anglomedved: (Default)
anglomedved ([personal profile] anglomedved) wrote2011-02-27 08:53 pm

Redundant church buildings - one step too far......

                                                    

The fact that church buildings become unused and are sold off is inevitable, though sad. I have seen a dozen sold to private developers in my twenty-five years in Belgium. Most of them belonged to religious orders which have since died out – for the reasons see my last Sunday's posting 'Memories of pre-contraception Belgium'.  

We spent a couple of hours today in Mechelen (also known as Malines or Mechlen), thirty kilometres north of Brussels, a delightful old town which is home to the principal Roman Catholic bishop of Belgium.

There, too, under the imposing shadow of the archiepiscopal cathedral of St Rombout, used to be a whole cluster of monasteries and seminar buildings, many of which have since become redundant.

Re-uses are varied, but one which made me angry was the conversion of a former Franciscan church into a hotel. It’s not the conversion per se that I object to, but the fact that key features of the old church, like mosaics over the entrance, the stained glass, or the high altar which remains behind a glass screen at the end of the atrium, are actively used a decorative elements and advertised as part of the attractions of the hotel. See: http://www.martins-hotels.com/en/hotel/martins-patershof.

This should not have happened. Why, I don’t know. But in any case, that is one bar I shall not be drinking at ...

But not all was bad, by a long way. There was the lovely beguinage church, which I will say some more about later.

[identity profile] bizantinum.livejournal.com 2011-02-27 10:58 pm (UTC)(link)
What is a shit???

[identity profile] ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com 2011-02-28 09:39 am (UTC)(link)
Do you mean "what a s___ty situation"?
I'm sure that otherwise you know the meaning of this ancient English word from the Germanic root "skît", described by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'no longer in decent use'.

[identity profile] bizantinum.livejournal.com 2011-02-28 10:16 am (UTC)(link)
I see

[identity profile] mmekourdukova.livejournal.com 2011-02-28 11:23 am (UTC)(link)
О, а я и не знала, спасибо, Мишенька :-).

Номер с двуспальным ложем в алтаре - слов нет.
Сатанисты. Ведением или неведеним, неважно.

[identity profile] olafr-yngvarson.livejournal.com 2011-03-01 09:25 am (UTC)(link)
in ROC archdeacon Kuraev is very fond of words that no longer in decent use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jH5o47pX8w

Спасибо за статью

[identity profile] sosthinacuq.livejournal.com 2011-07-22 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)
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