SECULARISM IS DOING TO OUR CHURCH BUILDINGS WHAT COMMUNISM DID TO CHURCH BUILDINGS

When I was pastor of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta in the 1990’s we had a sister parish in Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia once a part of the former Soviet Union.

Sts. Peter and Paul was the only Latin Rite Catholic Church in all of the Soviet Union outside of Moscow that was not closed by the communists. The cathedral in Tbilisi was closed and turned into a gym.

When I was there around 1998, the Cathedral had been returned to the Catholic Church and was being restored as the Cathedral. The kids in the neighborhood were perplexed that their gymnasium was being turned into a church. They had no idea that it was being returned to its original use!

And thus this story in the National Chismatic Reporter caught by eye:

In St. Louis, former houses of worship are retooled to meet city's needs

Jun 29, 2019

by Bill Motchan, Religion News Service

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ST. LOUIS — St. Liborius Roman Catholic Church in Old North St. Louis, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was once called the "Cathedral of the North Side." More recently, the massive structure has been appreciated on social media as "the sickest, gnarliest place ever. "

Bought a decade ago by four civic-minded St. Louis residents, St. Liborius is undergoing a transformation into a community arts center, but while the partners prepare to restore the German Gothic church, its nearly block-long nave has been turned into SK8 Liborius, a skateboarding park beloved by the local skater crowd for its challenging 12-foot ramp.