This is what the poster wrote:
Sacred Heart Catholic church in Augusta, Georgia. It is now a community center for weddings. It's hard to believe that the sacred art was left abandon by the diocese. I failed to take pictures of the magnificent stone work on the exterior. It was left abandon for decades, investors the Knox Foundation, a Methodist family)restored it. I still fell to my knees to pray, it felt sacred.
16 comments:
New museum and expo hall coming to an old parish near YOU!!
Of course, the feeling was much the same at many old active parishes, regular prayer in a silent and holy place impossible due to loud staffers acting as if they owned the place, constant huge expensive weddings for wealthy parishoners lucky to make weekly Mass, flower shows and art exhibits, concerts, welcomed busloads of loud picture-snapping tourists. Too many places to list are like that.
A holy place? Not so much.
I am fed up with ugly novus ordo Masses!
When the wedding hall is more Catholic looking than most Catholic Churches.
I could be wrong, and maybe insufficient room is the reason but, I believe their adoring angels should be facing towards the location of the former tabernacle, not toward the nave.
the secularists get goosebumps when the get the opportunity to turn churches like this into restaurants, brew-pubs, and yoga studios. I am surprised that at least the altar was not removed as it now seems a prime target of desecration.
Well, at least it was not converted into a condo like some once beautiful churches here have been. It is interesting that 100 years ago, when labour was cheap, it would have been physically moved to a better location, brick by brick.
Wouldn't the high altar make an elegant buffet table? Just walk up and serve yourself. A priest whether ordained or of the laity believers is not needed. Believing is not even needed. Hmmm...but is that not what the liturgical movement of the 1960's wanted (and of its remnants today who idolise the "reformed liturgy")?
HEARTBREAKING, GUT-WRENCHING. Too terrible for words.
This is sad beyond words…..what were they thinking?? Sacred Heart in Atlanta came perilously close to the same fate back in the late ‘70’s. If it were not for a very brave pastor, Fr. Tony Morris (+RIP), and some determined parishioners it would have been closed. The archbishop at the time and his advisors wanted the money from the sale of the property to distribute to suburban churches. Originally there were two schools (Sacred Heart and Marist), the rectory, convent, and St Joseph’s Infirmary on the two blocks. Now only the church is there without even a parking lot of it’s own. It is dependent on whoever owns the paid lots where the others buildings once stood. Because of its significant history in north Georgia it was named a minor basilica by HH Benedict XVI in 2010.
Mallen
Interestingly, all the original buildings on the property are renovated and being used. The record an art’s office, the school the Red Cross and the convent the Girl Scouts.
Record is RECTORY.
When it is no longer truly a holy house of prayer, I rapidly lose interest past the remote possibility it might one day be such again.
Otherwise, it more akin to me as altar pieces in a museum, or returning to the old family home and finding it converted into a donut shop with drive through. Only empty shells remain.
A wise friend of mine remarked to a comment of mine regarding keeping some costly possession pristine, "Who are you saving it for?"
Hip, tell you friend to ask “why would you waste it?”
rcg, using something for designed purpose is no waste, but fulfilling its purpose. To use it for inappropriate things or to not use it at all is the true waste and profanation.
With regard to Sacred Heart of Atlanta, yes, both Marist and St. Joseph's schools were there, but the area changed in the late 1950s as the Downtown Connector (Interstates 75 and 85) sliced thru the northeast corner of the property, and Marist needed more space to accommodate a growing student body (which was heading north anyway). Even the old adjoining St. Joseph's Hospital left there in the late 1970s---today the massive Marriott Marquis Hotel is located on that spot. Basically, the area got more and more commercial. The archbishop of Atlanta in the 1970s, Thomas Donnellan, doubtless was trying to fund a large expansion of suburban Catholic churches, such as in Cobb and and north Fulton Counties, and money was short. Interestingly, in 1982 a fire destroyed much 0f the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a block from the State Capitol, and Donnellan opted to rebuild the church even though it had lost much of its membership---being Atlanta's first Catholic church doubtless was the reason it stayed open; otherwise, the congregation could easily have been added to Sacred Heart's just a mile up the road.
Mallen,
Actually there were three schools on the two blocks with Sacred Heart Church, Atlanta. They were Sacred Heart School, Marist, and St. Joseph's High School. It was a large urban campus with plenty of green space. I recall a baseball field just south of the Marist school building. I guess the old Joni Mitchell song about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot (lots) is apropos for the downsizing of the Sacred Heart Church campus.
Sacred Heart School Alumni 1961-1963
I’m surprised some liturgical furnishings eg the font weren’t repurposed to other parishes in the diocese - do you know why?
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