36 thoughts on “Inside St Catherine’s Chuch, The Liberties, Dublin”

    • Whatever about spirituality, the engineering/architecture of the church is amazing. Should it not be preserved?

      I look forward to it being converted to a restaurant or nightclub or community space or whatever in the future.

  2. The amount of money that will be wasted restoring this building that could be spent on real charities that help people….

    • Not your money, not your buisness. Wonder how much you gave last year for Charity? I’m sure less than this Church..

      • Good guess that an individual would contribute less to charity in one year than a parish of thousands! FYI, you dont decide what is or isnt my business. I simply made a comment on the fact that money will be spent restoring a building by an organisations who’s philosophy is supposed to be about helping the poor when it’s more interested in fancy buildings and stain glassed windows. If you don’t like opposing viewpoints, dont look at the internet.

    • The church gives enormously to charity and this particular church has been associated for almost a century with the penny dinners, providing food for the tables of the poorest in the inner city. Also the church itself is responsible for hundreds of charities in Ireland and probably millions of charities worldwide. The building will be covered by insurance.

    • You’re not giving any money so keep your trap shut. Nor am I. If people find this a place of spiritual comfort – as deluded as I personally think it is but no less respect – then they can spend their money as they see fit.

      • See comment above- you may have an ambivalent opinion on the damage the church has caused to the world over the centuries but I dont although I’m not going to demand that you “keep your trap shut”. The people who suffer most from this are the “deluded” as you put it- will the vatican just reach into their cash reserves pay for this? Maybe increase the rent on their properties in Bond street a fraction of a percent? No of course not, but they will take their share of the “offering” from these low income families every Sunday mass as usual.

        I reserve the right to free speech and if you cant handle the views of others that are different to your own then dont look at the comments.

  3. Wonder if the dude was felt up or something. Then I’d say have at it bud, and reiterate the previous comment.

  4. You’ve got your St Catherine’s Churches mixed up (not to mention your denominations). The church that was burned was the Catholic one on Meath Street. The Anglican (Church of Ireland) one (home to CORE) is on Thomas Street (you should have checked your own wiki link). Renewal/ Evangelical churches are, in any case, unlikely to feature quite so many statues but may well have interred earls.

  5. I can accommodate the worshippers in my house. Wouldn’t like to see them left in the luch.

  6. How could anyone who gave a toss about either churches or the Liberties get the churches mixed up? Can you not see the difference in height and orientation for a start? Chompsky? St Catherine’s Thomas St by the way is one of the ten or so most distinguished historic buildings in the City.

    • Now this is how you sarcastically lampoon Irish people’s attitude to religion.

      A lesson to all the people inappropriately venting in the other comments.

  10. I’m sure those enjoying this story as an ‘up yours’ to the catholic church would all feel the same if Notre Dame or St Patrick’s Cathedral got burned.

    While churches are symbols of religion and all of the heinous things that sometimes go with it, the irrational destruction of the buildings is nothing more than vandalism.

    Yes, bad things happened at the hands of the church, awful, unpardonable things, but does that make a building closing in on 200 years old and effectively a part of the city’s history ripe for destruction?
    Following that logic, should we go and destroy all the remaining German bunkers on the French coast, lay waste to pre-christian sacrificial sites etc?

    Ah yeah, let’s go f=?k up all those historic places where nasty things happened. The perfect plan.

  11. To all those people lampooning this I was born and rared in the liberties this church is an integral part of the community my father’s funeral mass took place in this church I was married in it my kids were christened in it people of all ages and all classes are genuinely sad

    • Anyone pathetic enough to ‘celebrate’ this isn’t worthy of comment Garrett. I’m agnostic and haven’t stepped foot in a church in years but it’s a terrible shame to see a part of our city’s history destroyed like this. Not to mention the worshippers like yourself who will sorely miss it.

      • +1

        My grandparents lived in the parish and were buried from that church and my parents were married there too.

        I’ve a lot of memories of that building from growing up and was quite upset to see the damage to it.

  12. Also those stained glass windows were probably pretty nice, bit of art destroyed there too.

  13. god can flood a planet but not put out a fire. typical.

    …seriously though its a shame