reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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@Rhabanus wrote:
It’s a dead ringer for the other one in the Praxiteles’ photo. Note the finials at each end of the vertical and horizontal arms.
I do in fact have access to some recent books on Irish churches and cathedrals, so will do some more routling about in search of the mysterious rood.
The crucifix was designed by the architect responsible for the renovation and was made in Madrid (by the same people who made the Tabernacle).
In Madrid!! I wonder if it were made by the company I am thinking of. If so, then we are in for a little embarrassment all round!!
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
That church you thought was Monaghan, is actually in Hamilton, Ontario
http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=306Well, that resolves that problem.
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
That church you thought was Monaghan, is actually in Hamilton, Ontario
http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=306THANK YOU, Paul, for enlightening our darkness! The article which you kindly attached is most interesting. I must obtain a list of the 40 churches that Joseph Connolly designed for Ontario. If you know where such a list is, I should be glad to get it.
Lovers of churches will be delighted to know that Joseph Connolly’s exquisitely beautiful Church of Our Lady in Guelph, Ontario, was spared the attentions of The Rev. Richard Vosco (priest of the Diocese of Albany, New York who ‘renovates’ churches) owing to the unfailing common sense and indomitable fortitude of the Catholic faithful in the Diocese of Hamilton. The anawim of Guelph rose up mightily to quash the vaunted proposal to wreak “you-know-what” on that gem of Neo-Gothic architecture: The Church of Our Lady.
Read all about the salvation of that lovely church in this article: http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1999/aug1999p9_317.html
Paul Likoudis, in his scintillating article “How a Canadian church was saved from destruction,” writes:
‘Father Richard Vosko, a priest of the American diocese of Albany (New York State), who had proposed the radical plan to remove the church’s marble communion rail, confessionals, high altar and rearrange the pews, was still paid $60,000 for his plan to wreck the church’s interior]Let the Church of Our Lady, Guelph, be a lesson and a guiding star to all the faithful of Cobh. Do not yield to the demagoguery and the truncated syllogisms of the ‘liturgical’ vandals. If they dare to violate the sacred interiors of Gothic churches, there is no limit to their depravity. Pay no attention to their seductive siren-songs about “re-ordering our churches” [cf. Paddy Jones, “The Liturgy Page,” Intercom, October 2006)]. Look to the Star – Look to Mary! Take heart! This madness of wrecovating St Colman’s, too, shall pass. Just don’t give up the ship.
P.S. Paul, I saw an advert for your book on the names of Dublin Streets and intend to order one. Have you published anything on the churches of Joseph Connolly?
Oh I have a list of books to write, but unless someone actually pays me to do it, I won’t 🙂
That said, I am planning a first imprint by Archiseek.com
Paul,
Looking at the floorplan, would I be correct in saying that Monaghan looked very much like St Saviours in Dublin once did?http://www.saintsavioursdublin.ie/churchpictures_large/centralsanctuaryview.jpg
@Rhabanus wrote:
The retro-fitted vents in the sanctuary on either side of the throne-like chair do nothing to enhance the ensemble. Che tackezza!
Where is the tabernacle located, anyway? I know that it’s perched parlously on that ridiculous plinth, but where? In some side chapel? The north transept? The south transept? Where is it hiding?
As the Magdalene once famously complained, “They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put Him!”
Peek-a-boo! I am sure that He sees us, but where are we to see Him?
Peek-a-boo!
“L’oeil etait dans le tombe – et Il regardait Cain!”
Peek-a-boo!
Thanks to the investigative skills of Fearg, it has been determined that the peek-a-boo tabernacle is located in a northern chapel. In a Gothic shuch this constitutes a solecism at the very least, a gaucherie at least, and perhaps even a blasphemy, if not an outright sacrilege. Follow, for but a moment, the internal logic of a Gothic church, with its liturgical directions firmly in place. The East, whence riseth the morning sun, affords a natural icon of the Risen Christ who is the Sun of Justice. The East conjures up in the Catholic imagination the garden of Eden, Paradise (St Cyril of Jerusalem) and the place from whence shall come the Lord of all who will judge the quick and the dead. (Byzantine and Romaneque churches would depict Christ the Pantocrator in an apsidal fresco or mosaic – for He is Lord of All and will return on the Eighth Day.
