reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

@Praxiteles wrote:

Well, it looks as though Cork City Council has obliged Bank of Ireland with permission to build a glass box opposite St. Peter and PAul’s in the City Centre. This will be an interesting one and another example of a glass box being erected in the siting of a primary protected structure in Cork. The other being next door to St. MAry’s Pope’s Quay.

What an outrage! As if the city centre needs yet another achitectural obscenity. Who, for example admires that multi-storeyed car park? That ought to have been built underground not above ground.

It strikes Rhabanus as odd that the CCC has not adopted an ironclad policy of insisting that any new buildings to be erected in Cork City Centre MUST blend in with the surrounding architecture. What barbarian would countenance a glass abomination right across from one of the most beautiful and significant churches in the city of Cork? Has the Corkonian pluck been utterly anaesthetised of late? Corkonians: make your views known to the Cork City Council. Otherwise, don’t complain when the bulldozers arrive to raze your heritage and erect neo-Brutalist confections that will disintegrate and collapse within fifty years.

You will love this. This is an email to archiseek.

Dear John Sweetman, I am a achitecture designer and I thought I would give you my input on the current interier design layout in which I have seen on this website. The one thing I really noticed about the interier of Pro-St. Mary’s is there is not enough light passing through it. I thought maybe you could concider opening up the fresco seen of Jesus assending to heaven with a stain window of Mother Mary holding Jesus in her arms with the cross in the background and roses as the border surrounding them. It is just my observation that I can see that the Roman colums are a eye sore and should be plain colums without the Roman style. You should also look at painting the interier a light color to allow the light from the stained window dome to bounce off the walls. Thank you for your time Sincerely,

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Saints Peter and Paul, Paul Street, Cork: the nave, looking towards the east window
http://www.ribapix.com/image.php?i=47834&r=2&t=4&x=1

http://www.ribapix.com/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=item&key=Wczo3OiJpcmVsYW5kIjs=&pg=159

Just to remind everyone that next year is the 150 anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of St. peter and Paul’s. An ambitious programme of events is currently being prepared by a Jubilee Committee in Cork.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Just came across this today:

INTERNATIONAL LITURGICAL CONFERENCE
FOTA, CO. CORK, 12th July 2008-07-14
PRESS RELEASE

Last Saturday, a well-attended, International Liturgical Conference was held in the Sheraton Hotel Fota, Co. Cork, devoted to the topic: “Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy”. It was the second such conference. The first was held in Columbus, Ohio last September. The third will be held in Budapest next August. These conferences explore the unexpected phenomenon of what is being called the “Benedictine reform” of the Liturgy – sometimes called the reform of the reform. The starting point for all the papers was the frank recognition that to date the reform of the Sacred Liturgy (i.e. the way we celebrate the sacraments, in partiuclar the Mass) ordered by the Second Vatican Council has been, to put it mildly, a mess. It is in urgent need of correction, a standpoint, it is claimed, which is shared by the Holy Father.

The Conference was chaired by Dr D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, Maynooth, a former doctoral student of the then Joseph Ratzinger. In his introductory comments, Fr Twomey singled out Ratzinger’s theology of creation to highlight two central concerns to be found in the Pope’s extensive writings on liturgy, namely (1) the cosmic dimension of the liturgy and (2) the roots of the ritual of the Mass not only in the Word-liturgy of the Synagogue but also in the Temple worship now transformed in Christ. In the bungled reform of the liturgy after the Council, he claimed, both – the cosmic dimension of the liturgy as well as its roots in the Temple worship – were, for various reasons, practically ignored. The result is a truncated liturgy. Fr Twomey also pointed out that in Ratzinger’s sacramental theology and in his theology of the world religions, we find a profound appreciation of the fact that the ultimate roots of Christian sacred liturgy are to be found in the cultic rituals of humanity which reach back to the dawn of time. All of this has been ignored by the so-called liturgical experts who, for the first time in the history of the Church – indeed in the history of religions – began to fabricate the liturgy according to abstract principles of questionable theological provenance.

These themes were taken up by the impressive paper of international speakers.
The way we now speak only of “the liturgy” and no longer of “the Sacred Liturgy” well illustrates one of the main reasons why the reformed liturgy up to now has, on the whole, been a catastrophe: it increasingly lacks any reference to the Sacred or to Transcendence. James Hitchcock, Professor of History at St Louis University, USA, described the way the reform went wrong, primarily because of the way the secular assumptions of modernity became the determining factors in shaping the liturgy. Thus, for example, the object of the new type of secularized liturgy, it would seem, is to help people relax. Sacred space gives way to domesticated space, where people are supposed to feel “at home”. The community ends up celebrating itself. The reformers, unfortunately, ignored the findings of anthropologists such as Mary Douglas, who recovered for us moderns the nature and centrality of symbol and ritual –and with ritual, the centrality of tradition in forming community, a community that reaches beyond the here-and-now to God, the angels and the saints in glory. In a word, the reformers fell prey to the spirit of the age.

The internationally renowned English theologian and author, Dr Alcuin Read, described in some detail the major steps in the reform since the council. The original vision of the Council Fathers got lost in the hands of the so-called “liturgical experts”, who, for the first time in the history of the Church began to fabricate liturgy in the abstract, as it were, instead of letting it organically develop. Central to the concern of the “liturgist” was the hermeneutics of discontinuity, as though all that had happened over the previous centuries had been a mistake and so something new had to be produced. Dr Read also outlined what he described as the four pillars of the “Benedictine Reform”, namely the Pope’s personal liturgical example, his insistence on historical and intellectual honesty with regard to the liturgical life of the Church in recent decades, his insistence on the correct celebration of the liturgy according to the liturgical books, and his desire for fidelity to received liturgical tradition. Central to this is the affirmation of the hermeneutics of continuity, expressed, for example, in the general permission to allow the pre-Vatican II rite (the so-called Tridentine Rite) to be celebrated and calling it the extraordinary rite.

The validity of the ordinary rite – the Novus Ordo of Pope Paul VI – was stressed in the lively paper delivered by Mrs Hitchcock on the main features of the Benedictine Reform. Two extremes are to be avoided: rejecting the validity of either the old rite or the new. Both are expressions of the one, ancient liturgical tradition of the Latin Western Tradition. It is hoped that both will in time influence each other, since the older rite is itself in need of further development, e.g. the use of the vernacular in the readings, as already foreseen by the Pope’s decree authorizing the use of the older rite. But the main attention must be given to the celebration of the new or ordinary rite and the need to recover the cosmic dimension of the sacred liturgy, which Pope Benedict XVI has stressed over and over again.

A fascinating paper by the German theologian, Manfred Hauke, Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Lugano, Switzerland, introduced the participants to the life and work of the little-known liturgist, Klaus Gamber of Regensburg. Ratzinger once described him as the only scholar who truly represents the central tradition of the Church in matters liturgical. Professor Hauke described Gamber as the father of a new beginning in liturgical reform.

The reform of the rite at present currently in use must, for example, pay more attention to the sacred nature of the liturgy. In his learned paper, Dr Uwe Michael Lang, a German Oratorian priest and renowned patristic scholar now working the the Vatican Congregation for Worship and the Celebration of the Sacraments, discussed “Sacred Art in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger”. The Pope is acutely aware that the contemporary crisis in art is a symptom of modernity’s crisis of identity, with the result that art today is neither refreshing nor inspiring. This is because modernity denies the transcendental nature of beauty, the identity of beauty with truth and goodness. This has had a profound influence on the art and architecture found in our churches. The heresy of iconoclasm (the destruction of images) thus returned with a vengeance. Statues and images were removed from churches and often destroyed. They were sometimes replaced by abstract art that simply confuses. One contributor commented that many modern churches have all the attraction of a fridge. Ratzinger once said, in effect, that the complete absence of images is not a Christian option. However, the romantic but basically modernist solution of A.W. Pugin, who recognized only the mediaeval art as truly Christian was also criticized, as it had been by Newman in his own day. The Pope calls for a truly creative sacred art that is at the same time contemporary and creative of something entirely new.

The Canadian editor of the periodical, Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, Dr Neil J. Roy read a scholarly paper on the richness of the Roman Canon, its internal order and beauty. He paid special attention to the lists of saints mentioned before and after the Consecration, showing how there was nothing arbitrary about the composition of the lists. The saints mentioned there cover the entire spectrum of saints and are arranged under two “headings”, as it were, that of Our Lady on the one hand and St John the Baptist on the other, two saints who are depicted in sacred art both in the East and in the West as petitioning Our Lord on behalf of sinners.

The guest of honour and keynote speaker at the conference was the Argentinean Archbishop, Jorge Maria Cardinal Mejia. His opening address was on the problem of translation. Pointing out that translation was a consequence of sin, he outlined the biblical understanding of the origin of languages in the original sin that led to the Tower of Babel, punishment for which was the origin of the various languages of the world. Scripture also points to the healing that came with Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit which enable humanity to communicate with a common language once again, that of the faith. His scholarly discourse on the various translations of the Bible illuminated the significance and the limits to all attempts at translation Cardinal Mejia also presided over and preached at the concelebrated Mass according to the new rite (the Novus Ordo of Paul VI) in Latin in the magnificent Cobh Cathedral. The Lassulus singers of Dublin provided the music of Palestrina for the Mass. Their singing was as close to perfection as is possible, remarked the Cardinal at the end of Mass. This solemn Mass demonstrated that the new rite, when properly celebrated, can also be magnificent. It also can effect that “sursum corda”, that raising of our hearts to God, the angels and the saints in communal worship, which is the object of authentic sacred liturgy.

Any idea as to the number of participants?
Fota Island must have afforded an absolutely perfect location for the conference. And very few venues could have surpassed the stunningly beautiful Cathedral of St Colman, Cobh to house the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy. Palestrina is the ideal master of sacred polyphony. The sung Mass must have been “Heaven on earth” for participants.

Rhabanus notes the wise integration of academic study on the Sacred Liturgy with the ars celebrandi. Now THAT’s the way to conduct a conference on the Sacred Liturgy!

Three international conferences within the space of a single year?? Looks as though the Benedictine Reform is making its mark. Let’s hope that it will have some effect in the area of architecture and the plastic arts.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Apparently, the next Fota Conferebnce will be on the topic of Sacred ARt and Archiotecture. That should be a welcome event.

Will it constitute one in a series of international liturgical conferences on the same topic, such as the one that took place last Saturday on Fota Island?

The whole notion of sacred art and architecture really needs renewed focus, particularly in the light of so much needless destruction of truly beautiful architecture and of course the really ugly, decadent stuff that has blighted the landscape and impoverished the Church for the past four decades or so.

It’s about time that those engaged in producing authentic sacred art and architecture had a chance to make their case.

Obviously one of the topics that should receive attention is the notion of a coherent theology of aesthetic, as well as the articulation of canons of beauty. Many today are left with the impression that all new church buildings are supposed to be ugly. [Who established that rule? – which is followed so closely, nay, slavishly, by the majority of ‘liturgical’ architects.] This should give serious liturgical artists and architects plenty of scope to explain how they approach the vocation of a church artist or architect.

Rhabanus doesn’t want to see any donkey jackets on the photographic coverage of such an event.

WE are all well aware of the dangers of “restoration” from the debacle of what happened at Cobh Cathedral and we can certainly justify maximum vigilance when it comes to further proposals for this building.

However, such “restoration” disasters are not unusual. Another example must surely be E. W. Pugin’s All Saints at Barton upon Irwill. The church was built by him between 1865 and 1868 at a cost of £25,000 supplied by the descndants of the local recusant lords or the manor of Trafford, the de Trafford family. The very best of craftsmanship and material went into the building and decoration of the church. In some respects, this was E. W. Pugin’s chance to rival his father’s church at Cheadle, done for the Marquis of Shrewsbury.

Bewteen 1985 and 1991 extensive “restoration” was undertaken at enormous expense with monies supplied by private and public benefactors. The initial results seemed (from the photographs) very promising and those from the re-opening in 1991 suggest that the church once again looked as it had in 1868.

However, on entering the church today, it is almost derelict. Large tracts of it have been infected by dry rot – most notoriously the gilt decorated ceiling of the sanctuary which appears to be on the verge of collapse. The painted and frescoed decoration of the nave and side aisles seem to have simply vanished. The famous fresco of the adoration of the lamb on the Spouth wall of the chancel which contains a portrait of E. W. Pugin is in the most precarious state and in urgent need of professional attention if it is to be saved from vanishing off the wall. A very harsh coloured glass was installed in the west rose at the time of the 1985/1991 retoration. The original glass was removed during the war and never replaced. We are told that it went AWAL. How, may we ask, can this have happened?

It is interesting that something similar appears to be happening in Cobh CAthedral. After a much publicised and highly expensive restoration, the building is in a shambles and possibly in a worse structural condition than before the so called restoration of the 1990s began. Now, another “reastoration” is proposed and contracts awareded to “conservationists” who, as far as a major ecclesiastical building of international significance is concerned, are untried. We are told that the easily impressionable Cobh Town Council are, undersatbdably, “impressed” – but then they could be relied on to build a hay shed. What, we might ask, is going to happen if the next “restoration” in Cobh is going to leave the building even more delapidated than it presently is?

@Praxiteles wrote:

On a different subject, can anyone suggest a list a neo byzantine churches in Ireland?

Galway Cathedral comes to mind. Quite magnificent, really, with an impressive mosaic of the Rood (Calvary with the crucified Christ flanked by the BVM and St John Evangelist) dominating the Eastern wall.

The sanctuary and main altar are positioned beneath the dome at the transversal. Everything is in place: altar, communion rails, gates. Nothing has had to be done to this building in order to accommodate either Vatican II or the Council of Trent. In other words, the layout is equally appropriate for both usus antiquior (ritus extraordinarius) and the novus ordo (ritus ordinarius). The materials are of the finest quality. It looks spanking new even though it was built around 1955. Plenty of space and impressive sense of mystery. The building bishop obviously had vision and good taste – a rare combination today.

How did this magnificent building escape the notice of this venerable thread?

The Holy Name of Jesus, Manchester.

Here we have the High Altar. Miraculoausly, this survived a terrible outburst of iconoclasm which saw the final Jesuit comminity at the Holy Name of Jesus send their extensive collection of relics to the Manchester Crematorium!!

The Holy name of Jesus, Manchester

The screens on the north wall behind which are set the confessionals.

These are magnificent buildings but with the decline of the catholic church in Ireland over the last decade who now finances these expensive restorations.