Stinking Pews

Hatred of Le Pew.

 

Fr George Rutler doesn't have a very high opinion of pews. An interesting and enlightening article on "The Problem with Pews" over at Crisis Magazine. To be read as much for Fr Rutler's excellent turn of phrase as much as anything else.

 

Pews contradict worship. They suburbanize the City of God and put comfort before praise.

 

 On Islam: a desiccated offshoot of Christianity.

 

Filling churches with pews was chiefly the invention of the later Protestant revolution that replaced adoration with edification.

 

Solemn Mass

as a Sacred Dance, though a thing far different from the embarrassing geriatric ballets called “liturgical dancing.”  

 

Worse than plain wooden pews are those that are upholstered. Goodbye acoustics.   And anyone who gives priority to the softness of his seat rather than the sound of song, should humbly ask forgiveness of St. Cecilia who died suffering from more than the lack of a cushion, but was comforted—and eternally so—by good music.

 

 I pass along my unsolicited views to polish my credentials as an earnest curmudgeon.