reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

As a contrast to St Saviours in Dublin, here is St Catherine’s Dominican church in Newry, where a more minimalist approach to reordering took place (sorry about the poor quality photo). It looks similar too, albeit smaller than St Peter’s in Belfast.

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I meant to add, Fearg, that the sanctuary of St Catherine’s Dominican church in Newry is currently too cluttered with extraneous stuff, eg the pulpit and the ‘ironing-board’ altarette. Certainly it is a blessing that the high altar was not hauled away and desecrated. Nevertheless, the beauty of the sanctuary is compromised by the modified pulpit – which ought to go in its original place – and the ironing-board which could be removed altogether and sent C.O.D. to PJ’s central depot. [“We re-ordered our churches!” “Rawrk! Polly-want-a-cracker? Rawrk!”] Why do the ‘renovators’ always fancy that everything, including the kitchen sink, has to be piled into the sanctuary? High time to get rid of some of the ‘trash and trumpery’ cluttering up St Catherine’s and restore its pure lines. Is there anything wrong with allowing the architecture draw the visitor deeply and reverently into the mystery of Our Lord’s Eucharistic Presence?

As Anscar Chupungco or others among the inculturation fraticelli might, let me suggest that a cross-cultural perspective be taken to the wanton destruction of our churches. To this end I suggest a quick virtual tour of the neo-gothic gem of San Lorenzo’s parish, in Gijon, from Spain’s Asturian coast http://www.slorenzo.com/ . You get the full round by scrolling down and clicking on “visita virtual” on the bottom left. Not too bad at first, right, then get a good look at that Ascension sculpture. This church was more or less a total loss at the end of the Civil War (1939), and had to be almost completely re-constructed. The poverty at the time was heartbreaking, yet the parishoners gave more than they probably should have at a time when even staples like milk and eggs were frequently unavailable. Well, come 1966 (if memory serves) one Don Urbano (pious late grandfather) sees statues and pictorial representations of the via crucis being carried out of the Church, the flunkies striking attitudes only slightly less contemptuous than the anarchists that torched it. A few days later he meets the parish priest in the street, “Father what’s this all about? Those are OUR statues, I paid 50 pesetas toward these icons.” “Well” he warbles “I was on vacation during the renovation.” In Gijon it occurred during a dictatorship, what’s the excuse in St. Saviour’s case?

Poor thing, San Lorenzo’s still looks graceful, but imagine how it must have looked before the reorder-ers got their hands on it.

Another splendid photograph of a rather handsome cathedral. Love that spacious tabernacle set majestically atop the altar and flanked by the ‘big six.’ Now, Prax, don’t lay me low with another shock to the system. I am still only just recovering from the wound dealt me by that photo of Flannery’s gutting of St Saviour’s.

I just found a photo of Ray Carroll’s “Christ in Majesty” tapestry in Richard Hurley, Irish Church Architecture in the Era of Vatican II (Dublin: Richard Hurley and Dominican Publications, 2001), p. 110. In the photo, the bishop’s or diocese’s coat of arms is flanked by the ‘big six.’ The photo does not take dispaly the full arrangement of the sanctuary. I gather, then, that St Mel’s was razed in much the same way that St Saviour’s Dublin was wasted.

What madness possessed the clergy-in-charge to wreck a beautiful sanctuary like St Mel’s?

I dread to see the complete abomination perpetrated on that serene sanctuary.

Sorry to disappoint Rhabanus, but St. Mel’s is one of the worst disasters to have hit. It was done by the then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise and subsequently Cardinal Cathal B. Daly.

On the positive side, here we have a development in Farragut, Tennessee that is perhaps a step in the right direction and an indication of where architecture is going in more plugged in Catholic circles. There are, however, elements that I would have reservations about: a day chapel AND an adoration chapel. Why cannot both be comdined into one chapel to be used for daily Mass and thereafter for Adoration thus allowing one the practical ability of renewing the Sacred Species frequently and the theological ability of maintaining a link between the Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. Also, I do not believe that it is appropriate for toilets to be included in the body of a church. These should be located in a sacristy, outside the church, or else in a separate building linked to the main body of the church. Perhaps Rhabanus can tell us more of these domestic habits of the Americans?

http://www.hdb.com/projects/st_john_neumann.html

@Praxiteles wrote:

On the positive side, here we have a development in Farragut, Tennessee that is perhaps a step in the right direction and an indication of where architecture is going in more plugged in Catholic circles. There are, however, elements that I would have reservations about: a day chapel AND an adoration chapel. Why cannot both be comdined into one chapel to be used for daily Mass and thereafter for Adoration thus allowing one the practical ability of renewing the Sacred Species frequently and the theological ability of maintaining a link between the Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. Also, I do not believe that it is appropriate for toilets to be included in the body of a church. These should be located in a sacristy, outside the church, or else in a separate building linked to the main body of the church. Perhaps Rhabanus can tell us more of these domestic habits of the Americans?

http://www.hdb.com/projects/st_john_neumann.html

This firm likewise designed the beautiful Church of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston.

See the fair sanctuary here: http://www.walsingham-church.org/

Don’t forget about Thomas Gordon Smith Architects. This is the firm which is erecting the Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek, Oklahoma and building the Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Denton, Nebraska.