Again, in the early Church [St Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Lecture I, St Ambrose of Milan, De Sacramentis], by contrast, the west, as source of darness (the setting sun) was the point most assocoated with the devil. Hence the candidates for baptism would turn westward, the direction ftowards which they would pronounce the apotaxis (renunciation of the devil, his works, and all his pomps)
But in the Gothic churches built in the Middle Ages, it was the north end/transept/side which was regarded as the least favoured place. It was in this direction, toward the north, that the Gospel was proclaimed: in the teeth of the devil. All that was bad and threatening seemed to come from the north (Norsemen, other invaders, ill winds etc.) In Gothic churches, consequently, the north door or transept was the place to display figures of the Old Testament, rather than the New. An exception is the cathedral of Chartres, where St Anne is portrayed in the north transept. This was because Chartres cathedral housed some of her relics (her head). Of course, St Anne would have been somewhat of an Old Testament or at least an Intertestamental figure, hence the north trnsept would not have been an utterly incongruous for her in the iconographic programme of that cathedral, especially since Our Lady would have taken precedence in the cathedral whoch took its name from her.
In the language of Gothic architecture, positioning a tabernacle in the north end of a Gothic building is so utterly tasteless and foolish an act that I daresay it may well constitute an insult to the Blessed Sacrament. Clearly the notion of a squint in the very door of the tabernacle is perhaps the single most egregious gaff of that particular arrangement. Nevertheless, the positioning of a tabernacle on the north side of a Gothic church would never have been perpetrated by serious architects like Pugin, MacCarthy, Ashlin, and Connolly, who were thoroughly conversant with the grammar of Gothic architecture and whose personal dedication to their holy religion would have kept them aloof from such pernicious folly.
I would be most interested to know which ‘liturgical expert’ advised the local bishop to permit the placement of a tabernacle in the north wall of a Gothic church. And people accuse our forebears living in the Dark Ages of quackery!
A final thought for all those dedicated to the Gothic ideal, to the dignity of the sacred Liturgy, to the honour of Holy Mother Church, to the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God, and to the glory of Almighty God:
“Whereas a Doric temple was built by men who had found an escape from the burden of life in a balance between the attainable and the unattainable, a Gothic cathedral was built by rebels who refused to acknowledge the limits of experience set by mundane things.”
Ernest H. Short, The House of God: A History of Religious Architecture and Symbolism (New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 194.Rhabanus wrote:Thanks to the investigative skills of Fearg, it has been determined that the peek-a-boo tabernacle is located in a northern chapel. In a Gothic shuch this constitutes a solecism at the very least, a gaucherie at least, and perhaps even a blasphemy, if not an outright sacrilege. Follow, for but a moment, the internal logic of a Gothic church, with its liturgical directions firmly in place. The East, whence riseth the morning sun, affords a natural icon of the Risen Christ who is the Sun of Justice. The East conjures up in the Catholic imagination the garden of Eden, Paradise (St Cyril of Jerusalem) and the place from whence shall come the Lord of all who will judge the quick and the dead. (Byzantine and Romaneque churches would depict Christ the Pantocrator in an apsidal fresco or mosaic – for He is Lord of All and will return on the Eighth Day.Just so. This sacramental awareness of our and the liturgy’s orientation in the worship space was an organic inheritance, appropriated by each new generation that was born into a world in which the sun rose in the east. I am put in mind of the magnificent Gothic Cathedral of Toledo which itself underwent serious renovation in the course of the 18th century. Narciso Tome’s late Baroque (Churrigueresque) “Transparente” skylight violently disrupts the symmetry of the Gothic ambulatory with a gaggle of puti that seem to float unsupported, dancing in the un-stained sunlight. It was considered a monstrosity at the time but today it just about “works.” Why? Because this partial demolition of the ambulatory sought to meet Christ’s presence “in situ,” in the tabernacle toward which the longitudinal nave marches. It was an alteration that sought (even if some feel misguigedly) to serve the cultic functions of the church, rather than to reform them. The Archibishop Don Rodrigo from the 13th century and Narciso Tome in the 18th were both agreed that the faithful come to the heavenly Jerusalem only through the presence of Christ, bathed in the rising sun of the east. The latter only sought to light our way.
