Check out my latest blog post over at One Peter Five. Here is a brief excerpt:

Much has been written about the artistic and architectural wreckovation which occurred in many parishes in the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council. The modern iconoclasts surveyed the Catholic landscape during those years looking for altars to smash and statuary to evict from some of the most beautiful sanctuaries imaginable. Traditional aesthetics and liturgical continuity were out as many felt little obligation to transmit what prior generations had preserved and passed on to them.

In his short, but brilliant, treatise “The Binding Force of Tradition” (Sensus Traditionis Press, 2013) Father Chad Ripperger speaks of this assault against beauty. Far from excusing these excesses as mere architectural expressions of that era, Fr. Ripperger labels them as nothing less than “sins against charity”. He writes:

“Charity is defined as the supernatural virtue infused in the will by which the person loves God and one’s neighbor for the sake of God. If one loves God and loves one’s neighbor, one will always make sure the tradition is passed on intact for the greatest assurance possible of the salvation of those who receive that tradition. Even the very construction of monuments was often done for the love of God and therefore to destroy a monument without a sufficient reason is a sin against charity, i.e. a sin against the love of God. But it is also a sin against one’s neighbor who is deprived of the magnificent monument which would inspire him and lift his mind and heart to pray and to love God.” (pp. 47-48)

Read the rest here.