[giraffe_lady]

I'm eastern orthodox so not part of one of the groups you're talking about but we share a lot with catholics so maybe close enough.

The reaction you're talking about with the palm reading seems like it could have mostly been because of the presence of a loaded tabernacle? I mean I doubt they would have been pleased about this without it but lay catholics I know take the tabernacle extremely seriously.

I don't particularly, aesthetically, like to see churches used for secular purposes but if they've been properly desacralized I don't have any strong religious objections.

> "holy spaces" remain exactly that: consecrated spaces that are in themselves holy regardless of whether a human congregation is present or not

This is true but it implies a causality that is backwards I think. Spaces aren't holy because of the consecration, they're holy because of the people that come there to worship together regularly over many years. If they stop doing that the church doesn't immediately "lose its holiness" or whatever but it does change: it becomes a shrine or a relic or maybe just a building.

[PaulRobinson]

> The reaction you're talking about with the palm reading seems like it could have mostly been because of the presence of a loaded tabernacle?

Yes, I think the tabernacle was the crux of the issue here.

> Spaces aren't holy because of the consecration, they're holy because of the people that come there to worship together regularly over many years.

That's a more modern, and dare I say, Methodist view of the church. If a space has a tabernacle in it with the body of Christ in it, within the Catholic tradition, that space is holy and consecrated even when there isn't a human soul in the place, because by definition there is a belief that the soul of Christ is in that space.

You can deconsecrate that space and remove that blessed sacrament and then it's just a building, but in the eyes of most Catholics the space itself has a mystery even in the absence of worshipping congregations.

[giraffe_lady]

Like I said I'm orthodox and have never been much exposed to protestant theology other than it just being sort of in the air in western secular culture.

I think you'd get interesting answers if you polled lay catholics with a question like "which is more holy, a consecrated but never-used church, or a parish recently desacralized after centuries of regular use."

There's definitely one "correct" answer if you asked a bishop or a catholic theologian. But I have noticed that there is often a big difference between lay religious experience and hierarchically controlled official dogma. A poll a few years ago had less than half of american catholics believing in transubstantiation, for example.

[PaulRobinson]

In the spirit of Father Ted (watch it if you've never seen it, it's fantastic), I think we are heading into the reaches of an ecumenical matter... :)