Beauty is not sacrificed for funtion with the firms mentioned above.

As for one chapel serving as both the venue for daily Mass and adoration afterwards, this is the case with many churches where perpetual adoration has been introduced. Nevertheless, I have seen places where both are operative. I agree with Praxiteles that both functions can be accommodated in the one chapel, and this has a good pedagogical effect regarding the Blessed Sacrament as the Fruit of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. [Catholics seem in almost constant need of having this teaching reinforced. Where has the ‘Catholic instinct’ gone?]

As for the installation of washroom facilities, the churches with which I am most familiar provide these off the narthex, either in a corridor leading to the rectory offices or meeting-rooms, or else on the north side of the narthex (a more appropriate direction for the placing of washrooms than the tabernacle). Washrooms in older churches are generally located in the sacristy or in the hall beneath the church. Many of the latter churches are now installing elevators in the narthex for the convenience of the disabled.

Tell me, now, Prax, are there ANY churches in Ireland that were spared the efforts of the liturgical demolition squads? It strikes me as odd that the faithful in Ireland did not rise up in fury to stop the vandals from accomplishing their fiendish work. How did the barbarians make such deep inroads?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Apart from one example that I will post, I will reply to this privately as I do not want to focus unwelcome attention on parishes whose obscurity has been a providential manner of holding on to their churches more or less intact.

Good thinking! Like the Magi, we shall keep Herod in the dark and return another way into our country.

I am heartened to learn that not every church succumbed to what JRR Tolkein, in The Lord of the Rings, calls ‘the scouring of the shire.’

It strikes me as odd, though, that prominent Catholics in Ireland did not raise a voice against the wave(s) of liturgical and artistic destruction. I think, for example, of author James Plunkett (1920-2003) – did he ever criticise or comment upon the devastation of beautiful (and historically significant) Irish churches?

Has no one had the courage to tell the Emperor that he’s wearing NO CLOTHES?

“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.” Precisely. End of story. If the documents of V2 say nothing of all this, then why was the path of vandalism pursued with such unremitting vigour? Why were precious statues and altars which were hewn and sculpted from Carara marble hauled away and in many cases destroyed, only to be replaced by cheap plywood junk of little or no artistic merit whatsoever?

I know of one family in a metropolitan diocese here in North America who came to their parish church one day and found the well-proportioned marble high altar lying smashed to smitherenes in a heap of rubble. That altar had been donated by their family in honour of their parents. They had not even been consulted about the removal of the altar much less about its destruction in the church itself. The church, originally built in the round, was dept-free at the time of the liturgical assault, but was put into the red by the radical renovations commenced by the new pastor, whose answer to the mounting protest of the parish was: “I prefer wood to marble.” This passes for an answer to the wholesale destruction of a church interior? When pressure increased, he admitted that he had received his ‘marching orders’ from the local chancery office. No documents, no writ from Rome, no instruction from the Congregation for Divine Worship or its equivalent at the time, no appeal tothe example of the saints or the Fathers of the Church. Just a simple, feckless excused tossed over an impudent shoulder: “I prefer wood to marble.” Then, the feeble exoneration bleated with tail between the legs: “the chancery made me do it.” Flip Wilson’s female counterpart Geraldine popularised the phrase: “The Devil mad me do it!” Indeed.

Consider, if you will, a conversation I had back in the 1980s with a female religious (we used to call them nuns once upon a time – and this one was a nun, not just a sister) who disparaged the artistic accomplishments of a revered member of her Order, whose works are now being rediscovered and enjoyed by a new generation of Catholics in some parts of North America [her work used to adorn countless Catholic himes across Canada and in many parts of the USA]. I detected hesitation in the nun’s voice when I asked for prints of some of the more famous pieces and asked why she did not approve. Note the answer I received: “Well it’s not really Vatican II art, is it?” I immediately asked her what this meant? “It’s too soft and gentle, and, I don’t want to say ‘too religious,’ but it is. It doesn’t fit in with Vatican II.” This response is revealing. In this nun’s mind, even if only subconsciously, the art that emerged since the Second Vatican Council was the antithesis of anything beautiful, gentle, and distinctly religious. How telling. And, wishing to demonstrate her loyalty to the Chruch and the hierarchy, she distanced herself from art that she recognised was soft, gentle, and religious in orientation.

Time to reclaim our Church, dearly beloved, and our Catholic art, and our Catholic devotions, and the Faith of our Fathers, and the apostolic Tradition, and the Depositum Fidei – in short, the whole Catholic religion! The ‘experts’ and the bureaucrats have been tinkering with it for far too long; and in some cases, now, it is utterly unrecognisable as Catholicism. This is, after all, Christ’s gift to us. This is HIS Church and this is HIS religion and we are here on HIS terms, not our own. So ‘Farewell!’ to the blandishments of the scribbling Pharisees who peddle their tawdry wares in tracts no longer suited to the times.

Let them find documents before they proceed to comment on them and operate under their alledged inspiration. The truth will out!

On a historical note re St. mel’s Cathedral, Longford, the following may be of interest: