reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
- This topic has 7,926 replies, 103 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 5 months ago by
.
- Posts
@johnglas wrote:
Rhabanus: I’ll defer to Prax, but not to you. The DIP is a doll dressed up and you seem to be obsessed by an ultramontane delusion. How many of these dour northerners have a culture of clerical sexual abuse? (Sorry about that, but it has to be said.)
I do not accept many so-called liturgical reforms, I deplore the stripping of the altars and the banalisation and vandalism of churches. I will not accept dubious practices dressed up (sic) as true religion. A bit of pomp occasionally, yes. But no to the rest and most of it is tacky.Introducng the question of clerical sexual abuse into this debate is a bit of a red herring and a fallacy of subreption. I am quite sure that were one to dig, it would not take too long to come up with Northern examples of what you refer to – e.g. the name Kincora springs to mind. Puritainism is no guarantee of chastity.
@johnglas wrote:
Rhabanus: I’ll defer to Prax, but not to you. The DIP is a doll dressed up and you seem to be obsessed by an ultramontane delusion. How many of these dour northerners have a culture of clerical sexual abuse? (Sorry about that, but it has to be said.)
I do not accept many so-called liturgical reforms, I deplore the stripping of the altars and the banalisation and vandalism of churches. I will not accept dubious practices dressed up (sic) as true religion. A bit of pomp occasionally, yes. But no to the rest and most of it is tacky.Let us consider a few facts:
The term ‘tacky’ has been bandied about recently without a definition.
It has been applied to customs and traditions that obtain in southern Europe by a northerner formed by the general assumptions and – dare we suggest? – the prejudices of the middle class.Johnglas is free to avoid practices foreign to his ken; but to deplore them as “tacky”, whatever that is supposed to mean, and to execrate them in fervid terms suggests that want of generosity and joyfulness all too characteristic of the puritan.
Johnglas rightly deplores clerical sexual abuse. He may find much food for thought (and perhaps some grist for his mill) in a recent publication by Leon Podles, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Baltimore MD: Crossland Press, 2008). The pages treating the abuse perpetrated by liturgists are trenchant and telling (345-346). According to Podles, “Liturgy is a way of controlling people and making them carry out the fantasy that the specialist has envisioned. Anyone who has tried to disagree with a liturgical expert has had an experience that confirms the joke among Catholics: ‘What is the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.’” (p. 346)
He then proceeds to cite examples of liturgists who have come to grief.
The connection implied between clerical sexual abuse and the dressing of statuary in convents and churches is unclear, particularly as the majority of the cases of abuse reported over the past few decades has come not from southern Europe but from countries and continents where Catholicism has not been in the ascendancy since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
But as Prax wisely states, this is somewhat of a red herring. Podles, however, has touched a nerve by alluding to the manner in which liturgical “experts” have wielded (or at any rate have tried to wield) control over others, including whole parishes and dioceses. Does this not ring true in various situations covered on this thread where the folks have awakened to find their church or cathedral denuded of its furnishings and reorganized beyond all recognition. And with little or no consultation at all. “Pay, pray, and Obey!” seems to be the motto in many a region featured on this thread.Catholic culture has produced great masterpieces of art, architecture, music, literature, devotion, education (the university, Jesuits’ ratio studiorum) and science (Gregorian Calendar – resisted in England until the reign of George III – for fear of papistry!!) Certainly abuses arise, but not as valid expressions of accepted schools or principles. This is precisely why they are called abuses!
As for obsessions with ultramontanism, Rhabanus cordially invites Johnglas to lay aside his strong cup of tea, just for a moment, and riffle through the pages of The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908-1913) and consult the definition of Ultramontanism found therein. After another sip of “the elixir of life” Johnglas may wish to check The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition (2003), for an updated treatment of Ultramonatism.
