During a recent holiday in Italy that included numerous visits to churches throughout the mainland and Sicily, I couldn’t help but think of the great reformer’s testimony and, in particular, on her insistence that evil and its helpers are repelled by the intentional use of holy water, whether sprinkled about one’s person, or, to use her word, “flung” into spaces of spiritual concern or where we would seek the protection of a blessing, even on the material things we use.

Because, sadly, as I entered churches and prepared to bless myself in these Italian churches my fingertips would meet the bone-dry bottoms of holy water fonts, or stoups. …

Obviously, I can’t prove a direct correlation between the absence of holy water and empty pews, but my head, my heart and my gut nevertheless make the connection.

[Water is a sign of life, and its absence a sign of despair and death. It only takes a priest and some blessed salt to make holy water in the Catholic Church, so it is not as though this is some sort of supply-chain issue. It is a sign of acedia or sloth in a real sense. Did that start with the empty pews, or did the empty pews result from acedia? At some point, it doesn’t matter. — Ed]