Is this Paris? Only city I could think of with your description. Because there were no shopping malls in the 18th century. The precursor to shopping malls were bazaars which are very old. So that part of your comment seems not chronologically and terminology accurate.
I just want to say it doesn't have to be this way, but it is the way it is. In this specific case, I wondered why didn't Rome help support the maintenance of it's own; but I'm not really in tune with the vagaries of how the catholic diocese work across the world.
I am in no way religious, but I have a lot of respect for religious architecture. I suspect the desire to respect and glorify 'the divine' leads to designs that are aesthetically pleasing in a unique way that I can't quite describe.
Yes, it is common heritage. We are no different from talibans when destroying religions monuments such as Budda statues that were built by the effort/talent of previous generations.
Church building maintenance is a huge portion of most dioceses' expenses, and with dwindling parishes and lack of funds, they simply can't keep all of them open. Some of these beautiful buildings cost more in maintenance each year than it would be to build a newer, more modern one that was sized correctly for the current number of parishioners.
Much of Europe has already gone through this; many (but not all) of the churches you can visit in Europe have significant state support because they're historical and touristic.
Sometimes the diocese gets enough people interested in "saving" an old church that they can cover the maintenance for another year, decade, etc, but we're talking millions of dollars.
The Catholic Church appears as one big institution run by an absolute monarch, but it is much more like a fiefdom run by local bishops with a king who can if he really works at it, depose one. And the parishes under the bishops are similarly somewhat independent. The canon laws covering it can be seen here: https://canonlaw.ninja/?nums=1254-1310 (note that the bishop "taxes" the parishes to support the diocesan activities, this is usually done as an "annual Catholic appeal" which transfers money from the rich parishes to the poor parishes, usually the ones with schools). A parish financial committee is established by https://canonlaw.ninja/?nums=537 but the pastor has some pretty powerful leeway in executing his duty as he sees fit.
Even many Catholics don't realize that their favorite "old parish church" is often kept afloat by donations from one or two old parishioners. The old couple handing out donuts after Mass may be donating a million a year to keep the parish school running, and you may only ever find out if you dig into the non-profit filings. As an example, a local (well regarded) private Catholic school K-12 has $4m in tuition income, and $2m in donations, with the rest from "other" which includes selling tickets to games, merchandise, etc. Of that $7m, almost $4m goes to salaries, and about $1m to building and maintenance.
Find your local parish and search for "annual report" and you can see more.
Side note: I see from the canonlaw.ninja site that not even the "universal" church can't help but get into the copyright fight also. ;D wink
"Canon 1. This document is temporarily unavailable due to a cease and desist from the Canon Law Society of America. We are hoping for a solution in the near future.
cf. 1983 CLC 1"
Our local parish had bad damage from a wind storm during Holy Week and has been closed ever since. The school building, which currently hosts a non-parochial school (where my kids go), is being shut down by the archdiocese at the end of the school year because the maintenance costs have grown excessive (it was a bit of a problem for the school because they only learned this in November and had assumed that they would have the lease renewed for at least one year at the end of this school year). While the pastor of the parish (which is a merger of this parish and another one about a mile away) has promised that the church will be reopened, I’m skeptical. This parish was the most moribund of the four parishes in the suburb where I live and sentiment aside (it’s where my wife and I were married and our kids baptized), it’s hard to justify keeping this parish alive (worth noting is that it’s the only one of the four that no longer had its parish school open—when they shut it down, they had around 50 students total enrolled in the school).
The French revolution took place at the end of the 18th century and I'm sure that a lot of churches in Paris (or any French city) were demolished in a big FU to God. I can't recall something similar having taken place in Portugal at the time. Or anywhere else.
Official anti-clericalism and state atheism lasted for a very short period of time, not nearly enough to do any damage to the churches save for surface vandalism and pillaging of the statuary, furniture etc.
The great victims of the Revolution are the monasteries and the castles. The monasteries were officially dissolved (in a movement similar to what had happened in England under Henry VIII), their land redistributed and their buildings sold for stone. The same happened to aristocratic holdings and most Medieval castles that somehow managed to survive until then were destroyed over the first half of the 19th c.
That's how we've lost some of the most iconic monuments of Western civilization (I'm in particular thinking of Cluny, whose archives were burnt, manuscripts vandalized and stolen, stones parted out).
This happened everywhere that the Soviet Union "spread" to. Churches were demolished, desecrated, or burned. Some were re-purposed, but many were destroyed.
Well.. start by reading the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake.
The persecution took place through about a century to carefully avoid drastic events as you'd later see in France, thus reducing public opposition/outcry. Contrary to France, there was no need for "revolution" because liberals were already in power since the earthquake. More details here: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extin%C3%A7%C3%A3o_das_ordens_... (need to translate)
My home town is Coimbra. The whole Rua da Sofia (Street of Knowledge) was expropriated and left to abandonment or sold for whatever other purposes without shame on the 18th century. Worse destiny had the church of São Cristovão, presumably built by the father of the first portuguese king: https://www.cm-coimbra.pt/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/coimbra...
For a political movement aimed to bring light into the masses, liberals sure dived the empire into some really dark decades that we'd never recover from afterwards.
There's nothing of the sort in Paris. Religious and aristocratic monuments suffered tremendously between the Revolution and the early days of conservancy, but for the most part churches were given back to religious occupations once the revolutionary heat went away.
That was the turning point which granted liberals/republicans the ruling power over the Portuguese empire and later other empired such as the French. The outcome were religious "reforms" that expropriated, razed and progressively moved to erase catholicism in favour of "enlightment".
In my hometown the churches were left to rot and then "modernized" to other entertainment facilities, owned by private merchants of course. The end result was quite devastating, albeit not as bad as what you'd see happening in France afterwards.