Rhabanus contends that when the papacy is strong, abuses are dealt with in a fair, even-handed manner and that the average Joe Catholic stands a better chance of getting a just settlement, and of being able to live contentedly according to the Way of the Gospel. On the other hand, when the papacy is weak, secular authorities exercise undue influence, if not dictatorial control, over ecclesiastical and spiritual matters (e.g. Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I; Joseph II of Austria) and liturgical and theological “experts” wrest control with dire consequences for the powerless (St Joan of Arc, Jan Hus, and other casualties of odium theologicum). The Councils of Constance and Basle were by no means the Church’s finest hour.
Likewise the liturgical pandemonium and iconoclasm that the Catholic faithful in various regions and countries have endured for the past forty years reflect defiant resistance to the papacy and an adoption of that brand of Gallicanism (or whatever you may wish to call it) which panders after the approval of secular authorities, powers, and influential quarters all too eager to reduce the Church to thralldom.
Show our gentle readers, please, the great legacy of Caesaro-papism. Which buildings or works of art patronized by Henry VIII, or Eward VI or Elizabeth I do you hold up as the apogee of culture?
Explain, Johnglas, the canons of your theory of aestheticism against which you measure – and by which you execrate – the Divine Infant of Prague or Our Lady of Victory or the clothed and crowned statue of St Peter enthroned.The Signora Neroni is pouring Rhabanus another glass of champagne. Let me read your Theory of Aesthetic as I sip slowly from the foaming glass. Grazie, grazie, carina; basta cosi per piacere!
Rhabanus: Prolix but unconvincing; perhaps I misread you, but you are not advocating caesaropapalism are you? Henry VIII (difficult I warrant you) – the best example in Engand of the consequences of megalomaniaa and despotism (and caesaropapalism?); Edward VI – the grammar schools and the English liturgy (can anyone surpass choral evensong?); Elizabeth I – Shakespeare among others (although he was a recusant). I am neither middle-class nor especially a tea-drinker (a good glass of Montepulciano any day) and I will admit that clerical sex abuse was a low blow (!), but a purple cloud of ultramontane delusion really gets us nowhere.
In this democracy (metaphorical but real none the less), opinion is sacred and I will defend mine absolutely (until a better argument comes along). Like many people, I grew uo with a statuette of the DIP in my pious auntie’s house; for me it was always an object of sentiment and nostalgia. I even made a point of going to the church of OL Victorious in ul. Karmelitska
(a filched Lutheran church apparently), but the reality turned me off completely. On the domestic level, such sentimental piety is just about acceptable, but as a public manifestation of religion it is deficient (to say no more). Incidentally, I never linked abuse to the dressing of statuary; it was intended as a riposte to the overwearing of Roman Purple spectacles.
This is an architecture blog; let’s declare a truce and get back to what you all do so well.Just in case there might be any impression to the contrary Praxiteles subscribes to an ultramontane concept of Catholicism and utterly repudiates any 18th century quasi Josephinianism or Gallicanism -both of which were distinctly bad influences on religion and not insignificant contributors to the cataclasm to hit Europe at the close of the siecles des lumieres.
@ake wrote:
I mentioned the conservation works going on at St.Mary’s, Haddingdon road, Ballsbridge earlier. Rather more than conservation works actually. Anyway, here are some shots;
I forgot this ; the plans for the landscaping around the church and parish building. Quite expensive! but the trustees of St.Colman’s could learn a thing or two about how to spend properly here.
[ATTACH]6852[/ATTACH]
large version; http://www.flickr.com/photos/58086761@N00/2285838542/sizes/l/in/set-72157603965796644/
Here is a photograph from which the Cloyne HACK might learn something when it comes to erecting temporary altars. The photograph is of the apsis of the Lateran Basilica arranged for the ordinations that took place there last week. As you can see a temporary altar has been erected in front of the Cathedra of the Bishop of Rome. however, it has not been simply flung onto the floor and left there. As you will notice it has been raised on a predella of at least one step.
In an idle moment this afternoon, Praxiteles happened across the latest on our friend Brian Quinn’s web page (Rooney and McConville, Belfast). It makes for very interesting reading -especially the bit about liturgical consultation and the creation of a “worship space” all of which seems to be possible for BQ without distinction of creed!
http://www.rooney-mcconville.com/liturgicalconsultation_1.aspx
Just take a look at this guff:
“As liturgical consultants, we help you form your new worship environment into a central element in your ministry and pastoral planning. We do this in two ways – by designing the worship interior and its elements, and by facilitating an interactive process that discerns the worship needs of the community prior to a commitment to construction”.
