fgordon

Washington’s Cathedral of St. Matthew – a disarmingly modest structure in that city of giant edifices – was recently restored. This was a true restoration.

All credit to the Pastor and whoever else determined that the restoration should be precisely that: restoring the already quite attractive elements to their pristine condition. No destruction, no wild re-orderings, no parachuting in of discordant elements; in a word, no doctrinaire impositions. 🙂

It bodes well that the capital of the U.S. has shown the way forward for the rest of that nation. Perhaps those menaces who have masqueraded for all too long in that country as liturgical experts – and who have very expensively wrecked many fine churches – could find a place in one of the many museums in D.C.!! 😀

The image below is somewhat poor – perhaps a better one can be found. The link http://www.stmatthewscathedral.org does not have great images of the restored building, though it has an interesting gallery of the restoration work.

With reference to the discussion on altar rails, it is to be noted that St. Matthew’s has retained them.

If one thinks of that scene from “Planet of the Apes”: the time-travellers discover underground the remains of New York – and there in a transfigured shell of St Patrick’s the clinically dressed survivors worship a retro 1950s A-bomb. I think the new Detroit Cathedral is certainly based on that scene!!

Below, a perfect illustration of the sanctuary as stage approach – does somebody stand in the wings to prompt? Do they sell popcorn during the performance? Do the lights dip and dim for the soliloquies? Is there a balcony scene? Well, this is certainly NOT “worship as an objective fact”. I don’t know if it constitutes worship in any way, except the mutual adoration of priest and congregation one for the other. “Now we see in a glass darkly…”

One looks at this lovely image of sangallo (#605) and one hears the words of J.H. Newman re-echoing as both a guide and a warning:

“I never knew what worship was, as an objective fact, before I entered the Catholic Church.”

Luzarches has nicely brought the argument back to the central point – the deep void that represents the actual liturgical state of Catholicism.

We must remember that the “liturgical renewal” that followed the Council (but was strictly speaking only tangentially related to it) had been in preparation for many decades before: from elements of the youth movements of 1930s Germany to the rarefied and cliquish “scholarly” meetings in France and Italy in the 1950s. The destruction was planned, but its violence and extent surprised even the planners, I think.

Now that most of the worst vandalism has been done, we are left with a bleak landscape, and I lament the fact that, alas, I see little sign of liturgical revival among the younger clergy. In fact there is almost a complete ignorance of the Catholic conception of the liturgy. It has been exchanged for a Las Vegas conception of the liturgy. But even Las Vegas has much more pizzazz!

Just as the “liturgical movement” worked its revolution slowly over several decades, infecting certain scholarly circles [true scholars like Gamber resisted manfully] and especially seminary professors, and most disastrously, infiltrating the liturgical arm of the Roman Curia (let’s not start the whole Bugnini invective), in the same way, the movement of reforming the reform – to quote Benedict XVI – must begin slowly. The recent appointment to the chair of Liturgy in a certain national seminary in Ireland shows, alas, that it will be another generation before a Catholic liturgical scholar is again let loose on the seminarians there, but the slow process of reforming the reform must begin.

Benedict XVI can give important momentum to this movement, he can’t – and is too wise to try – overturn the past 80 years in a jiffy.

This is why we must be content with saving even some elements of old churches – if it only means leaving the high altar and reredos as a floating compromise. At least such elements will be ready for the restoration! :rolleyes:

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:

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.

Many thanks to Praxiteles for this veritable catalogue of McCarthy churches. 😉

It fell to a single generation to build virtually all the churches pictured here – during the unimaginatively named “devotional revolution” of the mid to late 19th century. After Catholic emancipation had made it legal and the growth of a Catholic middle class had made it possible, a whole slew of rather solid, sometimes rather fine, churches were planned and built, to make possible again regular worship in consecrated buildings.

By an unfortunate coincidence of timing and attrition, it also fell to one generation to “restore” and “repair” most of these fine churches. It is deeply regrettable that much of this major work of upkeep happened to become necessary in the years of confusion and iconoclasm that followed the second Vatican Council. The tragedy was not caused by the Council itself, of course, but by a deliberately erroneous and tendentious misrepresentation of the content of the documents of Vatican II by ideologue “experts” who sold their nonsense to a Catholic clergy and people accustomed to obey what came from Rome.

