Please remember this beautiful church

Mourning the loss of The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. There's a beautiful monastery on Speedway & Country Club many Tucsonans love, I loved going into the chapel in the evenings and listening to the sisters pray. I even prayed along with them a few times. They basically prayed all day everyday. Nuns are incredibly patient people. They housed undocumented migrants there, which is very important for society on the border. They believed in giving charity to everyone, despite their citizenship. I love Tucson so much, it's an incredible place.

I don't know why the Catholic Church shut it down. Maybe they couldn't get new nuns to live there, I could never live that life. Maybe the Catholic Church operates like a business that just shuts down smaller branches when they don't bring in enough profit. Maybe luxury apartment businesses were putting pressure on the church to shut it down. Or maybe Republicans didn't like having a sanctuary for undocumented migrants. 

Many Tucsonans love the building, just because it's so beautiful, and the people of the Miramonte and Sam Hughes neighborhoods got together to prevent it from being demolished. The compromise though is it's now surrounded by luxury apartments. Gentrification is hitting Tucson hard and it makes me so sad. I guess at least the building still exists, but the sanctuary that once housed people of faith now is a leasing office. It feels a little blasphemous honestly. Like, Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple kinda vibes.

I know the Catholic Church isn't blameless, they have an awful political position on reproductive rights and priests got away with child abuse for way too long. But the nuns at this monastery had their hearts in the right place. Maybe these nuns were passively endorsing the bad parts of the church, but I can't be mad at them or blame them for that. Lord knows I don't want to be held accountable for the awful things I passively endorse.

It's so frustrating that good honest Christians have to compromise their faith to the whims of the larger church organization. I highly respect the Catholics that are pro-choice and who criticize their own church for the child abuse. That's really awesome and promotes a better world for Catholicism. I'm afraid those awesome Catholics don't have enough power in the church though, wish they did.

Watching a huge church organization slowly close down is kinda terrifying. Like, religion in general is dying, and I don't know if that's a good thing. What's going to physically replace the beautiful church buildings? Luxury apartments? That doesn't sound like an improvement to me. Especially since this particular sanctuary once housed people truly in need, and now it houses people who are willing to throw 2200 bucks a month at some corporation.

My hero is Sister Helen Prejean. If you haven't heard of her do yourself a favor and do some googling, she's incredible. Her motivation is her faith, she's done so much good for this world because of her devotion to the church. If the Catholic Church is slowly dying, how are we going to get these incredible people?

Also there's something just terribly ironic that the first president of the USA that didn't go to church was Trump, who is just an awful human being. Is the death of Christianity is gonna give us more leaders like Trump? I can't handle that. That would just be too bleak. Some of the worst movements have been anti-christian. Like Nazism and Ayn Rand, both hated Christianity.

If you have thoughts or feelings about the churches closing down, please comment below. 

I'm trying to be optimistic, I want to believe the death of religion would be a net positive for the world. But I'm not convinced. For all of Christianity's faults, I do like Jesus Christ and His doctrine. For all of Catholicism's faults, I do like their buildings and nuns. 

And the grief is wild. Like, this beautiful place that was once filled with faith, now it's just a paragraph on a Wikipedia article and a few articles in local newspapers. I'm not even Catholic, but I miss the nuns. I'm not alone in this, many Tucsonans miss them. Realistically, what is the point of a beautiful building if nobody uses it. I walked past the Monastery yesterday, and I tried to go in, but the doors were locked. It was a Sunday morning, and the churches doors were closed. I guess the Adoration wasn't so Perpetual after all.

Love you all.