And this, which makes absolutely clear that any mess created in the process is truly YOURS and no one else’s:
“The role of a liturgical consultant is to facilitate a process that ensures your new worship environment not only accommodates your spatial needs, but resonates with your tradition and aspirations. Such a process involves as many from the parish as possible and is adapted to, and inspired by, your community. This guided consultation is an opportunity to reflect on your Christian commitment and how your worship space reflects and nourishes that commitment. Just as each community is unique, so is the guided process and so is the result”.
What happens when the parish just does not want what ever is concocted by the “decision-making” committee?
@Praxiteles wrote:
In an idle moment this afternoon, Praxiteles happened across the latest on our friend Brian Quinn’s web page (Rooney and McConville, Belfast). It makes for very interesting reading -especially the bit about liturgical consultation and the creation of a “worship space” all of which seems to be possible for BQ without distinction of creed!
http://www.rooney-mcconville.com/liturgicalconsultation_1.aspx
Just take a look at this guff:
“As liturgical consultants, we help you form your new worship environment into a central element in your ministry and pastoral planning. We do this in two ways – by designing the worship interior and its elements, and by facilitating an interactive process that discerns the worship needs of the community prior to a commitment to construction”.
And this, which makes absolutely clear that any mess created in the process is truly YOURS and no one else’s:
“The role of a liturgical consultant is to facilitate a process that ensures your new worship environment not only accommodates your spatial needs, but resonates with your tradition and aspirations. Such a process involves as many from the parish as possible and is adapted to, and inspired by, your community. This guided consultation is an opportunity to reflect on your Christian commitment and how your worship space reflects and nourishes that commitment. Just as each community is unique, so is the guided process and so is the result”.
What happens when the parish just does not want what ever is concocted by the “decision-making” committee?
Then hard cheese on the parish! The flock is expected to pay, pray, and obey. It is not for the flock to think or to have a say, not even when it comes to longstanding devotions or practices approved and endorsed for centuries by the Church. That is the prerogative of those who have been trained and entitled to have OPINIONS, rather than principles.
Rememebr, Prax, the charlatans presenting workshops/playshops in seminars throughout the land are telling the bullies that “feelings are infallible” – especially when they are the feelings of those in power.
The palaver which you have cited from above perpetuates the myth that one can create one’s own reality with little or no regard to particpation in the much greater tradition and the universal reality of the Mystical Body (careful here: a theological concept).
The addled notion that architecture somehow operates in its own vacuum and on its own terms utterly removed from the greater world of ideas and the development of cultures (arising from cultus) is the foundation of the twaddle you just reported. This is an architectural thread, after all, so we must strictly avoid any reference to the world of ideas or the traditions that have given rise to monuments of faith.
Thanks for the photo of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura – today’s stational church – and the final earthly resting place of — dare we type it? – Bd Pius IX (beato Pio nono). Must depart before the finger-waving Thought Police come round to sniff out the papists and ultramontanes. Whatever you do, Prax, don’t do any thinking – this is an architectural thread.
The sound a cat makes, indicating the presence of catty remarks. I now realise why there is no Catholic equivalent of Towers , Spires and Pinnacles by Sam Hutchison (Wordwell 2003), a fond and nostalgic review of the architecture of the Church of Ireland, nor why there is no Society for the Preservation of Irish Catholic Churches, or equivalent (which might make a real difference). Clearly, absolute orthodoxy to a vanished dogmatic is an absolute prerequisite for being allowed to participate in this thread. That saddens me. As does the sound of empty churches, which is the inevitable outcome of such unregenerate orthodoxy.
@johnglas wrote:
Clearly, absolute orthodoxy to a vanished dogmatic is an absolute prerequisite for being allowed to participate in this thread. That saddens me. As does the sound of empty churches, which is the inevitable outcome of such unregenerate orthodoxy.
Never said that and have never advocated that.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