@Fearg wrote:
Paul,
Looking at the floorplan, would I be correct in saying that Monaghan looked very much like St Saviours in Dublin once did?http://www.saintsavioursdublin.ie/churchpictures_large/centralsanctuaryview.jpg
In old photos I have seen from the 50s yes, but on a much bigger scale – in my childhood no, changes had already been made
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
They did something similar at Monaghan and ruined it. And the bishop is still a little sensitive about criticism.5 or 6 years back I said something negative here, and the next thing I get a letter from a dioscesan flunkey asked me to desist.
Diocesan flunkey or no diocesan flunkey, they cannot suppress the truth. The word has long been out. The very stones themselves will cry out!
I draw your kind attention, gentle readers, to a comment on St MacKartan’s Catholic Cathedral, Monaghan in Jeremy Williams, A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland[/I], 1837-1921 (Blackrock, Eire and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1994): “Elaborate Telford organ remains in its intact western gallery. Not so the furnishings at the eastern end. Hague’s altar, baldachino, unconventional throne and pulpit have been replaced by fittings devised by Michael Biggs to conform with liturgical trends of the 1960s following a formula already deployed in Longford Cathedral. But what has been successful in a neo-Classical setting here dispels all sense of the celestial.”
Kudos to Fearg on inaugurating a new thread dedicated to organs, cabinets, and lofts – which survived with far more dignity and respect than the glorious sanctuaries of yesteryear.
Please tell me, Fearg and Paul, that St Saviour’s was spared the ravages of Paddy Jones’ euphemistic boast “We re-ordered our churches!” PLEASE tell me that St Saviour’s survived intact. That spectacular photo in sharp black and white shows off the celestial glory of that pearl of a church. “Tell me, kind Spirit, did Tiny Tim survive? Are these the shadows of things that must be or things that only might be?”
Dare we see a photo of St Saviour’s today? “I see an empty stool beside the hearth, and a little crutch without an owner ….”
Here we are Rhabanus!
The present interior of St. Saviour’s, Dominick St., Dublin. It is the fruit of the labours of one Austin Flannery, OP.
@Praxiteles wrote:
Here we are Rhabanus!
The present interior of St. Saviour’s, Dominick St., Dublin. It is the fruit of the labours of one Austin Flannery, OP.
A more than shocking indication of how he translated the Vatican II documents, isn’t it?
How gruesome.
A. Flannery made a complete mess of the translation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At best, they are patchy and depend largely on who did the translating work. They are worse than useless for any sort of serious work because you cannot rely on the text of the translation and have to check every single reference and, more often than not, you end up having to translate the relevant Latin yourself.
@Praxiteles wrote:
A. Flannery made a complete mess of the translation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At best, they are patchy and depend largely on who did the translating work. They are worse than useless for any sort of serious work because you cannot rely on the text of the translation and have to check every single reference and, more often than not, you end up having to translate the relevant Latin yourself.
Absolutely, Praxiteles. It is now standard practice in academic circles and in scholarly journals to insist on using Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (2 vols), edited by Norman P. Tanner, S.J., original text established by G. Alberigo, J.A. Dossetti, P.-P. Joannou, C. Leonardi, and P. Prodi, in consultation with H. Jedin (London: Sheed and Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). The work presents the conciliar texts from Nicea to Vatican II with the Greek and/or Latin text on one page and English on the other, If you dispute the translator’s efforts, you can see right away what the original text says.
Flannery makes a good door stop or, by times, a useful weapon to settle the cat when he’s harassing the budgey.
I see from the devastation wrought in St Saviour’s that Flannery used the same documents that Paddy Jones did to justify the wreckovation (completed and still intended) of Irish churches: “When you read the Liturgy Constitution you will not find any reference to moving altars, having an ambo, removing altar rails, providing a presider’s chair. But …” So … no document justifies the sackage? Are we dealing, then, with Gnostics who have some internal illumination that the rest of us lack?
Riddle me that one, Praziteles!! And I remember when Catholicism used to be an organised religion!
Someone was asking about construction photographs of St. Colman’s Cathedral. Here is a few to hand.
The first comes from an album of photographs of Ireland published by a Canadian (Finnerty, I think) in Chicago in 1898 and probably dates from ante 1894 (the palace, on the left, did not have the second wing added to it which was done by Robert Browne who bcame bishop in 1894)
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