johnglas
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Rhabanus: Prolix but unconvincing; perhaps I misread you, but you are not advocating caesaropapalism are you? Henry VIII (difficult I warrant you) – the best example in Engand of the consequences of megalomaniaa and despotism (and caesaropapalism?); Edward VI – the grammar schools and the English liturgy (can anyone surpass choral evensong?); Elizabeth I – Shakespeare among others (although he was a recusant). I am neither middle-class nor especially a tea-drinker (a good glass of Montepulciano any day) and I will admit that clerical sex abuse was a low blow (!), but a purple cloud of ultramontane delusion really gets us nowhere.
In this democracy (metaphorical but real none the less), opinion is sacred and I will defend mine absolutely (until a better argument comes along). Like many people, I grew uo with a statuette of the DIP in my pious auntie’s house; for me it was always an object of sentiment and nostalgia. I even made a point of going to the church of OL Victorious in ul. Karmelitska
(a filched Lutheran church apparently), but the reality turned me off completely. On the domestic level, such sentimental piety is just about acceptable, but as a public manifestation of religion it is deficient (to say no more). Incidentally, I never linked abuse to the dressing of statuary; it was intended as a riposte to the overwearing of Roman Purple spectacles.
This is an architecture blog; let’s declare a truce and get back to what you all do so well.Rhabanus: I’ll defer to Prax, but not to you. The DIP is a doll dressed up and you seem to be obsessed by an ultramontane delusion. How many of these dour northerners have a culture of clerical sexual abuse? (Sorry about that, but it has to be said.)
I do not accept many so-called liturgical reforms, I deplore the stripping of the altars and the banalisation and vandalism of churches. I will not accept dubious practices dressed up (sic) as true religion. A bit of pomp occasionally, yes. But no to the rest and most of it is tacky.Prax: As usual you chasten me – I am aware of the various ‘levels’ of cultus – ingenious… At base, I still have grave(n) reservations. San Pietro may do it tastefully and I agree we have become uneasy with pomp, but that is the tenor of the times and fashions come and go. Can you image pomp in the hands of some of the current incumbents and liturgists? I shudder.
Far be it from me to disagree with either of your venerable selves, but I don’t care how long it’s been done for or the ostensible reason for doing it. Using statues in any way as cult objects, or appearing to use them as cult objects, is treading on very dangerous ground. Statues as a ‘focus for devotion’, just about acceptable; statues as an integral part of the decorative scheme of a church, no problem; statues randomly dotted about the church pandering to ‘popular piety’, whom do you include/exclude or should it be done at all? Dressing statues up is tacky by the standards of propriety and common good taste. A sculpture stands or falls on its artistic merit. Does dressing a statue up add one scintilla to its religious significance? Some things are best consigned to the bin (or put the vestments on a mannequin in a museum if you must). Luther wasn’t all wrong.
Prax; Your dedication to his as usual can merit only admiration. As a planner I’m bemused by the attitude of the council, although I do remember an old colleague of mine advising that ‘you never argue with the church’ (in this case the C of S), or words to that effect. But there seems little excuse for that here – it looks like a perfectly decent vernacular church which deserves conservation, i.e. neither preservation (as in aspic) nor wreckovation. Any pics of the interior?
CologneMike: ‘The glass is always half-full.’ It was irony – being translated: don’t always look on the dark side of life.
Hutton; Who are the architects responsible for this miscegenation? I think we should know.
You’re never wrong to dream – but I think the BB’s a bit too far away and out of context. Why not locate it at one of the very generous road intersections in this area? It could be read as a modern urban folly – why should the aristos have all the whimsy?
Seriously, whatever is done it needs treated with respect as part of the area’s patrimony (is that gendered language?) – at the developer’s expense of course.CologneMike: As a non-resident, I’m loathe to intervene, but you cannot preserve parks as an ‘oasis’ if by that you mean used by you and three other people and the usual raft of ‘undesirables’ who have made many parks no-go areas. Urban parks are not natural! They are intended to be used by the general public. What better than contemplating the park when rushing for the train and even lingering of a summer’s evening or a winter’s day, or if you’re too early/late for the train. It could even have a cafe (shock, horror!) and encourage people to use it as a rendezvous. The glass is always half-full.
