reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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@Praxiteles wrote:
And here is an external view:
The Madeleine in Paris looks like the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, Rome or the Parthenon, Athens:
Clearly a larger budget and a freer hand than the situation that gave rise to St Mel’s.
Re posting 1560:
Here is a picture of the inmterior of James Gibbs’ interior of St. Martin in the Fields, London (1726-1729)
On the subjectof Longford Cathedral, does anyone know whether the present colour scheme, especially the stencilling on the ceiling, is original or not? I was surprised to find that St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin also had a similar stencilled decroation of its ceiling and architrave. In the case of the Pro-Cathedral this was extant at lesat until about 1900 but had disappeared by 1940.
@Rhabanus wrote:
Has anyone yet received or read Augustus Welby Pugin, Designer of the British Houses of Parliament: The Victorian Quest for a Liturgical Architecture (Hardcover) by Christabel Powell? It was due to be published in June 2006. Has anyone’s copy arrived? I thought I read a review in The Literary Review a few months ago, but perhaps I am mistaken. Of course, the reviewers receive advance copies that are still at the galley stage.
Any news of the book?
Christabel Powell’s Augustus Welby Pugin Designer of the British Houses of Parliament: The Victorian Quest for a Liturgical Architecture (Lewiston and Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006) arrived by yesterday’s post. Brava, Christabel!
In his foreward to the book, Dr Sheridan Gilley congratulates the author on underscoring Pugin’s liturgical imagination. Indeed she does a praiseworthy job of presenting Pugin as “a liturgist who had a liturgical vision” (p. 2). I see from another, related thread on Archiseek.com dedicated to the work of architect Brother Michael Augustine O’Riordan, that his work, like Pugin’s is being radically marred and in some cases utterly destroyed by an outbreak of postmodern philistinism parading under the deceitful banner of “implementing Vatican II” while outraging the sensibilities of worshiping believers and other lovers of art alike. Do those undertaking the daunting task of reconfiguring the work of these brilliant architects and their respective schools possess any liturgical credentials? What have they written on Gothic or Neo-Gothic, or Classical or Neo-Classical architecture? How conversant are they in any of these idioms? “By their fruits ye shall know them!” Just scroll up and down the respective threads and behold their works and pomps!
To surrender the oeuvre of a genius like AWN Pugin or J.J. McCarthy or any of their school to the clutches of our contemporary hacks only too eager to dismantle a rood screen or sweep away a reredos of transcendent beauty [or tinker with tucking a tabernacle into a south corner or a north wall] is to advance vandalism under the law. This destruction of excellence in architecture is the language of violence. Peruse the photos of St Patrick’s, Armagh in 1880, 1904, 1990 and in the final ‘renovation.’ Consider St Peter’s, Belfast, or St Mel’s, Longford, or St MacKartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan – all shown earlier on this thread. As the hymn goes, “Change and decay in all around I see! [O Thou Who changest not, abide with me!]”
Time for Irish Catholics and those conserned with the preservation of liturgical art to do their bit and reclaim their heritage. Just as the Folly Tower was razed during WWII and rebuilt in a later generation, so too can these magnificent cathedrals and great churches be restored to their pristine grandeur by real liturgists and real artists and real architects who know their respective disciplines thoroughly and who behave responsibly in maintaining the reverent atmosphere, dignity, and spiritual profundity of these houses of liturgical and personal worship.
Be sure to get your copy of Augustus Welby Pugin, Designer of the British Houses of Parliament: The Victorian Quest for a Liturgical Architecture by Christabel Powell and have your library (if such is still permitted by the ruling barbarians to exist in your local or religious community).
Happy reading, fellow anawim! Non praevalebunt!!
Here is a picture of the Pro-Cathedral sanctuary from c. 1895 with the contemporary decorative scheme of the apse and ceiling.
