{"id":4316,"date":"2006-02-24T01:44:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-24T01:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/how-interesting.html"},"modified":"2006-02-24T01:44:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-24T01:44:37","slug":"how-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/how-interesting.html","title":{"rendered":"How interesting…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man built a mini-church in his basement:<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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While for years a church as operated as a second or perhaps even primary home for infinite worshippers, the most prominent church in Denise Deschamps\u2019s life at the moment is actually in need of a home itself. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because for most of Deschamps life she has lived with a tremendous, intricately detailed sculpture of a Catholic Church in the basement of her childhood home, built by her father by hand and personally designed down to the detail. The church measures taller than most men and depicts a Good Friday Mass right down to the robes on the miniature replica alter boys. <\/p>\n

But after her father Roland Thomas\u2019s death at the age of 94 last year, Deschamps said she is facing a drastic decision regarding the larger-than-life piece of folk art, which contains a copper roof, concrete facade and finished interior including mini confessional booths. "My father was an engineer, he was very active in the church, and I think this just combined the two," Deschamps said of the miniature, which is resting in the basement of her father\u2019s Malden home, which is being renovated and prepared for sale. "We are selling the house, and it\u2019s putting me in a desperate situation," Deschamps said. "It would cost way too much to store it, and I really don\u2019t want to destroy it. I just hope that maybe someone or some organization would want to take it." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man built a mini-church in his basement: While for years a church as operated as a second or perhaps even primary home for infinite worshippers, the most prominent church in Denise Deschamps\u2019s life at the moment is actually in need of a home itself. That\u2019s because for most of Deschamps life she has lived with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow interesting... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/how-interesting.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How interesting... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Man built a mini-church in his basement: While for years a church as operated as a second or perhaps even primary home for infinite worshippers, the most prominent church in Denise Deschamps\u2019s life at the moment is actually in need of a home itself. That\u2019s because for most of Deschamps life she has lived with…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/how-interesting.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-24T01:44:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How interesting... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/how-interesting.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How interesting... - Via Media","og_description":"Man built a mini-church in his basement: While for years a church as operated as a second or perhaps even primary home for infinite worshippers, the most prominent church in Denise Deschamps\u2019s life at the moment is actually in need of a home itself. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}