Thursday, February 04, 2010

WARNING - *P.O.D. pics to follow

* P.O.D. = "Piously Over-Devotional"

Today I spent part of my day off up in Newark, visiting St. Lucy's Church on 7th Street (in the shadow of the Cathedral Basilica), a gem of the Archdiocese as well as the State, in my humble opinion. When I was in the seminary, I learned the "POD" term as something used by enlightened liturgists who wrote articles about how "worship spaces" that were filled with such cluttering distractions were not really conducive to worship in a post Vatican II community. The great church historian, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, used to say something like, "There are no new heresies in the Church; just old ones with new names." The movement in the 70s and 80s to make Catholic churches look like Quaker meeting halls was simply the iconoclast controversy with new window dressing.

Here are some pics I took which show a very POD church. If loving this is so wrong, then I don't wanna be right.





5 comments:

Joe of St. Thérèse said...

I don't want to be right either...

Dawn said...

Beautiful!

MJ said...

Reminds me of Old St. Marys in Detroit. I don't want to be right. either

ProudCatholic said...

Consider us "piously over- devotees" then. How beautiful (and how Catholic!) this church is. There can never be anything wrong with a church that makes you feel the way you do when you walk in--even when it's empty and silent--it does not feel empty in the least and your mind and soul are far from still, filled with God's presence. It makes you want to hit your knees,humbly bow and give thanks to the Lord for his greatness and for his most beautiful Bride with us on this earth! We've never been to this one..sounds like a wonderful little pilgrimage to make this Lent.

Unknown said...

Yes, it does remind me of Old St. Mary's in Detroit. Our church was "wreckovated" and we lost many of our beautiful statues - thankfully, we still have altars to Mary, St. Joseph and St. Jude.... which is more than most churches.