Note the beauty of Peter Turnerelli’s High Altar which was viciously demolished and atomized by the wreck practised on this building by Professor Cathal O’Neill. Not even the tabernacle survived: it is now crowned by the disproportionate cupula on which the cross rests.
The High Altar is raised on a predella of 5 steps. The throne (of Archbishop William Walsh) on three.
The first part of the inscription on the left refers to the ascension account and Christ’s promise to remain with us for all time. The central inscription quotes the account of the crucifixioin in which Christ commends Our Lady to St. John.
Immediately below the stucco of the ascension are the medallions of the four evangelists.
A choir of angels is psinted on the metopes.
@Praxiteles wrote:
And do not forget Richard Hurley’s daft “untervention” in the Augustinian church in Galway!
This link will give an virtual tour of the horror that has been created.
http://www.augustinians.ie/galway/picture_gallery/newvirtual.htmThis is a virtual visit of the church before the Hurley wreckovation:
http://www.augustinians.ie/galway/picture_gallery/virtual.htmBelow will give you view of the church post 1924.
Looking at the 1924 picture it would seem that many features of the church were removed sometime prior to the recent works. There appears to be mosaic work on the arches and several other features which were not in the church before the latest works began. Can anyone enlighten me as to when (and why) these were removed.
BTW the altar rails were not removed but were shifted to the front of the church and are now just inside the entrance.
The Augustinian church, Galway:
@Seanselon wrote:
BTW the altar rails were not removed but were shifted to the front of the church and are now just inside the entrance.
This is another example of the nonsense about altar rails which displays a complete lack of understanding as to their origin and purpose: that of demarking the samnctuary from the nave. Placing them at the entrance of the church suggests that the entire church is a sanctuary -which is a non -Cathoic idea- and as absurd as Brian QUinn’s placing the altar rail of St Mary’s church, Newry, Co. Down, aganst the back wall of the chancel to convey the idea that the sanctuary has leaped into the nave. Both Hurley’s and Quinn’s ideas are radically anti-hierarchial and at variance with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.
@Seanselon wrote:
BTW the altar rails were not removed but were shifted to the front of the church and are now just inside the entrance.
BTW can some one tell me the difference between removing something from its original position and shifting it?
The improvised chapel, Concentration Camp Dachau, in Block 26, 1941/1942:
I quote a descripition from a surviving inmate: “Die Kapelle bot ein Bild der Armseligkeit: ein Altar aus Kistenbrettern; ein Kelch aus einem Blechnapf, ein Tabernakel aus Konservendosen”.
Those in the picture marked with red “X”s on their backs are priests.
Before a picture such as this, the shallow guff of the likes of P. Jones, R. Hurley and B. Quinn about “community participation” in the liturgy is clearly exposed in all its glaring fraudelence and reduced to silence.
@descamps wrote:
BTW can some one tell me the difference between removing something from its original position and shifting it?
The original quotation distinguished “shifting” from “removing.” Removal means taking something away, i.e. out of the building. Whether it was used in another, external context is beside the point. The point here is that is was taken away out of the church, or discarded. [Praxiteles hinted, for example, that the main altar in St Mel’s was removed, but, as a concession to a pressure group in the parish, is kept, unused, in the basement of the church. This is a case not of shifting, but of removing the altar.
Shifting a piece of furniture means taking it from its original place in the same church and placing it elsewhere within the same church perhaps even integrating it into a different part of the sanctuary or church. In many ‘renovations’, magnificent pulpits with beautiful testers or sounding boards were dismantled and reassembled in severely truncated form. Frequently they were shifted In these altered states from the nave, where they had been close to the ‘the people’, to the sanctuary, often quite unimaginatively plunked down on one side of the altar as though in symmetry with either the presidential chair or the tabernacle. Clutter, clutter,clutter. Pile everything up higglety-pigglety in the sanctuary, and litter it with hymnals, missalettes, and bulletins, and musical intruments, then complain about “confusion of roles.” DUH!
