Selling the Basilica

A rather strange dream last night. . .

. . .I dreamt that the church
(The Roman Catholic Church, that is )
was in dire need of financial help.

The church decided
that it was going to sell off a lot of her buildings.
This included selling
St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

I protested the sale of the Basilica.
While I could understand
selling some of the Catholic school buildings
that were no longer in use,
or other buildings,
I could not understand selling The Basilica.
The Basilica is an historic treasure,
not just for Catholics
but for many people.
I tried to explain this
to church leaders,
but they continued with the plan nontheless.

The church also decided to sell off
all of the rectories.
The parish priests were relocated
to much smaller housing.
The houses were one room homes,
with a very small driveway to park their cars.
It was basically a bed and a bathroom.

All of the priests in a geographical area
(not sure how large the area was)
would have a community building
where they would have their meals
and watch TV and just hang out.
The idea the church had was to
bring the priests back into
a life of community relationship with each other.

In my dream,
I decided to live in one of these house.
I dressed it up very nicely with curtains.
And I planted all sorts of flowers outside.
My house was way better than all of the others.
I was trying to show the priests
who were not keen on the idea
of living in these small houses
that they could be made quite comfortable
and homey.

In the end,
the small houses became quite popular
with single people.
Married couples without children
and older couples with grown children
also liked these one room houses.
And the neighborhoods
all shared the TV room and
had meals together in the community house.
People took care of each other
but still had their privacy.