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| The Former Dominican Church St. Andrew which the Modernist Pastor Glettler -- insofar as memorial protection allows -- vandalized. [Photo: kreuz.net] |
The Dominicans have worked in Graz since 1466.
At this time came from Emperor Frederick III. gave the Corporis Christi Chapel built in 1439/40, to the Order of the Dominicans.
They extended to the chapel and built a church and monastery.
The Church of the Holy Blood was erected in 1586, one year after the Dominicans had moved to St. Andrew's Church, the parish church. The St. Andrew's Church was renewed under the Dominicans and was built as a baroque church and monastery, in which the Order in its heyday established Universities for Styria, Carinthia and Hungary.
Enlightened Fury
The enlightened Emperor Joseph II abolished the monastery to the detriment of the country in 1786.
The priory, located in the alley named after the venerable poet-priest Ottokar Kernstock, about ten years ago it was marred by being converted into apartments.
In 1807 the Dominicans were dispossessed.
The Convent moved to the parish of St. Anne's church, which it aquired from the Augustinian hermits Münzgraben, where Abraham a Sancta Clara preached in earlier times.
The Order remained here - with an interruption from 1832 to 1857 - until its dissolution.
The current Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Schönborn, who worked as a priest for two years at the Catholic university community, lived in the convent for two years.
Departure
With the Feast of St. Dominic, on the 4th of August celebrate in the Münzgraben Church, the Order departed.
So you chose - probably because it was a Sunday - the traditional feast day of St. Dominic (4 August), not according the reform of the Roman calendar (since the 8th of August, 1970).
The Dominican Provincial Fr. Christophe P. Holzer of Augsburg also took part in the celebration of Mass. "Due to the lack of young people in Europe, the Order can not maintain each establishment."
The accidental death of the prior, Fr. Max P. Swoboda, a year ago accelerated the decision to repeal of the convention.
The Consequences
The four Dominicans living here to move into a house of the Elizabethinan Sisters, a priest goes to Switzerland and Father Miroslav remains as a hospital chaplain in Graz.
"The Dominican Presence in our city is not to coming to and end," said Bishop Kapellari at the farewell Mass.
The property of the Dominicans will be transferred to the Benedictines of Admont, the church is penned as a gift to the Diocese of Graz-Seckau.
The complex will benefit Admont as a student residence.
In Graz, there are yet 187 men and 490 women acting as religious of various religious orders.
Kreuz.net...
To do what he did to such a magnificent church, this Father Glettler, O.P. must be mentally ill....sick. For the Dominicans to ruin a church like that, they deserve to die out. And I hope they do.
ReplyDeleteThey are nearly gone from Western Europe. Congratulations to worthless members of the Order like Fr. Glettler for ruining his own Order. No wonder there are no vocations to it, or to the Franciscans, Jesuits, Redemptorists, etc.
Before the Reformation especially, the Dominicans were among the largest Orders in the Church, with over 25,000 friars. The Franciscans before the Protestant Reformation had nearly double that. The Augustinians had over 20,000.
In Italy, there were thousands of Dominicans, all the way up to right before Vatican II. But never so many as before the Reformation. Most large towns had a Dominican monastery....some places like Florence or Rome had as many as 5-6.
There were in Italy even small Dominican "reformed" congregations of friars which developed a more cloistered/contemplative life even though the mainstream Dominicans of the time were not a cloistered Order.
The Order never really recovered from the Reformation, nor the religious wars, the French Revolution and the edicts from secular rulers such as Napoleon and Emperor Josef II of Austria who suppressed thousands of monasteries of all Orders.
But, the Dominicans were on the road to recovery, with 10,200 members right before Vatican II. Had the Council never happened, it is within the realm of possibility that the Dominican Order could have been back to the 20,000+ members they had prior to the Protestant Reformation.
But today, with priests like this Fr. Glettler, and Cardinal Schonborn, and radical liberals across Europe and elsewhere (they are all old men now), the Order deserves what it gets. Here and there Dominicans survive in the old ways and with the traditional Mass (affiliated to the SSPX). It is only here where true Dominican life for friars as well as sisters and cloistered nuns still lives and thrives.
The Vatican II Dominican Order for the most part is dead. Just like the Franciscans, Jesuits, etc.
When they do things like that to magnificent churches like the one pictured, shed no tears for their departure. Just thank God and say "Good riddance"!!
What he did to this church reminds me of the inner city kids in Philadelphia where I live, who roam the streets at night spray painting graffiti on the sides of trains, on bridges, buildings, and shops. It's ugly. Just like the walls of this Church.
ReplyDeleteThis is tragic but it seems the Dominican priests brought this downfall themselves. They embraced Modernism....this is the result. They have not read the writings of the Holy Fathers, esp. Pope Pius X, on this subject. Really we can call them traitors to the Church. Look how the Dominicans are growing in the United States...the traditional men. God Bless them. It does seem the hierarchy in Germany and Austria have lost 'the plot' if not entirely their vocation. There appears to be a plan to deconstruct the Church. To what end? Certainly not in honor of Almighty God.
ReplyDelete