Re: Re: reordering and destruction of irish cathedrals and churches
Yes, Praxiteles, I am aware of HH’s recent iteration of the “hermeneutics of reform”. My only point is that, with the best will in the world, there is no substantial institutional platform to initiate a palliative strategy. Is he going to talk over the heads of the bishops, as he needs to? He’s too much a man of the council to do that. I note that HE Card. Arinze made some comments recently about the liturgy. Any good content was enervated by his observation that BXVI would seek to promote such correctives with lovingkindness rather than the paternal firmness proper to the Roman church (But it’s about thirty years too late for that anyway…). I cheered when I heard of J.R’s election and I am still pleased. But you have to remember that even in the excellent ‘Spirit of the Liturgy’ his suggestions aren’t more concrete than mooting putting a crucifix on the reordered ironingboards. The sad fact is that I suspect that even this, let alone the eastward-facing posture, would be too much for some clergy because we are happy easter people dontchaknow?
Gianlorenzo, I didn’t know about Cobh being related to Milan, hence those cretinous proposed curved steps, I suppose. I went to mass there a while back. Maybe it was the gloriously renewed Ambrosian liturgy or the new sanctuary, but it felt like dead space to me. A place of prosaic assembly. Heightened I think by the fact that the architectural aesthetic of the intervention is conservative; it’s impossible to make a visual edit of the sanctuary. Do you have any visual or drawn information re Milan’s reordering?
So the moral is even if the Cobh wreckers have deigned to leave the faithful with their old high altar in tact the architectural meaning will be fatally subverted and the ‘presider’ will have to turn his back on the Blessed Sacrament. This is the central paradox of the conservative position when applied to historic churches. Logic and the ‘spirit’ of the modern rite would tend to demand a clean sweep of the sanctuary. Sacrosanctum Concilium rules this out for historic churches. It’s a syllogism; Use the old high altar! Therefore there is no such thing as a conservative reordering.
At my local parish church the excellent parish priest faces east with his congregation; when the the Archbishop of Southwark came to do confirmations he did likewise. Small gains for which I am thankful. But the pp could be taken away and one parachuted in who wanted to extend the mild, mid 60’s reordering, and I guess the bish would be equally supportive of him.
