plain”.

But I’ve seen worst chapels.
 
I apologize to you if you felt deceived. I wanted to comment on the altar. That’s all.

I wanted to comment on what was in the first picture I posted. The barrenness of the sanctuary is could, by itself, mislead someone to think this may be a protestant church and that alone was my motivation to merely pose a question - “what kind of church do you think this is based on this picture?”

Including the crucifix in the picture and asking “is this a catholic church” would not be any sort of guessing game and would miss the point - does a sparse altar reflect Catholic values?

And perhaps the answer is “yes” and I am way off base. . . .

I don’t think any of this makes me some sort of villain. No, I don’t like this church layout. Some here have expressed they do and proceeded to say others may as well and that somehow I’m either being mean to those individuals or to them and disregarding their opinions as invalid.
 
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EricF said:
If we can do this without getting too snarky, let’s post some more. (I know, tall task). This might be fun if kept lighthearted.
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Ooh, I’m gonna go out and find me some high Anglican churches to mix up with my library of Catholic Church pictures 🤩
 
A Church is a Church.The style can be more or less pleasant and is a often matter of personal taste, time in history, cultural background and economic means. I lived in Europe where there are many amazing beautiful churches practically empty and used mostly as tourist attraction. In Europe the best church I remember was a repurposed store warehouse in a poor area. The priest was a very holy man and you could strongly feel God’s presence and people faith and devotion.
 
Searching1 said:
The barrenness of the sanctuary is could, by itself, mislead someone to think this may be a protestant church and that alone was my motivation to merely pose a question - “what kind of church do you think this is based on this picture?”
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But the sanctuary is not as barren as you made it appear—there is a huge crucifix right there in the sanctuary.
 
I have already stated that revealing the crucifix would have given it away and I wanted to ask about that portion of the sanctuary I showed. “But the sanctuary is not as barren as you made it appear” – fine. But overall ot is, and minus the crucifix, it is.
 
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