You can’t say that! There’s lots of things wrong with wanting and attempting to police language. Something guaranteed to shock and surprise is saying: I’m a socialist; I’m an atheist, I like churches. Oh, and cathedrals. Chapels not so much. Too functional, too severe.
Socialist says, I like mosques, synagogues and temples too but they’re not so easily accessible. Now obviously it’s not the reason for their existence that one likes, they are, after all, brainwashing centres and indoctrination edifices for despots. No, it’s the aesthetic qualities, the enduring link to the class that laboured with their blood, sweat and tears to produce something long-lasting and magnificent in its grandeur and splendour or in its simplicity.
Churches are a bit like pubs, disappearing fast. The headline to a piece in the Mail Online of March 2025 said ‘Britain’s vanishing churches: More than 3,500 have shut in the past decade and been turned into mosques, nightclubs, luxury homes, pubs and even swimming pools as congregations plummet.’ And ‘… the Church of England has seen 400+ closures since 2010, it lacks a specific breakdown for the Catholic Church. The context mentions that the Catholic Church in the UK still has approximately 3,200 churches and that mainstream denominations are facing declines, but it does not provide a five-year sales figure for Catholic properties’.
Once upon a time sold-off churches always seemed to become carpet warehouses.
In Australia, New South Wales, there is an example of a catholic church that, like a battleship, was decommissioned/deconsecrated in the nineteen thirties. Presumably it has, since then been used for capitalist purposes, rental, leasing, making money. It would appear that the church was merely ‘resting’ and was not a dead church. A group of LGBT Australians who had a contract to use the church, sorry, ex-church, were getting kicked out by whoever owns it, because of a lifestyle incompatibility with ‘religious groups’ who objected to the ‘offensive trade’ taking place there. Offence can only be taken, not given.
Perhaps not quite the same as getting thrown out of a bar or public house for causing a disturbance, I’ve been thrown out of better places than this, you cry. Around the same time this LGBT group was being turfed out, the Roman Catholic Church said, “Hold my beer” and excommunicated at least 750 priests because of some malarkey that the Supreme Leader, Pope Leo XIV, didn’t like. Don’t do it, he said, but they did it anyway. It could also affect thousands of worshippers who have not been immediately expelled. The Society of St. Pius X wants to remain traditional but if you piss off the ones in power and they can subject you to sanctions then what are you to do? As the Australian group found out.
A socialist society will not preserve ex-religious buildings solely so that religious mumbo jumbo can take place in them. Instead, community decisions will decide what is the best purpose that these places can be put to for the greater good.
DC
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