"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
British writer Moyra Doorly has launched a one-woman campaign, Outcry against Ugly Churches, or for short, Ouch!
She writes: Contemporary architectural and liturgical forms are earth-bound and inward-looking. Implicit in these forms is a denial of the transcendent and of the concept of sacred space. The spirit of relativism has emptied churches across the world. The first step in turning the tide is the ending of the unprecedented practice of Mass facing the people.
Mass facing the people is a result of the paradox of living in a relativist universe. In the modern search for unlimited freedom, space has been liberated from all constraints and this has emptied the universe of meaning, leaving no direction to turn other than inwards. The ending of the practice of Mass facing the people is the first and crucial step towards reclaiming both the transcendent vision, which turns the gaze outwards, and the concept of sacred space, which gives meaning and direction to what is out there and beyond. These have all but been eradicated from the contemporary universe and from the modern church building.
The Ouch! campaign can therefore be summed up in three words -- turn again, Father!
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
