Our new and old church

Isaac and I go to church at St. Mary's in Grantham on Sundays. The church is new to us but was originally built in 1833, so I would consider it at least sort of old. It was built around the same time as Harlaxton Manor. Here is what the outside of the church looks like:

St. Mary's Church in Grantham

The entrance to the church seems to be pretty original, but the altar was remodeled in 2003.

The parish priest at St. Mary's is Father Anthony. Almost everything about the mass is the same, as you would expect at a Catholic church. However, there are some distinct differences. For example, the words in the Profession of Faith are slightly different. They reverse the order of some of the words and use some different words here. They also say ah-men instead of amen (with a long "a" sound). Also the songs are quite different. As I mentioned before, some of the hymns are old and some are new. Because most of the hymns have a date that indicates when the hymn was written, and because some were written hundreds of years ago, I asked someone how they know how old the songs really are. Well, here is the inside scoop....

Many, many years ago, monks wrote a lot of hymns and published them in books. Books were considered very valuable so they were never destroyed. They were saved through wars and they were never thrown out. Libraries still exist today that contain all these books of hymns. So many of the hymns' origins are known because of the great value placed on books.

I thought this was pretty fascinating. As a writer of books, I know that my books are only good for about 4 years because we publish a new one about every 4 years. When the books go out of date, they are replaced with new ones. So the question remains....if we continue to update and get rid of our old books, how will anyone know in the future what we knew now? When students in the future study our history, what will they think of us? And, you know, more and more books are becoming electronic. What will happen if the technology changes and you can no longer access certain books? I know these are crazy questions but I can't help but wonder what people will say about us in the future. I guess it is up to us to mold our history.