Photo of the Week

The skateboarding church in Spain

St. Barbara Catholic Church in the city of Llanera, in Asturias, Spain, began to be built in 1913 in the Neo-Romanesque style and opened in 1917. It was initially part of an industrial complex called the Santa Barbara Society. After the Spanish Civil War, the industry closed and St. Barbara Church was incorporated into the Parish of San Martin de Cayes.

With the "springtime" of Vatican II, Catholics stopped going to Mass and the church was deserted by both the clergy and the faithful. It fell into complete abandonment. In 2007 a group called The Church Brigade purchased it and transformed it into a skateboarding arena.

Years later, modern artist Oscar San Miguel Erice, aka Okuda, decorated it with his so-called "pop surrealist" works and renamed it Kaos Temple (Temple of Chaos).

You can see how it looks today on this page.

Someone could object: But, why do you feel offended when that Church had been officially desecrated before by the Catholic authorities themselves?

Our answer: A place that was built for the worship of God and where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was said regularly cannot be used for certain profane purposes, even when the Catholic Church retires her blessings from that place.

This is a truth that is understood by the sensus catholicus – the sense of the faithful – and also by those who want to insult Catholicism.

In any circumstance, the abandonment of St. Barbara Church, like so many others we are daily witnessing, is a consequence of the crisis in the Church. It is one more sad consequence of the tremendous disaster called Vatican II.

Photos from the Internet sent by a reader

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Posted January 3, 2016

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