An article online from the Associated Press reported on a phenomena that is sad, concerning, and perhaps a harbinger of things to come in other places and times. The article was reporting on the repurposing of church structures in Belgium. In the town of Mechelen one church is being renovated into a cafe and concert facility. Nearby a former Franciscan church has already been renovated into a luxury hotel. Another has been turned into a climbing club where people use the already-existing hand- and footholds to climb among the stained-glass windows.Across Europe, the continent that nurtured Christianity for most of two millennia, churches, convents and chapels stand empty and increasingly derelict as faith and church attendance shriveled over the past half-century. A 2018 study from the Pew research group showed, in Belgium, that of the 83% who say they were raised Christian, only 55% still consider themselves so. Only 10% of Belgians still attended church regularly. In the Flanders section of Belgium more than 350 churches have already been repurposed. On average, every one of the 300 towns in Flanders has about six churches.
There have been some opportunities to turn over no-longer-used Catholic churches to other Catholic rites: Eastern Catholic, Orthodox or Coptic. But the majority of repurposing is for commercial use.
Guest room at Martin’s Patershof hotel in Mechelen, Belgium
Associated Press article | Raf Casert
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It would be very hard to even imagine my parish, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, being refurbished to another function. Hopefully, it will always be the “gem it is,” where countless faithful have called it their “spiritual home” for over a century! May God’s spirit continue to live in it and through those who gather to worship there, and carryout what is ours to do!
This article is circling in my family. I look at in a different point of view. It may be repurposed but it left an indelible ink that I’m pretty sure it will move some people deeper in the spiritual world or may be converted. The Holy Spirit will come.
There was a lot of this in the Detroit area. Wave after wave of immigrants, French, British, German, Irish, Poles, Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Armenians, Lebanese, African Americans, Southerners, Chaldeans (Iraqi Christian) etc. came and Detroit grew from a city of about 9,000 in 1840, to 200,000 in 1890, to 1.8 million in 1950. People built and were proud of their ethnic churches, and many were quite beautiful. From there it has shrunk every decade, for many reasons, and is now just over 600,000. As people began to move out of historic areas with the sprawl of the suburbs, the Churches were left behind. Some of the great ones still survive.
Pray!!
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Very sad.