reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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The Church of the the Holy Name of Jesus, Oxford Road, Manchester
Built by Joseph Aloysius Hanson for the Jesuits 1869-1871.
The building, while French neo-gothic of the 14th century, is, at the same time adapted to the post Tridentine liturgical concerns of the Jesuits – clear unobstructed view of the altar (hence slender pillars) and wide enough for easy preaching from the pulpit, emphasis on the Eucharist, and on devotion to the saints associated with the order adn to the Sacred Heart which they strongly promoted as an antidote to Jansenism.
The church is 186 feet East/ West; 112 feet North/South; and 100 feet in interior height.
Cobh Cathedral is 210 East/West; 120feet North/South; and 80 feet in interior height.Interestingly, the High Altar is in position and in use; as is the pulpit. This clearly indicates the liturgical fraud being pushed in the Cobh development.
The Holy Name of Jesus, Oxford Road, Manchester
The High Altar
The focal point of the church, was completed by the installation of the altar in 1886 to a design by J.A. Hanson’s son. The reredos of Caen stone contains statues in alabaster of ten Jesuits saints. From left to right they are, St. Ignatius (above), St. Aloysius, St. Francis Jerome, St. John Berchmans, St. Francis Borgia, St. John Nepomucene, St. John Francis Regis, St. Peter Claver, St. Francis Xavier (above), St Stanislaus Kostka. The altar itself is of alabaster inlaid with green Russian malachite. The frontal is based on da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’. The five main windows depict the Coronation of Our Lady and are by Hardman of Birmingham (1899).
Th Chapel of St Joseph
Exterior view
The tower as originally designed by Hansom would have been half as high again as the present tower, but was not built due to poor ground conditions under the foundations. The present tower was added as a memorial to Father Bernard Vaughan S.J., Rector of the Holy Name (1888-1901). It is 185ft. high and was completed in 1928 to the designs of Giles and Adrian Gilbert Scott. The tower contains a chime of 15 bells by Gillet and Johnson. A new mechanism was installed in 1995 and plays automatically the Angelus and some twenty hymn tunes as well as bell ringing before Mass etc. There is also a keyboard for manual operation.
The link address is: http://www.holyname.co.uk/
I thought so, but I am not sure. I am told that an extension of the sanctuary has been made into the nave. My recollection of St. Vitus was such that no extension could be made into the nave because of the sheer distance between the nave and chancel and because of the imperial mausoleum which sits in the lower plane of the Chancel. Could I have been mistaken?
Happy to confirm that it is indeed St Vitus in Prague – I’d know it anywhere!
Have you seen P Clerkin’s adventurous new thread, off topic but very paranoid?Well, if Peter Parler can’t be trusted to know Prague Cathedral, who can? I must say, Peter, I admire your work in particular on the Golden Gate! Below, another image from a different angle.
Obviously all these shots are taken early in the morning, before opening hours. The one characteristic that now blights St. Vitus is the hoards of noisy tourists who constantly tramp around it. Alas, mass tourism has made a spectacle of all places of beauty.
A most interesting feature of St Vitus is the splendid ambulatory altar to St. John Nepomuk – see the image below. If one looks closely just above the mensa of each altar, one sees etched silver tablets containing the texts of the Eternal Mass – what used to be contained on the so-called Altar Charts. Thus on the Gospel Side is John 1: 1-14 “In principio erat Verbum†and on the Epistle Side, some offertory prayers: “Deus qui humanae substantiae….†and “Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas…â€
While the altar charts were one of the first victims of the slash and burn approach to things liturgical that typified the 70s, they could not be removed from the altar of John Nepomuk.
Is this feature unique to this altar?
Here is a close-up of the splendid silver work that adorns the altar of St John Nepomuk in spade-fulls. I shall try to find a close-up of those altar charts.
Some more views – one can just make out on one of these images an example of the altar charts, etched in silver. Here is shown the altar chart on the Gospel Side of one of the altars of St. John Nepomuk’s tomb. I hope to find a better image of this interesting feature.
Does anyone know of other examples of this type of feature anywhere?
Attached are what are described as Altar Cards from the Honan Chapel, which featured in the book ‘The Honan Chapel’ edited by Virginia Teehan and Elizabeth Wincott Heckett.