Communion rails that were not utterly destroyed or hauled away to the basement or given to the local pub as a novelty item sometimes were reworked into ambones or even altars. A rip-roaring renovator of a pastor in a southern Ontario parish once claimed that it would be “too labour-intensive” to make an altar out of the communion rail, so, amidst much vocal opposition of the parishioners who had donated the marble rail in honour of one of his most distinguished predecessors, Fr Rip’n’Snort tore out the beautiful marble communion rail and sold the rungs to a LAMP MANUFACTURER in the big city for $100.00 a pop. What a hero and man of the people!
Shall we make any further distinctions, descamps?
Praxiteles wrote:The improvised chapel, Concentration Camp Dachau, in Block 26, 1941/1942:I quote a descripition from a surviving inmate: “Die Kapelle bot ein Bild der Armseligkeit: ein Altar aus Kistenbrettern]
Prax,
i have taken part in many fora in the last few years but this post is an all time low. I can only trust that it is a temporary aberration and that future posts will from you will return to a more scholarly level. Very sad.
BQ
Brain!
I am afraid that I am not following the point and regard my previous comment as quite reasonable.
No right minded person will deny that those captured in the picture in Block 26 of Dachau – most of whom were facing extermination and were exterminated for no reason whatsoever – are participating actively, consciously and fully in the celebration of the Mass and are able to do it in the most extraordinary of circumstances which still managed to maintain the most rudimentary hierarchical distinction between sanctuary and nave.
The picture posted in # 1569 is a testimony and icon of TRUTH against which the quack theories of charlatain “liturgists”, and of all other comers, are to be tested for authenticity, sincerity (sine cera), and probity (probatus). Those found wanting in the test should hang their heads in shame!
The guff stops here!
Also, it should be noted that those standing up with the red “X”s on their backs are priests trying to say Mass.
@Fearg wrote:
And a similar hypothetical question for Brian Quinn – if the 1904 sanctuary had still been intact in 2002, how would you have proceeded? (Assuming the client gave you complete freedom!).
Thanks,
Fearg.Brian,
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this one.. (its in relation to Armagh Cathedral)Thanks!!
Fearg.@Fearg wrote:
Brian,
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this one.. (its in relation to Armagh Cathedral)Thanks!!
Fearg.Well…….have we any comments?
I would be interested in getting people’s read on what is being done with Sacred Heart Church in Peoria – http://sacredheartpeoria.com/index.html – personally, I think that the result is quite beautiful, but I have some reservations! If the link doesn’t work, copy and paste it into your browser. Gallery 1 is before, the others are during and after.
@jmrowland wrote:
I would be interested in getting people’s read on what is being done with Sacred Heart Church in Peoria – http://sacredheartpeoria.com/index.html – personally, I think that the result is quite beautiful, but I have some reservations! If the link doesn’t work, copy and paste it into your browser. Gallery 1 is before, the others are during and after.
Thanks, JM, for exposing readers of this thread to the hope-filled proceedings at Sacred Heart in Peoria. Writing in Houston, you undoubtedly know the magnificent church of Our Lady of Walsingham -used by Catholics of the Rome-approved Anglican Use of the Roman Rite.
By the way, the current bishop of Peoria, a priest of Holy Cross, is the man responsible for the splendid restoration of The Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of The University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
Let Brian Quinn and his groupies take note that beautiful churches can be designed and built and in fact ARE being designed and built. Peoria is in full communion with the Apostolic See and is known as an observant and indeed zealous diocese. No shortage of vocations and clearly no shortge of funds to build worthy edifices for divine worship.
Compare Sacred Heart, Peoria with St John the Baptist, Drumaroad or Our Lady of Wayside or any of the other postmodern expressions of unbridled philistinism and ill-considered pastiche under review on this thread. “The proof is in the pudding!”
Ireland is MUCH BEHIND THE TIMES in chasing after the masters of neo-brutalism and iconoclasm.
