Formulaic?????

 Formulaic?   Many of the Churches which occasioned this blog are of a similar style and origin,-- namely neo-gothic style built primarily by late 19th Century German-Americans.   What has always surprised some of my friends is the subtle variations in a few simple styles.   The early pictures will deal with the exterior structure while we may later move on to theme found inside the churches such as the altar pieces and the stained glass windows. Consider the structures.  Chesterton once said that "Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."  Within the confines of a general style or form there are many variations.   The details of the human face generally do not consist in the reorienting of all the major features but in slight variations in each and of the relations between the parts.  Thus we have freedom within form and flowering within tradition.  The form is so familair as to be recognizable at a distance of several miles, but closer inspection allows one to see the manifold variety of expressions on a given theme.

The importance of architecture

The Gothic cathedral translates the aspirations of the soul into architectural lines, and is a synthesis between faith, art and beauty which still raises our hearts and minds to God today. When faith encounters art, in particular in the liturgy, a profound synthesis is created, making visible the Invisible, and the two great architectural styles of the Middle Ages demonstrate how beauty is a powerful means to draw us closer to the Mystery of God. May the Lord help us to rediscover that "way of beauty", surely one of the best ways to know and to love Almighty God. Pope Benedict XVI (got this from RORATE CAELI) http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/

The First Pictures

Well technically they are not on the blog. Rather, they can be found at the following website.

http://sites.google.com/site/catholicchurchesofinilandoh


Hopefully you will appreciate them. Details about the churches depicted will be forthcoming.

What the hell, exactly, are you up to?

What indeed am I up to? A friend and I have recently been traveling through Indiana, Ohio, and some of Illinois. Though our trips have often had some object, a church or an old rail-junction, we never cease to be amazed at how Providence leads us to some hidden treasure or story, generally related to an old Catholic Church. More often than not, the churches are still existence, in use, and in some sense unscathed. Most of the Churches in question date to the mid-to-late 19th century. Many are of German heritage, somewhat like myself, though I do not date to the 19th century. I have nothing against a beautiful Irish or Italian or eastern European church. Hmmn... unscathed? Some of you may well know what "scathing" they have escaped. I will turn my attention to modern and ugly Catholic churches in later additions, but the thing to be escaped was the rapid and largely vapid process of renovation or perhaps "wreckovations" which assaulted the Church and individual churches in the immediate post-conciliar period. It is the victims and the survivors or this onslaught which comprise the origin and the business of this blog. The approach will be two-fold. Firstly I will try to post photos of the excellent churches we have encountered. Secondly, and perhaps in a more negative mode, I will discourse on why the loss or evisceration of some of these churches was overall not necessary or beneficial. Besides the individual losses, this scouring bespeaks a rather potent brew of good intentions, bad taste, and most sinister of all bad faith. We are richer when we find such architectural gems and we are all the poorer for having lost a number of them. Well then, lets see what kind of images we can get. The blog mat start in a rather haphazard manner ( after all it is a blog), but we'll see if it doesn't congeal into good order.