ruined churches
I make YouTube videos about Catholic cathedrals in which I lament what has been done to the older ones and bemoan pretty well everything about the new ones. This isn’t because I’m anti-Catholic or anti-cathedral, nor that I’m principally concerned with the architectural aesthetics involved. What pains me is the message which these innovations send out about our attitude to God.
St Barnabas, Nottingham, is a serviceable Victorian cathedral which, like other old Catholic churches, had the high altar at one end with a tabernacle on it. It now has a kind of block under its crossing.
St Anne’s, Leeds, has had its high altar (which I assume is still there) effectively obscured by the bishop’s throne.
SS Michael and Gudula, Brussels, is similar to Nottingham, with its modernist altar particularly out of place in such an elegant building. The high altar survives but the space for the tabernacle is empty.
SS Peter and Paul, Clifton (late on in the video), was built from scratch to the new pattern and, as well as having a nasty, central block, is dominated by a vast concrete void. Catholic worship used to face God but it now consists of people facing each other. The tabernacle is now hidden and, instead, the central space is dominated by an empty slab, as if God were absent.
