I visited a local church this past Sunday instead of going to the church I usually attend. It was one of those modern squat buildings with a puny steeple that were popular Protestant designs in the 90s before the mega churches and warehouse styles took over. The interior was even more disappointing than the exterior. The sanctuary was fanned out in a way that made communion awkward. No choir loft, so the piano and cantor were on a little platform off to the side. The altar was this puny, uninspiring wooden stand with a hideous polyester table cloth, and the Tabernacle was set on a wooden podium freestanding behind the ugliest fake stained glass window modern art I have ever seen. The floors were those ugly cheap industrial tiles or carpet. There were no statues, no iconography. There was a crucifix on the wall, one on a stick, and these teeny tiny stations on the walls. Confessions were in a room, not a confessional, and the baptismal font looked like a DIY bathroom tile over a hollowed out concrete industrial basin. Oh, and a giant, ugly felt banner with some vague modernist symbolism.
Hardly anyone dressed up at all. I mean like every day casual clothing. One woman was even wearing skinny jeans and a cropped tank top that looked like a sports bra. That's it!
The priest kept looking at my son and I throughout the Mass because we stood out like sore thumbs, dressed up, wearing a veil, and my son in a full 3 piece suit and tie.
The music was the worst of Breaking Bread. Truly the worst.
But the worst was communion. It was the fastest Sunday communion I have ever experienced. I feel like the priest missed half of it, and then when it was time to receive it was like this rapid fire hand out on the hand. It was over before I knew it!
The congregation was about 75+% elderly. However, afterwards I saw families pour out of the church, but I didn't see them in the congregation during Mass!
It was just so strange. And before anyone says anything about circumstances, this wasn't a case of poverty or working with what you have. This was a case of utter laziness and apathy and modernism. I didn't see a single soul there who looked unable to dress nicely. And the community is certainly wealthy enough to decorate the church appropriately.
The parish I attend is a simple little parish in a little wooden church. Only two rows of pews and a center aisle. That's it. In a rural town where you have to drive 20-30 minutes just to buy your regular groceries and the median income is below the national average. And yet these people have not only put together a beautiful, inspiring, and reverent church, but they built a school from scratch!
It's just so sad to see such, well, 1990s Protestantism in a 2020s Catholic Church. There's really no excuse for it. I mean, how can you look at that cheap, ugly decor and think, "oh, this is beautiful, it is so inspiring, and honors Jesus!" It doesn't! It looks like someone spit on the patrimony of the Church! It looks like some progressive, communist, anti-Catholic modern art decorator was hired!
There's another local church, but according to the pictures online the entire place, even the altar, is carpeted in dark red shag carpeting.
Lord have mercy, I haven't a charitable bone left in my body for these sorts of things! I would like to collectively slap everyone in that generation who let this happen to Catholic Churches!
