reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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One passing shot before I retire. Attached is an example of the quality of ‘replacement/restoration’ work that has been carried out in St. Colmans with the help of over €170,000 (£ equivalent) of Heritage Council grants plus the hundreds of thousands donated by the people of Cobh and the Diocese of Cloyne for the restoration project. 🙁
“…Gothic adventurers crowded so earerly to the standard of Radagaisus, that, by some historians, he has been styled the King of the Goths…Alaric was a Christian and a soldier, the leader of a disciplined army; who understood the laws of war, who respected the sanctity of treaties; and who had familiarly conversed with the subjects of the empire in the same camps and the same churches. The savage Radagaisus was a stranger to the manners, the religion and even the language of the civilised nations of the South. The fierceness of his temper was exasperated by cruel superstition; and it was universally believed that he had bound himself by a solemn vow to reduce the City into a heap of stones and ashes, and to sacrifice the most illustruous Roman senators on the altars of those gods who were appeased by human blood….Comitantur euntem Pallor, et atra Fames; et saucia lividus ora Luctus; et inferno stridentes agmine morbi”. (Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 31).
To complete the newly acquired picture gallery, I thought you might like to have the enclosed picturesque photographic study of the South elevation of the exterior of St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork
(#52) Much as one might regret the hooliganism perpetrated on that sedilia, Praxiteles, no one who has tried sitting on one for any length of time could possibly begrudge an aging Pro-Consul the back support. Some of them, as you know, are nowadays quite spineless.
Could there be hope for Killarney at last!!! Did you all see the article below in the Sunday Indo. today?
Magnificent artifacts to return to Gothic Cathedral
JEROME REILLY
MAGNIFICENT artefacts removed from Pugin’s Gothic masterpiece, St Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney could be re-installed, if a historian and antiques expert has his way.
The cathedral was finally completed in the Twenties following some 80 years of construction work.
But in the early Seventies, under the direction of Bishop Eamon Casey, the cathedral was remodelled to take account of changes in the liturgy demanded by Vatican II.
That included the removal of a dozen brass chandeliers and a number of magnificent brass candelabra which then fell into private ownership.
Those artefacts were recently purchased by local historian and antiques dealer Maurice O’Keeffe who was very much aware of their historic provenance.
“I have restored one of them and they are magnificent. I would be more than willing to let the church have them for exactly the same amount I paid for them so they could be re-installed,” he said.
The cathedral was designed by Augustus Welby Pugin and is renowned for its Gothic proportions.
Work commenced in 1842 but stopped between 1848 and 1853 because of the famine, when the building was used as a hospital.
The Californian Redwood tree in the grounds was planted after the famine in memory of the children buried underneath. Pugin died insane in Ramsgate in 1885.Well, just as civilization is sowing the first seeds of a serious “restoration” work in Killarney, the pall of Bishop Magee’s medieval darkness still hangs over Cobh cathedral. The Bishop of Kerry may not realize just how luck he is still to be able to locate the original fittings of Killarney cathedral. Have we come full circle?
For the purposes of contrast…… While much can be commented on, the floor is particularly noteworthy – especially after 35 years of wear and tear. The only remaining portion of the original floor is to be found in the Lady Chapel. Its destruction was staved off by the efforts of the redoubtable Beatrice Grovner who stood on her patronal rights as heiress to the Earls of Kenmare who are buried in the crypt underneath. The architect for the Killarney project was Dan Kennedy.
Perhaps Paul Clerkin might be able to provide a picture of St. Macartan’s before Joe Duffy was let loose on the building. I am told that a confessional in bee-hut form was subsequently introduced. While most would regard this as eccentric, not the good bishop who was eloquent about the early Irish penitentials and the monastic cells on Skellig Michael…… The architect in this case was Gerald MacCann, if memory serves me correctly.
O’Neill’s proposals for Cobh Cathedral look more and more like re-heated soup. -see attachment.
There is a very obvious lack of imagination in both clerical and architectural circles in Ireland.
😮 Just where do these clapped out prototypes come from?The sanctuary furnishings in the cathedral in Monaghan look like a bathroom set. Does the ambo have hot and cold taps? Will the new liturgical furnishings for the cathedral in Cobh be the same? There doesn’t seem to be any details given about these.
Two more views of the O’Neill’s foolishness courtesy of http://www.foscc.com :p
The photomontage could pass for Monaghan had the high altar there not been demolished. All that seem to have been done in this “adaptation” was to knock off the hard edges of Monaghan and supply soft curves and semicircles.
Will what happened to the cathedral in Monaghan be the fate of St. Colman’s?
The following is the ‘rationale’ from the official website of Clogher diocese for the iconoclastic ‘refurbishment’.
A radical rearrangement and refurbishing of the Cathedral was begun in 1982 to meet
the requirements of the revised Liturgy.The people of Monaghan were told a big lie… people of Cobh beware this lie is long past its tell by date!
The pic below is the architect’s view of the ‘refurbished’ sanctuary of St. Colman’s
A shocked collegue thought that the “remodelled” sanctuary in Monaghan looked for all the world like a childrens playground!!
52 / Praxiteles, I am still thinking about those Proconsuls. Did you know that it was the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla) who decreed in 80 B.C. that the Provinces were to be governed by ex-Consuls? It was a way of getting them out of Rome once they had outlived their usefulness. Apparently they were appointed for a maximum of five years – but of course few of them survived that long. It was never meant that they should! See http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proconsul
Re Jerome Reilly’s article reproduced in no. 65: it should be noted that A.W.N. Pugin died, at the age of 40, on 14 September 1852 as a result, not of insanity, but probably of the effects of mercury poisoning cf. Rosemary Hill, Augustus Welby Northmoe Pugin: A Biographical Sketch, in A.W.N. Pugin:Master of Gothic Revival,Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1995.
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