This seems so sinful to me, taking something old, antique, in many eyes, and trying to update it to fit in with today! Why would you do it! What could you improve on something so beautiful that has survived a century!

This was my shock as we buried my brother, having his funeral Mass in the family church where he was married. Our grandparents also married here as this church was rebuilt after a fire burned it down in the early 1900s. My grandparents monetarily contributed to it beauty as it was refurbished after that devastating fire! Buying their own beautiful wooden pew that is still there and marked with their number!

Still there are the stained glass windows and statues that parishioners raised money to purchase. The beautiful confessionals that my father and family would wonder into every Saturday to practice their faith. But the beautiful altars are gone, the communion rail that was knelt at each Sunday! Where is the marble baptismal font that my grandmother gave in my grandfathers name! It matched the lectern that is still in its place!

A church isn’t a fashion that is changed with each new trend! It’s a holy place where people come to worship, Baptize their babies, bury there dead and pass through with all the spiritual happenings and rituals making up their Catholic life! This church was our home everyday growing up. Choir practice, CCD classes, stopping in to light a candle and pray for a favor, help for a successful surgery. We came here on a daily basis a place of peace, of quiet, a place to regain strength before going home to show your mom not such a great report card.

But today it is barely recognizable to me. It’s as if the frame is still there but the Mona Lisa is not, An imitation sits in its place.

I understood the lack of the holy water fonts due to the pandemic upon entering. But the beautiful altar being gone was earth shattering to me. The color of the walls are not a color for the church! Everything felt cheap, found at garage sales and put in place!

No longer the church of my father. The church of my youth, the church people loved coming to. Instead as my sister commented, look Protestant, not our Catholic Church! My family died off 50 years ago and our jobs took us away! My question is why was money spent to rip up instead of repair!

Do we paint over the Mona Lisa or replace the Eiffel Tower with concrete! Who thought this was a thing to do to an irreplaceable antique that Honored God for decades in glorious beauty. Parishioners over these many years did without to glorify God in their most humble and beautiful way. Today they would be mortified to see the look of their church!

Make new churches modern, include beautiful items from churches being closed or torn down that cost their parishioners much of their salaries over the years.

As the funeral proceeded for my brother I felt the tears of my parents, grandparents aunt uncles and cousins and even our parish priests that we prayed with daily, They were there for him but also for the loss of their beautiful church that no longer was intact!