reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

@johnglas wrote:

Wunderschoen! Es ist nur ein Projekt, aber keine Wirklichkeit. Schade!

Nicht ganz der Fall…erlauben Sie uns sagen dass es sei noch nich eine wirkchliche Realitaet! Aber, es wird schon bald sein!!

@samuel j wrote:

Anyone hear or know if the Consultants have come up with anything yet on the plaster falling etc. at St.Colmans..?

Officially, nothing fell in St. Colman’s….it just collapsed.

And some more on Vatican II and ecclesiastical architecture – the Cloyne HACK could do well to try and struggle thorugh the article or ask someone to read it out loud for them:

http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=8000

Praxiteles earnestly hopes that Johnglas will forgive succumbing to the temptation to quote another paragraph from Randall Smith’s article:

“De-constructing Modern Church Architecture

But that’s enough about Fr. Reinhold and his ideology of church architecture. My point is simply this: Here in this 1947 treatise, we find a popular course of lectures delivered to scores of prospective liturgists proposing all sorts of architectural “reforms” that most people associate with the Second Vatican Council, none of which are actually called for by the Council. When the Council documents finally did reach America in the mid-1960s, however, they were delivered into a social and cultural context that was already well imbued with the modernist architectural ethos. And thus when American liturgists read and interpreted those conciliar documents, they did so through the interpretive lens of the modernist architecture handed down to them by “experts” like Fr. Reinhold. In other words, we were well on our way to the kind of churches pictured in Environment and Art in Catholic Worship long before the Council fathers ever wrote a word of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

As I have indicated several times above, it may well be — indeed, it seems likely — that Fr. Reinhold was not a conscious modernist. It seems likely he had just taken in bits and pieces of what passed for the reigning wisdom in the architectural schools of his day. That’s not a crime. But it may be a problem if you take it upon yourself to dictate to architects how they must build a church. Sadly, Fr. Reinhold was merely the first in a long line of liturgists who have had the presumption to think that they can substitute for an actual architect. Nothing is more common in contemporary church building projects — especially the bad ones — than for the architect to have to work under the tutelage of a “liturgical consultant.” The liturgical consultant is not there merely to teach the architect about the liturgy, but to “help” the architect in matters of design. Most architects find this intrusion to be extremely frustrating. The liturgical consultant is a person who knows little about architecture telling someone trained in architecture how a building “must” look. Says who? As it turns out, not the Council; nor the Church; and definitely not the tradition of architectural design. So who then? Well, as it turns out, pretty much just the liturgical consultant who sells himself as capable of doing the job an architect is trained to do. Indeed, the claim seems to be that the architect simply cannot build a church building without the guidance of the liturgist. Oddly, the liturgist does not seem to think he cannot plan a liturgy without the help of the architect.

The principles that Fr. Reinhold espouses are not independent of any style, as he repeatedly insists; rather, they are central tenets of modernist design. Thus, if it is to be the case, as even Fr. Reinhold repeatedly insists, that the Church should canonize no style in particular, but remain open to all styles, then we must set about disengaging these modernist principles from the general prescriptions for the building of churches. What is clear, moreover, is that forcing modernist principles of building design upon unwilling church congregations and passing them off as if they were principles of the Council simply must stop”.

Praxiteles wholeheartedly endorses all this – remember the ghostly spectre of Mies that came over Belvelly bridge onto the Great Island to savage the interior of Cobh Cathedral in the guise of the the great Prof. O’Neill with practically no experience of cathedral architecture behind him and lots of experience in building railway footbridges with canned lifts.

And some more on contemporary church building:

http://www.catholicculture.org/search/searchResults.cfm?querynum=1&searchid=175623&page=1

And an article on iconography:

http://www.sacredarchitecture.org/pubs/saj/articles/iconography.php

An English version of a famous liturgical exchange. Here Pierre-Marie Gy, OP, opens the debate with a critique of book published by a certain Joseph Ratzinger:

http://www.liturgysociety.org/JOURNAL/Volume11/Ratzinger_Gy.pdf

@Praxiteles wrote:

H. A. Reinhold was a diocesan priest from the state of Washington, and perhaps the only true radical in the leadership of the Liturgical Conference. A convert from Judaism, Reinhold had been chased from Germany in 1935. Known for his acerbic and hard-hitting opinions, his writings appeared frequently in his regular column in Orate Fratres, entitled “Timely Tracts.” Along with Hillenbrand, Reinhold was among the most vocal proponents of the connection between liturgy and social reconstruction. He was also a noted commentator on politics, art and architecture, leading to many articles in Commonweal and Liturgical Arts.

A story similar to that of ex-Augustinian priest Gregory Baum still holding forth at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Astoundingly influential on the ecclesiastical situation in Canada, given his own background.

And something on the Marini book and its efforts to block the reform of the reform:

http://www.archden.org/dcr/news.php?e=457&s=3&a=9644

Prax: A fascinating and erudite defence of the concept of the Real Presence and – more to the architectural point – of the existence of the tabernacle. But – where do you put it and what should it look like? By the late 19th century the convention had developed in almost all churches of having the tabernacle (of which only the door was ever seen, and that only when the veil was drawn back) as an integral part of the reredos or retable of the main altar – although there were sometimes tabernacles in the ‘side’ altars (or at least one of them – the ‘altar of repose’). The contemporary trend for free-standing tabernacles has led to an unfortunate ‘dumbing down’ of the whole concept of Reservation. Tabernacles are often crude objects on even cruder pedestals and any sense of mystery has been lost (or diminished).
I have never been a fan of ‘exposition’ and its growing popularity is very unfortunate. In medieval Scotland, the sacrament was reserved in a ‘Sacrament-house’, a kind of cupboard recessed into the wall, surrounded by a richly-decorated architrave drawing attention to the numinous nature of its contents. Something like this would be preferable to the current style and practice. I like the idea of a special Sacrament Chapel, distinct from the main or principal altar, but this is suitable only in larger churches or where an appropriate chapel already exists. I do not advocate destroying original altars to achieve this!
A not unsympathetic visitor to a Catholic church recently compared a modern tabernacle to a birdcage! There was no malice intended, but it perhaps suggests that we need a contemporary architectural expression that is worthy of what it is intended to contain.