Are they the same thing?
ALERT ALERT
Yes, Michael O’Brien is right to be concerned (#506, #514) – there are plans afoot to make an assault on Kilrush Parish Church. Can anyone in West Clare tell us the state of things – is there opposition – can it be whipped up? West Clare people are not about to roll over and let a belated ghost of the 1970s destroy what has so far been preserved, I hope!
The ecclesiastic responsible for the porches was Peter Canon Ryan, RIP, who also kept the wrecker’s ball from this rather fine church. Now that the chapter in Killaloe is slowly being extinguished…he may well be the last Canon to act as P.P. Kilrush.
The chapter of Killaloe Diocese was re-established in 1904 – can it be allowed to die so quickly? And what will replace the chapter? The Chapter actually acts as a kind of institutional balance within a diocese, ensuring that a manic centralisation does not place all authority, prestige and function in the bishop’s hands.
In any case – can Kilrush be saved? :confused:
Gianlorenzo, both these altar charts (or cards) are from the Gospel Side of the altar – thus they both contain the Last Gospel (John 1:1-14), read as the final act of faith in the divinity of Christ at the end of every Mass.
The work on the frames is rather fine it seems to me.
The altar cards were, as you know, three in number, one on each side of the altar and one in the middle. The middle chart was the biggest containing offertory prayers (Suscipe sancte Pater, Offerimus tibi Domine etc) as well as the all important consecration formulae (Hoc est enim corpus meum – Hic est Calix sanguinis mei…). The idea was that the priest could read these texts from right in front of him without being distracted by the missal at that vital moment – a very good idea. The charts at the extreme ends of the altar were to help him with the Latin texts when he was too far from the missal to read from it.
Typically these charts were like framed pictures, free standing and removed from the altar when Mass was not being said. What’s extraordinary about the altar of St John Nepomuk is that the text of these card has become a part of the overall piece, being etched into the silver that frames the altar. It’s a lovely thing, and thus make these “altar charts” inseperable from the altar.
I wonder if such a feature is found in any other church?
I am glad to have Peter Parler’s assurances about his Prague masterpiece – the Vitusdom. I posted the photograph in the first place because I am told that the consultancy firm McCutcheon-Mulcahy, who are promoting the wreckage of Cobh Cathedral, are claiming that the sanctuary of the Vitusdom has been re-ordered and brough forward in the same way that the great Professor O’Neill plans to extend the sanctuary in Cobh into the nave. Not having been in Prague for some years, I was not too sure about that claim but am heartened to see from the recent photographs that have been posted that all is still intact in Prague. What McCutcheon Mulcahy do not seem to realize is that if you extend the sanctuary in Prague, you will have to remove the mausoleum of the Emperors Ferdinand and Rudolf which is bang in the middle of sanctuary. Indeed, a new temporary altar has been set up in the sanctuary – but the problem about using it that you cannot see over the mausoleum and anybody behind it cannot see anyone at the new altar. If you were to extend the sanctuary into the nave, you would require a runway of about 150 feet. The peculariaties of the Vitusdom are explained by the history of its building. The medieval part of this vast church consists only of the Chancel. The building of the cathedral was overtaken by the wars of religion in 15th century. This resulted in the abandonemnt of the building process. A wall was build across the west end of the Chancel leaving one with lòittle more than an enormous sanctuary. When the Emperors Ferdinand I Mathias and Rudolf died Bohemia was in turmoil. In the 20th. century, a decision was taken to complete the Vitusdom by building the nave. The work was completed by 1928 and the wall screening off the Chancel was taekn down to reveal the imperial mausoleum right in the middle of the Chancel before the High Altar. The Mosoleum, by Alexander Collin, was built between 1566 and 1589.
I’ve been following this thread with some interest and have written to foscc in support of the campaign to preserve the interior integrity of this fine church. I can very readily appreciate the emotive nature of this issue and the puzzlement it causes to the average catholic in the pew.
When I was a child of twelve my own parish and school church, the Sacred Heart in Wimbledon, London, was traumatically and expensively reordered. This is a fine revival of the curviniliar phase of english decorated architecture but it, unexpectedly, has a polygonal apse with 3 radiating chapels (2 of which have preserved the original altars).
