General Butler on Church Building

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 08, 8 October 1908, Page 12

General Butler on Church Building

In the course of a speech at the opening of a bazaar at Greystones, County Wicklow, on August 15," in aid of ihe building fund of the local Catholic Church, General Sir William Butler said that Ireland had one long record of Christianity "and church building, which, although it had been broken, had never been entirely severed since the days of St. Patrick. With the exception of the devastations wrought by the Danish invaders and the Saxon invaders church building had gone on in that country since the days of St. Patrick. The .land was covered with churches when St. Patrick ceased his labors, and the most notable feature in the history of their country had in all ages been the construction of suitable buildings for the worship of God. He said that the^ difference between the Saxon and the Norman invaders was that the former destroyed church building,, but the latter- carried it on, and, in doing so, introduced Gothic idea of construction into their magnificent churches and edifices, the very ruins of which bore evidence of the genius of the Normans. During the so-called Reformation and for a period of 300 years church building was dead in Ireland. Nations that built churches and cathedrals were the greatest nations, great in their laws, in words, and in deeds, great in war and great in peace ; just as they were great in construction, in design, and in illumination. He said this because there was a school of political economists who maintained that money which went into churches would be as well spent on other and more material matters on earth. That was not the lesson he learned from history, but The Very Opposite. The Plantagenets were a great race of monarchs, and they covered England with churches. Napoleon built 3000 churches in France, and finished the Cathedral of Milan, which had been in course of construction for 100 years. The great American General, Stonewall Jackson, visited England before the Civil War in America, and it was not the greatness of London or its railways, it was not trade nor the Thames, nor Liverpool and its commerce, that struck his mind most. No; it was the lancet windows of Yorkminster Cathedral, and he spoke of them until his dying day. The people who built great churches in the past built up great empires. Let them never forget that fact. They built empires, not gingerbread or jerrybuilt, but empires that like their churches lasted. Let them take from England or France or Germany their Cathedrals of the Middle Ages, and what would remain of beauty or art, or what tangible evidence would remain of the genius of the people whose record was there in undeniable stone. Cathedrals lasted longer than palaces. The palaces of Whitechapel, Greenwich, etc., were gone, but the Abbeys of Westminster, Salisbury, and Canterbury were still with them in England. And The Day Would Come N again when Mass would be celebrated in some of those glorious chapels. There was no hurry about this, for God knew -His own time best. These were the reasons, or ,. some of them, why this church building, this idea of erecting houses of worship to the great God, was the most important of works which Irishmen ought to do. The church was the only place where the , poor man, or the poor woman, could sit in peace and see beauty, and art, and light, and worship. Yes, the church was the poor man's palace, where he could sit. down and see beauty and art, which he could not see anywhere else. When people scoffed at church building, they should scout their ideas— laugh at them. They did not know what they were talking about, and they knew nothing about history. He preferred that they shouW spend a year on building churches to spending on drink. The church spoiler might appear again, as he had appeared in Italy and in France. If, however, the church spoilers came, they could not take the pillars or their pavements, and for that reason he recommended them not to put their money in gold or precious ornaments, but in substantial walls and pavements, for then, if the worst happened, as, of old, history would just repeat itself, and the ruined walls would remain and bear evidence in years yet to come of what their race suffered for the faith that was in them. ' '