Just as in the nineteenth century AWN Pugin (and later his son Edward) exercised a most beneficial influence on liturgical life in reland (chiefly through the erection and ornamentation of exquisitely beautiful churches and cathedrals, so Ireland may benefit from the new movements in architecture and art abroad in designing beautiful churches fit for divine worship. The local boys seem stuck in passe pastiche.
Visit Duncan Stroik’s website or that of Thomas Gordon Smith Architects to see the renaissance in church design and building in North America.
@Rhabanus wrote:
Let Brian Quinn and his groupies take note that beautiful churches can be designed and built and in fact ARE being designed and built.
Ireland is MUCH BEHIND THE TIMES in chasing after the masters of neo-brutalism and iconoclasm.
The local boys seem stuck in passe pastiche.
Well Rhabanus, the evidene certainly tends in your direction. Rather remarkably, the whole cultural expertise or baggage assembled by Irish architectural firms involved in building churches seems to have been almost totally lost and regaining it is not going to be an easy task. Unfortunately, drawing on the passé elements entrenched in the American scene (e.g. The Theological Union in Chicago) is only going to compound matters rather than help them.
@brianq wrote:
Prax,
i have taken part in many fora in the last few years but this post is an all time low. I can only trust that it is a temporary aberration and that future posts will from you will return to a more scholarly level. Very sad.
BQ
Enlighten our darkness, omniscient bq, and give us thy light! Open our minds to the mysteries concealed in St John the Baptist Church, Drumaroad, and the hidden secrets of Our Lady of the Wayside. Dazzle us worthless mortals with thy lofty insights! Despise not our nothingness, but in thine ineffable humility teach us thy wisdom, that we too may comprehend thine architectural idiom and be refreshed by that blessed communion with the fruit of pure genius which is the manifest lot of the holy prelates who have patronised thee.
So, Brian, explain, using explicit (or even oblique) references to St Augustine of Hippo, Amalarius of Metz, Suger of St-Denis, Guillaume Durand, Sicard of Cremona, St Charles Borromeo, or any other liturgists who have contributed to the venerable tradition of sacred architecture over the course of the centuries, how YOUR architectural oeuvre reflects their influence and the wisdom of the ages.
We are eager for you to raise the academic level of this (four-star) conversation/thread by your own brilliant insights into the idiom which best exemplifies your own works and pomps. Which, for example, is your chef d’oeuvre? Which your proudest boast? I await with bated breath the essay which will unfold for us and for future generations your architectural philosophy and the theological perspective that informs your work.
The ball is in your court! This is YOUR moment …..
Praxiteles wrote:Well Rhabanus, the evidene certainly tends in your direction. Rather remarkably, the whole cultural expertise or baggage assembled by Irish architectural firms involved in building churches seems to have been almost totally lost and regaining it is not going to be an easy task. Unfortunately, drawing on the passé]Praxiteles,
I am not recommending “the American scene” or American architects en bloc. I merely suggest that Irish bishops, when their heads stop spinning and they begin paying attention to their primary vocation, are going to have to call on leaders in the field of liturgy and architecture.My earlier remarks about AWN Pugin as a real liturgist as well as a brilliant architect implied that such genius is lacking in Ireland, hence the need to look for expertise from abroad.
There are always tares among the wheat, but when a promising field of wheat begins to manifest itself, it may be worth transplanting some of the best samples. I mention Stroik and Smith, who have completed some excellent houses of worship (churches, monasteries, seminary) and who are being given some impressive commissions.
Consider their work, then have a second look at what your local geniuses have on offer.
Caveat patronus!
@jmrowland wrote:
I would be interested in getting people’s read on what is being done with Sacred Heart Church in Peoria – http://sacredheartpeoria.com/index.html – personally, I think that the result is quite beautiful, but I have some reservations! If the link doesn’t work, copy and paste it into your browser. Gallery 1 is before, the others are during and after.
Superb job..
By means of comparision – here is a recently renovated Church of the Sacred Heart in Co Donegal, Ireland:
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