I was serving mass regularly at the time. I endeavoured to extract from the parish priest a promise to conserve the sanctuary’s fine hand painted encaustic tiles. He did so with some force: The next week I came to church to find that these had all been jack-hammered and turned in with the concrete to form the base of the new altar platform. This event, as well as the scheme itself, has rather coloured my attitude towards the clergy’s guardianship of our sacred patrimony.
Please take a look at this church at:
http://www.sacredheartwimbledon.org.uk/
You will find the state as existing in the ‘history’ section and an image of the removed baldachino and high altar in the section marked ‘photographs’.
The problem we face is that, in contrast to the holy father and other sympathetic bishops priests and laity, the whip hand is under the control of those who believe that the council (V2) represents a juncture with the development of ecclesiology up to that point. This new ‘renewed’ church requires a radically different architectural manifestation. The liturgical action of the church is submitted to the higher authority of democracy and equality.
Unfortunately, ‘conservative’ resistance to this is at best ambivalent. Will there ever be a crack-down on liturgical abuses? No. Will Rome ever say anything as useful as ‘the eastward position for priest and people is desirable during the eucharistic prayer’- I’ll eat my hat, and in any case who’d obey?
The best we can do is offer ad hoc resistance to immediate threats to specific churches and hope that, over a number of years, if there are any faithful left, that the old high altars are once again used.
I am a student of architecture: For a number of years I have had an idea to compile a ‘before and after’ set of photographs of reorderings from all over the world. This would be free of an overly polemical text. The pictures would do the talking. This would show how we had all, apparently, become low church lutherans.
If anyone has any links to pictures, or pictoral data then I would be delighted to see it to start on the above project…
By the way, if you want to see a truely awful reordering or ‘adeguamento’ as the Italians call it check out the duomo in Milan. In its current state:
http://milan.arounder.com/milans_duomo_cathedral/fullscreen.html (excellent site, incidentally…)
Can’t find a link to its prior state; the 16th C high altar’s been mutilated, ditto the balustrade of the cancelli and, of course-obligatory…?- the tesserae floor’s been ruined.
Then, also, who could forget that the mensa of Bernini’s cathedra petri altar in St Peter’s itself was destroyed under the nose of JP II himself in the early 1980’s. If we’re waiting on any intervention on the side of tradition and sacrosantum concilium from Rome vis-a-vis architectural patrimony then it could only realistically come from BXVI. If he does say anything concrete, a big if, then it will be in such a way that it can be ignored by every iconoclastic bishop who wants to remake his church in his image and make for himself a Star-Trek chair where the tabernacle used to be: cf
In site of this, I try to remain optimistic.
Luzarches – did you know that Milan is the reason for the current proposals for Cobh. A former Administrator of the Parish visited Milan and fell in love with the reordered sanctuary and returned with the great idea that this could be done in Cobh, even though St. Colman’s is half the size of Milan cathedral. Even though he is no longer in Cobh, he is still the principal promoter of this scheme and will do anything and everything to get his way.
Luzarches,
I think you need to bring yourself up to speed. Benedict XVI, in his address to the Curia of 22 December 2005, laid down the stakes for the proper interpretation of the Council. He reasserted what the sane have been saying for 50 years – the Council has to be seen in continuity with the Church’s history and not -as the iconoclastis hold – in disjunction from it. If you read the promoters of the Cobh destruction you would imagine that the diocese of Cloyne has not celebrated a Catholic liturgy for 50 years and that somehow the diocese is prohibited from participation in the modern liturgy. Did you ever hear such a turdish heap of rot and that coming from someone who was supposed to have enough Wissenshaft to be Master of Ceremonies to the Roman Pontiff. I ask you….!!!!
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.
Had the promoters of this wrecking had their way, they would have cleared the sanctuary completely. Two things inhibited them, 1 a covenant that had seen signed with the Heritage Council in 1995 – though this on its own wouldn’t have stopped them for long; and 2, the Bishop was forced to make a very public commitment to a very angry group of parishioners in 1998 that the reredos and tabernacle would not be moved. However I do believe that if they get away with this they will begin to scheme to get around both the promise to the people and the covenant with the Heritage Council,- who have been completely silent so far regarding this planning application.Obviously the only remaining intact Gothic Revival Cathedral in Ireland is none of their business!!!!:mad:
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