Catholic & Protestant Church interiors

bobbyss wrote: »

Thanks for that and the recommendation. I often wonder while looking at a church if it's possible to say whether its a Catholic or protestant one. Don't protestant churches have stained glass windows?

They have stained glass windows. a lack of (scary) statues and lots of plaques commemorating war dead. If it looks very old chances are that it's a Protestant church - and cathedrals (Christ Church, St.Patrick's etc.) were the spoils of the Reformation. Thankfully in the 20th/21st centuries the Protestant community (excluding NI) generally hasn't had the need or the money to build any architectural monstrosities.

European protestant churches that aren't Anglican are often very plain, US and African ones the exact opposite. You'll find some of the gaudiest things going in COI premises at times.

In this country we tend to divide christian religion into Catholic v. non catholic.

Traditionally the Anglican congregation saw itself as catholic, the word just means universal or worldwide.
For this reason we should say Roman Catholic or Anglo Catholic.

Unfortunately the RC population take offence at being labelled RC, while the Anglican people have been conditioned by their neighbours into accepting the non catholic category thrust upon them.

If we were all a bit more christian, we would accept our neighbours self identity, but unfortunately historical prejudices survive just below the surface in many of us.

Another fact that most Irish do not appreciate, is that the Anglican churches can be High Church or Low Church. I was once at a High Church Mass in London, as a (Roman) catholic, I thought it was very similar to RC.

bobbyss wrote: »

Thanks for that and the recommendation. I often wonder while looking at a church if it's possible to say whether its a Catholic or protestant one. Don't protestant churches have stained glass windows?

All Catholic Churches have Stations of the Cross in some form on the walls.
Protestant churches don’t do that.

L1011 wrote: »

European protestant churches that aren't Anglican are often very plain, US and African ones the exact opposite. You'll find some of the gaudiest things going in COI premises at times.

in what way. iv always thought it the other way around

The Church of England and the Church of Ireland - and a large number of others around the world - are separate organisations but all of the Anglican Communion. High church refers to those Anglican churches that look and act almost like Roman Catholic churches, some of them call their services Mass. The only significant difference (afaik) is transubstantiation. At the other end of the scale are Anglican churches which are very plain and modest in appearance, and the services are much less complex while still using the same prayer book and doctrine.

The Church of Ireland is generally regarded as being on the lowish end of the spectrum, but with some spots that are higher (like St. Bartholemew's). But it's also generally regarded as a church that doesn't get steamed up about this. In some of the other churches in the Anglican communion, the low and high camps have at time been dismissive of, or hostile to, one another, or at any rate there has been tension and conflict along the low/high split. This happens very little, if at all, in the C of I. The C of I is therefore a very broad church; it can comfortably accommodate both low and high Anglicans without experiencing stresses as a result of that.

One place where I lived in England - this was 50 years ago - had two CofE churches for some obscure historical reason. On was considered high - the congregation addressed the Vicar as 'Father' - and the other was low.

bobbyss wrote: »

Yes I have noticed plaques commemorating war dead but what explains this? Why? More Irish RCs died in WW1 than protestants I would imagine yet no Catholic church has these plaques. Is there some connection between the military and the protestant church. Many officers for sure would have been COI for sure but I am sure more than officers are commemorated.

I think that you will find the majority of plaques commemorate officers - presumably their families were able to afford to have them erected. There was no connection between the CoI and the military, but especially in WW.I. most of the Anglican community would have identified more closely with Britain and the King rather than with Ireland.

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

There's a BBC series called Churches - How to Read Them which is pretty interesting. The fourth episode is about the Reformation and about 15 minutes in, he talks about how they destroyed stained glass windows, broke screens etc.

I vaguely remember an RTE(?) series on church architecture during the 1980's, can't think for the life of me what it was called. It had very haunting music played during the end credits.


One thing, what's with the Marian fixation in RC churches and RC monuments in general?

tabbey wrote: »

It is only RC churches in Ireland which fail to honour their war dead. This is because of the anti-British sentiment which haunted Ireland from 1918 onwards.

French and Belgians do not have that problem so rightly commemorate their dead in catholic churches.

You’re missing the big factor, which is that the C of I generally adheres to the Lutheran idea that praying for the dead is vain, whereas the RCs hold praying for the dead to be a holy and a wholesome thing. This profoundly affects how each church addresses the issue.

There’s a human need to deal with death, and while Anglicans (and Lutherans) don’t pray for the dead (what would be the point, they have been judged already?) they do remember the dead before God. A pretty fine distinction, you may think, but there you go. One of the ways they remember the dead is by erecting memorials in churches. Go into any English country church and you’ll find the walls festooned with plaques erected to the memory of (a) members of notable local families, and (b) former clerics or other people heavily involved with the parish. A few of these, particularly those from the notable local families, will have served the defence forces and may have died in service, and if so this will be mentioned, but mostly not.

Whereas Catholics pray for the dead, rather than erecting memorials to them - they arrange for masses, or mentions in masses, particularly at anniversary time. You’ll usually only find a memorial to a someone in a Catholic church if (a) he’s actually buried in the church, which is rare, or (b) he has paid for, e.g. a stained-glass window or an item of church furniture, in which case he may be mentioned as a benefactor on a nearby plaque. (Note that in this case he may not be dead, or may not have been dead when the plaque was erected.)

OK. With the Anglican tradition of memorial monuments to the dead, it wasn’t a big stretch when the community experienced communal grief, as in response to the Great War, to erect communal memorials to local people who had died in the war, or to members of a local regiment, or whatever. These memorials (if they listed names, which they didn’t always) would list everybody, whether or not a member of the parish, whether or not Anglican. This is natural and Christian, and it also reflects the tradition self-conception of the Anglican church as the national church, with a responsibility and role to the nation, including the non-Anglican part of it. Obviously this wasn’t quite as strong in Ireland as in England, with the Cof I having been destablished more than forty years before the Great War. But, still.

It’s unfair to say that Catholic churches don’t have war memorials because it was anti-British. They generally don’t have war memorials to the IRA, either, or to the Defence Forces of the state. Memorials to the dead are simply not part of the tradition of the Irish Catholic church, because (a) they didn’t need them - they could pray for the dead instead - and (b) they never - or, at least, not after the Reformation - filled the role that English churches did (and that the CofI did to some extent) of supporting and being connected with local landowning families.

Plus, yes, the Irish Catholic church, while it has often sought to influence the state, also maintains some distance from the state. It’s extremely rare, for instance, to see the national flag displayed in an Irish Catholic church, whereas it’s quite common to see that in Catholic churches in other countries. The Catholic church in Australia has special services and liturgies for secular, political holidays - Anzac Day, Australia Day, Remembrance Day - and the same is true in other countries, but I have never seen that in Ireland. And so forth. This may be a relic of the Irish Catholic church’s “outsider” status in British days; it may also reflect a wariness of becoming embroiled in political or party controversy; or it may reflect a distaste for anything which smacks of submission to or endorsement of the state. Whatever the reason, the phenomenon is undeniable.

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Think this thread has lost its way...

bit like the Protestant Church :pac::P

How so? It may have lost numbers, but is still thriving - in this neck of the woods anyway.

One of the best things about digging with the wrong foot is the lack of the confession box; I would be a complete heathen by now if we had them.

They do make great movie props though - below is a scene from the 1970 movie "Underground" shot inside St.Aidans Cathedral in Enniscorthy.



Left to right: Robert Goulet, Carl Duering, Joachim Hansen.

Now that's what I call going off topic.!