I'm not a church-goer or at all religious. But when I visited Britain a couple years ago I was amazed and saddened by the large number of churches left boarded up and unused. I guess NZ has a similar situation. Here in the States (at least out in these suburbs) there aren't enough churches evidently - congregations keep building more, and renting their space out to yet more congregations.
This isn't to our credit - I don't see mysticism as a solution that makes up for the trouble it causes - but I hate to see a good building go unused. And I love churches because they are built around a function that is not purely practical. This makes them far more works of art than the usual office buildings, shops, factories. Their design is open to so many influences, so much cross-pollination.
The Futuna page doesn't explain what the heck happened. As a retreat, maybe it's in a poor location for steady use.
BTW your link is broken but all you have to do is add the "http://" at the head of the link url (in the 'a href' tag), otherwise people are directed to a nonexisting Blogger page.
Aargh, thanks Hippolyte, I'm a dumbarse. Link now fixed.
I agree with you on generally being in two minds when churches such as this chapels become unused, and for the same reasons as yours.
In this case, AFAIK, the problem is not so much one of location as one of the local Catholic Church running out of worshippers and money, hence the sale of land and church three or four years ago to a developer who perhaps lacked the imagination to be able to use it.
So the organic reason for the church and accompanying retreat no longer exists then, which means unfortunately its destruction is probably inevitable.
4 comments:
I'm not a church-goer or at all religious. But when I visited Britain a couple years ago I was amazed and saddened by the large number of churches left boarded up and unused. I guess NZ has a similar situation. Here in the States (at least out in these suburbs) there aren't enough churches evidently - congregations keep building more, and renting their space out to yet more congregations.
This isn't to our credit - I don't see mysticism as a solution that makes up for the trouble it causes - but I hate to see a good building go unused. And I love churches because they are built around a function that is not purely practical. This makes them far more works of art than the usual office buildings, shops, factories. Their design is open to so many influences, so much cross-pollination.
The Futuna page doesn't explain what the heck happened. As a retreat, maybe it's in a poor location for steady use.
Anyway, thx, I love stuff like this.
BTW your link is broken but all you have to do is add the "http://" at the head of the link url (in the 'a href' tag), otherwise people are directed to a nonexisting Blogger page.
Aargh, thanks Hippolyte, I'm a dumbarse. Link now fixed.
I agree with you on generally being in two minds when churches such as this chapels become unused, and for the same reasons as yours.
In this case, AFAIK, the problem is not so much one of location as one of the local Catholic Church running out of worshippers and money, hence the sale of land and church three or four years ago to a developer who perhaps lacked the imagination to be able to use it.
So the organic reason for the church and accompanying retreat no longer exists then, which means unfortunately its destruction is probably inevitable.
http://onenews.nzoom.com/onenews_detail/0,1227,159931-1-7,00.html
See, if it was here, some high-tech entrepeneur would turn it into a house ...
Post a Comment