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In 2018, Fr. James Hudgins, the pastor of St. Jude Church in Fredericksburg, Va., explained to me a tiny sliver of the thought he put into our parish’s new building. Whatever little I knew of the importance of architecture before was now firmly cemented into my mind–intentional design matters.
As I learned more about ballpark architecture and its relationship to American cities (read and listen to the review of Ballpark: Baseball in the American City here), I realized there are actually a lot of parallels between churches and ballparks.
So I invited Fr. Hudgins onto the show to discuss this relationship, and he explained that the similarities run much deeper than physical architecture, back centuries through cultural and intellectual history. The evidence is telling–matter matters.
The Top Step 
Superb conversation! I thought a comparison of baseball and Catholic architecture would demand a quantum leap in reasoning. Not so, my friend, not so! Thank you for a very informative podcast.