But of course, NONE of the so-called “requirement of the post Vatican II liturgy”, so often used to enforce the rigorously narrow vision of the apparatchiks of the liturgical establishment, came from Rome and certainly not from the Council. But this is a well known argument and it is beyond proof. Nonetheless, we are left with the wreckage.

St Saviours, Dublin is perhaps the proto-example of this whole tragic self-laceration – but more of that anon…delighted to see a pre-JCB image of this noble building in #486.

I see a little of the “Cork Abu” in Praxiteles’ insistence on the superiority of Cobh Cathedral. I had always heard that Limerick was the highest, followed by Maynooth. Who was it – O’Casey? – that wrote of Maynooth’s spire: “a dagger through the heart of Ireland”?

In any case, concerning the spires of Germany: I have passed Ulm by train (sadly, I hadn’t the chance to stop) and the spire is arresting. However, having stood and gazed long at the façade and spires of Köln, I have to say they seem higher and are certainly awful (in the true sense!). Some images…

Thanks Gianlorenzo for the juxtaposition of the Ringkirche and Ennis/Monaghan Cathedrals in posting #361. It is most illuminating and explains the rather bland and ugly sanctuary of Ennis. Not indeed that Ennis was any great thing before the hammer fell upon it. The altar, if I’m not mistaken, was not of marble, nor even of cane stone. And the Cathedral was never embellished with any particular beauty. Now however, it looks frightfully empty and the similarity to the Ringkirche explains a lot.

As for Monaghan; it, I am sure, was something, once upon a time. I hope Paul Clerkin can load some images of the sanctuary in its former glory – I think he said he had them in posting #311.

I must say, I think the transformation of St Augustine’s (Galway) into an antiphonal Chinese restaurant (Gianlorenzo again in posting #345) just plain silly. Clearly the architect and the cleric who approved it have no sense of the ridiculous. :p :p

Re. above comments of P. Clerkin on Monaghan Cathedral. I remember my first visit to that noble building – from outside it has a French look, I would have thought. Indeed, its external appearence greatly impressed me – not heavy, not brooding as some gothic buidlings can be. This structure has a lightness of composition.

On entering the building I was (as it has been) gutted. What a hatchet job! I can imagine the Lord Bishop of Clogher is touchy on the issue. He realises now that his only enduring legacy to the diocese is a tasteless attack on its central gem. And he must realise that any pretentions he had to a favourable commentary in the history books (he is himself an historian, I think) for his “imaginative and senitive adaption of the Cathedral to the demands of the post-conciliar Liturgy”, as the jargon goes, is in tatters on both counts. First, it ain’t imaginative and it certainly ain’t sensitive; and second, the whole “demands of the post-Conciliar Liturgy” line is utter bunkum – and demonstrably so, if one has ever read Sacrosanctum concilium and later documents. [Bishop Magee take note].

Now, one must say immediately – partly too in response to G. Hickey’s earlier observations – that a thing does not have to be gothic to be beautiful. Indeed the quality of some of the individual pieces in Monaghan Cathedral is evident to see. But the idea that these utterly incongruous elements, alien to the setting and in some cases to the economy of Christian worship, can simply be hurled into an already very carefully and beautifully elaborated unity of art and archetecture is folly. Not to mention the necessary destruction of the already present – and vastly more appropriate, vastly more beautiful – elements, the condescending contempt for the wishes of the people (who are paying for it all, by the way), the irresponsible squandering of a precious spiritual and cultural heritage etc. This is the power of a mania; and the reckless iconoclasm that convulsed Ireland in those years can only be regarded as a mania. Was it Chesterton who said a mania is irresistable when it holds force and inexplicable afterwards?

Now -PHOTOS, PHOTOS – let’s have them P. Clerkin! From that first moment I entered Monaghan Cathedral I have wanted to see images of it in its pristine condition. But “Sensitive Joe” seems to have purged every evidence of the former charms of the buidling he bullied into his own image and likeness. Get scanning at once!