The EWTN churches

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Michael_C said:
This was the post I was looking for. I read the same thing in Mother Angelicas new book. The church was not built with the offerings collected from the people in the pews. I thought it said it was built by 5 families.

Beautiful churches promote holiness.
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OK: families. I counted each as a unit.
 
Yes the book Mother Angelica (The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles) by Raymond Arroyo is a must read for all.
 
Gee, well don’t look at St Peter’s Basilica or John Lateran or by any means Gesu. Actually, you might not want to look at most of the churches in Rome or across much of Europe.

I don’t think it has anything to do with impressing God. I think it has to do with honoring God. I think our churches are a reflection (albeit an inferior one) of heaven. If you read in Relelation the description of heaven what do you see? Gold, smoke of incense, heavenly beings singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty,” there are thrones, an altar, elders dressed in white with gold crowns on their heads, I could go on and on. No matter how ornate a church may appear, it will be nothing compared to what heaven will be like.

When I was in Rome, the churches were so awe inspiring to me. Not because of the beauty they possessed, but because of the beauty they were reflecting. I thought, **“If the magnificance of this place is this beautiful, then I cannot even fathom how much more beautiful heaven will be!!” **
 
Verita said:
Remember that it was God who ordered the specifications of the Old Testament tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant and all the other gold items used. God also ordered the building of the Temple of Solomon. Only the best materials were used, because these buildings were to house God himself. The same is true of our churches today. In the Eucharist, God himself is present in our churches and so we should give him all the honor and glory he deserves.
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To follow this line of thought…
The tabernacle should be in the sanctuary.Just as the Ark was in the Holy of Holies.
 
Michael_C said:
This was the post I was looking for. I read the same thing in Mother Angelicas new book. The church was not built with the offerings collected from the people in the pews. I thought it said it was built by 5 families.

Beautiful churches promote holiness.
Click to expand...
🙂 I used to worship here:

st-elizabeths-church.org/

Give me Hanceville any day! 🙂 🙂
 
godsent said:
When i changed my tv channel over to EWTN and watched a daily mass…i couldn’t belive my eyes when i saw how much gold there was in the church.

Even there religious dress seemed too much for me.Big old gold looking dress.

To be honest,i would MUCH prefer it if it was just a simple goldLESS church,with statues and stained glass windows.i don’t think jesus will think much for the gold…apart from us showing that we think gold will impress him or show him how much we love him…but quite frankly pray shows him,not gold or material things.
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Hmmm… just statues and stained glass… You do realize how expensive quality versions of both of these are, right? I’d venture to guess (I don’t know) that the cost would be comparable to the use of the gold. As I like to point out in my history classes, cathedrals and shrines, in almost all cases, take in far more much money from the faithful in donations than their original cost. They typically generate lots of revenue for the poor.
 
Important point … Gold can be pounded into sheets unbelieveably thin. If you haven’t worked with it, you would not believe how thin it can be pounded.

So, you see a gold statue … it is likely cheap plaster or wood with a breath of gold on it … no more than an ounce or two on a big one.

The expense is in the labor. So look on it as a jobs program. .
 
quasimodo said:
Important point … Gold can be pounded into sheets unbelieveably thin. If you haven’t worked with it, you would not believe how thin it can be pounded.

So, you see a gold statue … it is likely cheap plaster or wood with a breath of gold on it … no more than an ounce or two on a big one.

The expense is in the labor. So look on it as a jobs program. .
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Taken in this way, gold leaf is actually quite cheap. Cheaper to do the real thing that to fake it in some cases.
 
I think it should be a prerequisite for Catholics to have to have a traditional asthetic taste in church art and architecture.😉

Yes, most gold in churches is just gold plated, or basically gold “foil” covering cheaper surfaces like plaster. That goes for statues or any sort of decorations. If you ever see a pure gold chalice (which is fairly small in relation) it will probably be in a major museum or some grand cathedral or basilica in Europe.

All of this exquisite artwork and riches lift the mind toward God in a way that any modernist architectural tricks just can’t swing. Truly beautiful churches are a great aid to piety and a sense of the transcendent and reverence. When we started to build churches that look like glorified scrap metal or machinery sheds we lost reverence and started to worship the ego of architects and ourselves.
 
The Shrine where they have Benediction has a lot of gold and is very bright white. That building was donated by an individual. The very small church where they have the daily Masses is quite quaint. I don’t recall seeing a lot of gold there.
 
Remember the story of St Francis and the church of San Damiano which he had to restore with his own hands because it was so dilapidated?

