✣ Highlights from the week online
Ugliness wins prizes Gregory DiPippo of new-liturgicalmovement.org pondered the ugliness of this year’s winners of the Frate Sole prize for sacred church architecture, awarded by the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire. The third prize winner (pictured) encapsulated the problem perfectly, DiPippo said. “Most people would assume the building in the background was the church, and the one in the foreground a train station, or perhaps a library dedicated to the works of really depressing philosophers.” Reflecting on the ugliness of the winner, the Iglesia de Iesu in San Sebastian, Spain, DiPippo said: “Ugly churches win architectural awards all the time, because they are designed to win awards, not to serve as the House of God and the home of His people.” The Times flunks it The New York Times has “flunked out again”, according to getreligion.org writer Terry Mattingly. He quoted an article which said that in the weeks leading up to the Orlando massacres “a Republican congressman read his colleagues a Bible verse from Romans that calls for the execution of gays.” Mattingly asked: “When it comes to the authoritative interpretation of Christian scripture, who has the highest level of authority for the Times, the leaders of Westboro Baptist Church or legions of Christian saints, hierarchs and theologians (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) over 2,000 years of Church history? Who do you trust more, Pope Francis or the Rev Fred Phelps?” The New York Times, he concluded, relied on the latter to represent “all of Christendom”. The cardinal’s strength “In reading Cardinal Robert Sarah’s God or Nothing,” wrote Dwight Longenecker at cruxnow.com, “there were times that I couldn’t help comparing his story to that of Pope St John Paul II.” Both lost a parent at an early age; both grew up under tyrannical Marxist regimes which persecuted the Church – John Paul in Poland, Cardinal Sarah in Guinea. After studying abroad, Cardinal Sarah was ordained a priest aged 24 and archbishop 10 years later. He “served in his home country under constant oppression and death threats from the Marxist dictatorship”. At the 2015 synod on the family, Sarah spoke out against secular liberalism and Islamic fanaticism, as “almost like two apocalyptic beasts”. Such rhetoric wins him few friends. How can he keep going? There is another parallel with John Paul. “The trials that both men went through – being brought up in poverty, being orphaned, surviving dictators, death threats and constant persecution – strengthened their resolve.” Most importantly, “both are men of prayer and therefore men of power”.