Prax: That display of magnificence is almost too much; it is a wonderful historical accident that San Clemente is in the charge of the Irish Dominicans – I think it was Prior Mullooly (?) who led the amazing excavations in the lower church. (If anyone has never seen SanC get there next trip!) For all its splendour (and it is splendid) San Marco does need a good restoration to get the full effect of the mosaics.
Am I right in thinkinking that ‘they’ got rid of a baldacchino in St Peter’s Belfast in its recent restoration? I wonder what happened to it and why it could not have been re-erected over the new altar.Maskhadov: You’re just a vandal – ‘clear the front facade’! The design to incorporate it in a glazed box just illustrates the timidity and lack of imagination of ‘modernist’ architecture. Are contemporary architects afraid of voids and solids? Have they no sense of proportion? Are they illiterate in the classical language of architecture? Are they just bad architects? Is this decade just a repeat of the deadly 60s and 70s?
I’m very interested in the fate of this little remnant on SMcDSt. It was designed by Duncan C Ferguson in 1845/6 and
‘ closed within several decades of completion’ (Pevsner Architectural Guides – Dublin; Yale UP 2005, p.137), being then used as a grainstore. The Presbyterian use of the Doric order probably refers back to their Scottish origins – bluff northern types, not like the effete (Ionic) southerners. (‘Doric’ is used as another name for the Scots (Lowland) language.)
It deserves a much better fate and should be used as a frontispiece or centrepiece for something, preferably in situ or as close to it as possible.‘…not excluding on an old altar no longer used for celebration (cf. above, no. 303)’. So much for the liturgical ‘unsuitability’ of having two altars which invariably means vandalising the ‘old’ altar in preference for a flimsy wooden structure or a misshapen lump of rock..
Prax: A fascinating and erudite defence of the concept of the Real Presence and – more to the architectural point – of the existence of the tabernacle. But – where do you put it and what should it look like? By the late 19th century the convention had developed in almost all churches of having the tabernacle (of which only the door was ever seen, and that only when the veil was drawn back) as an integral part of the reredos or retable of the main altar – although there were sometimes tabernacles in the ‘side’ altars (or at least one of them – the ‘altar of repose’). The contemporary trend for free-standing tabernacles has led to an unfortunate ‘dumbing down’ of the whole concept of Reservation. Tabernacles are often crude objects on even cruder pedestals and any sense of mystery has been lost (or diminished).
I have never been a fan of ‘exposition’ and its growing popularity is very unfortunate. In medieval Scotland, the sacrament was reserved in a ‘Sacrament-house’, a kind of cupboard recessed into the wall, surrounded by a richly-decorated architrave drawing attention to the numinous nature of its contents. Something like this would be preferable to the current style and practice. I like the idea of a special Sacrament Chapel, distinct from the main or principal altar, but this is suitable only in larger churches or where an appropriate chapel already exists. I do not advocate destroying original altars to achieve this!
A not unsympathetic visitor to a Catholic church recently compared a modern tabernacle to a birdcage! There was no malice intended, but it perhaps suggests that we need a contemporary architectural expression that is worthy of what it is intended to contain.a boyle: Your mania for privatisation is OK as far as it goes if you’re talking about the market, but when you get to healthcare and education (‘create funds who can’t pay for themselves’) you are simply downright dangerous; this is an architecture blog – leave the political cant at the door.
This looks like an imposing pile, but I am unclear from the picture and the article what is left and what is likely to happen to it. The core of the house looks like a medieval tower-house, not an 18th century neo-gothic confection. Is none of it saveable?
Praxilteles – I have no argument with what you are saying and the failure of architects and planners to have a genuinely holistic and integrated approach to their profession is well known. Here, ‘context’ is everything and my point is merely that a summary of Ranjith’s paper (or reference to it) would have been enough. The mission of this thread to attempt to get a debate going on this important subject is admirable. Form should certainly follow function, but what is the ‘function’ of a church? -more than the ‘gathering space’ so beloved of many ‘modern’ (=’contemporary’, = ‘trendy’?) apologists. Until the last liturgist is strangled with the entrails of the last canon lawyer, we are unlikely to see a change in mindset. I share your horror at Drumaroad – what did this inoffensive rural community do to deserve this?