Even that ruined little church had a magnificent painted and gold-leafed (by the look of it) crucifix. Google San Damiano crucifix and you’ll see what I mean - it’s the same one that came to life and gave Francis the message ‘rebuild my church’.

Even in war-ravaged Assisi people found ways to give of their best and most beautiful for God’s house.
 
FCEGM said:
🙂 I used to worship here:

st-elizabeths-church.org/

Give me Hanceville any day! 🙂 🙂
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I see what you mean. That is one warehouse to be sure.

As a friend of mine says, "Perhaps a church building should be thought of as an embassy building.
It ought to reflect its home kingdom rather than the nation in which it is.

When one steps into a church building, one steps into heaven or at least an outpost of heaven."

CDL
 
There was a program once, where Mother Angelica gave a tour of the “shrine” in Hanceville, AL.

She seemed to explain that many of the elements of the shrine church were mentioned in the Bible, or else they were precious like items in the Bible.

I think it’s difficult to remain 100% totally focused on the Eucharist even in church. The art serves the purpose of helping with our distractions and helping us to re-focus.

So, that’s the standard or rule that I can come up with. I was especially impressed by the combination of gold and white colors, earlier in my life.

Gold is used so infrequently, because it is so precious. Gold makes me think of all the hard work that went into procuring it – the mining, the danger of the mines, etc. Where did this gold come from? the Nazi cache of World War II? Was it Incan gold that was pillaged from Central and South America?

Artistically, I think the gold motif is overdone, but that is just from TV. I might think differently if I saw it firsthand.

The “eight foot high monstrance” in the shrine make me wonder. Why wasn’t it 50 feet or 100 feet? It’s 8 feet tall, but it’s up so high. I think my neck would be sore looking up so much. Some would say, that’s the point – to look up.

It seems the grill work around the nuns is overdone, too. But, that’s just me talking.

My reaction to the shrine, is that I am not developed enough to appreciate the spirituality of the things I see on EWTN. For example, the spirituality of the nuns or monks lying prostrate at the time of the consecration. Or, having parts of the Mass in Latin. For me, it distracts from the spirituality of the moment, rather than enhancing it.

On the other hand, the shrine tears us away from the commonplace to suggest the unimaginable brilliance of the heavenly court.
 
godsent said:
When i changed my tv channel over to EWTN and watched a daily mass…i couldn’t belive my eyes when i saw how much gold there was in the church.

Even there religious dress seemed too much for me.Big old gold looking dress.

To be honest,i would MUCH prefer it if it was just a simple goldLESS church,with statues and stained glass windows.i don’t think jesus will think much for the gold…apart from us showing that we think gold will impress him or show him how much we love him…but quite frankly pray shows him,not gold or material things.
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Sort of sounds like Judas- wasting all the expensive stuff on Jesus.

Ken
 
godsent said:
When i changed my tv channel over to EWTN and watched a daily mass…i couldn’t belive my eyes when i saw how much gold there was in the church.

Even there religious dress seemed too much for me.Big old gold looking dress.

To be honest,i would MUCH prefer it if it was just a simple goldLESS church,with statues and stained glass windows.i don’t think jesus will think much for the gold…apart from us showing that we think gold will impress him or show him how much we love him…but quite frankly pray shows him,not gold or material things.
Click to expand...
DEAR GOD! That’s the SHRINE OF THE **MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT!!!

**Do you seriously think God will be displeased when we offer BEAUTY to the REAL PRESENCE? WHO ELSE deserves our best?

Yeah, I remember an apostle who complained about offering precious stuff to God. His name was Judas Iscariot.
 
I like the EWTN churches. Like the others said, it reflects the beauty of the unearthly place it represents… I give a double 👍 for the beauty of Catholic churches…
 
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Judas complains about ‘waste’.
Iconoclasts attempt to prohibit what they as being in the 7th century.
Puritans ravage and destroy in any items not deemed ‘plain enough’ in the 17th century.
And today, there’s an outcry that anything which is not perceived of as ‘benefitting the poor’–whether it was created 1 day ago or 1000 years ago–should be immediately taken away and somehow given to “the poor”, but, of course, even if Catholics actually DID that with every blessed (literally) item, they would STILL be disparged for not having done it BEFORE. . .

It’s presented as a no-win situation, but in reality it’s a non issue. And the calls for ‘giving to the poor’ (as if we DIDN’T) and the sneers about Catholic greed are IMO divisive, disparging and unkind, dare I say “unChristian”. . .
 
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