Space and Light was a short film made in 1972 or thereabouts, showing the extraordinary architecture of St Peter's Seminary, Cardross (whose magnificent Brutalist ruins I featured on here the other week). The same director returned a couple of years ago to shoot footage from the same camera positions, and then spliced the two films together.
It's haunting and beautiful, the silence (other than occasional rain drops or rustling of leaves) adding to the ethereal effect.
I'm going to return again to St Peter's in a few days.
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Heartbreaking/devastating. But I am surprised at the reason for my reaction. I expected to respond to the (shockingly rapid) abandonment of something beautiful (the building), but instead found myself mourning also the abandonment of the religious/contemplative life. I had 14 years of catholic schooling (counting nursery school and kindergarten), and am aware of the plusses and minusses of all things religious, and view with an objective eye. Yet still . . . .
I have to say I felt something similar. The architects (hard-core atheists, as it happens) worked hard to make this a spiritual building that, despite its Modernity, was in harmony with the monasticism inherent in seminary training pre-Vatican II. It was their very success that condemned St Peter's just a few years later, when Vatican II decided priests should be trained in the midst of their communities rather than in remote monastic seminaries.
The only still photos I've found of St Peter's in operation have been unsatisfactory or in books (and I've not yet had a chance to scan anything). Hence my promise to return again to this subject in a few days.
Interestingly (and despite my obsession with porn), like you I've been finding myself recently drawn to at least the idea of a contemplative life. Monks seem to be featuring large in my life at the moment.
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