Not for condos

Once again, more stories about how the 60 closed churches in the Boston archdiocese are going to be converted in condos. Once again, it’s just not going to happen. It assumes that all these churches are cookie-cutter boxes, all ready for subdividing. I’ve been in a lot of these places and they are not the kind of places that people think of for condos. St. Joseph’s church in Salem is a prime example. It is a big, square box that some people call the “blimp hangar.” No disrespect to St. Joseph’s, but it’s not your typical vaulted ceiling, soaring arches Gothic, Baroque, or Romanesque church. And there others in the same situation, like St. James in Stoughton and St. Margaret in Beverly. In fact, because a lot of churches built since about 1960 (and even before) don’t actually look like the classic idea of Catholic churches, I would guess that many of these buildings would not fit the condo developers’ idea of a good conversion.

Ironic, isn’t it, that even for those who want to use churches for a secular purpose want churches that look like traditional churches and not the modern things they’ve been building for decades?