Luzarches
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An interesting feature of Goldie’s church is the altar rail which spans the nave and both transcepts – just as at Cobh, although in the Spanish Place church the communion passage behind the rail is gated at the Chancel.
An observation that I would make aboult this configuration of altar rail, from an architectural perspective, is that in a church with multiple altars this feature visually and symbolically unites all the altars within the building and strengthens the reality of the unicity of all altars. The rail as extension of altar and banqueting table is thus emphasized in express contrast to the idea of the rail as a barrier of exclusion and this is further underwritten by the use of the hausling cloth.
To remove the rail in Cobh would then, in a sense, set up the other side altars in opposition to the main one (if the new one looks like an altar that is…).
The altar rail as ‘unjust barrier’ is false consciousness.
@Praxiteles wrote:
re the 2040 prognostications I should say that I have never taken any notice of the criteria of Emanuel Tode and the sociology department of the Paris Quatrieme!
Is that because he’s an pessimist or an optimist?
@Praxiteles wrote:
More then the altar folds, I noticed that this little arrangement in Denver has reduced the seating capacity from 1,000 to 800.
At last, we’ve come to the bottom of the great period of renewal and reorderings! I don’t know what things are like on the emerald isle but us (practising) left-footers here in Blighty have been in a demographic death spiral. On current projections, there won’t be any observant catholics left by 2040, or thereabouts. So now you see reorderings in the first place are about decreasing capacity in such a way that makes the churches seem as full as they were 20 years ago. It certainly beats effective catechisis.
Re: Norwich RC Cathedral.
To my best knowledge, the altar visible in the interior view through the Rood was taken away many years ago. It was not contemporaneous with the Pugin brother’s work, not particularly meritorious and in a partially fragmented state anyway. I understand that there are plans afoot to give the cathedral’s interior greater dignity and solemnity.
Re the Cathedral of the Immaculate Concepton of Our Lady, Denver, this is yet another protype for Cobh. Have you noticed the Anglican-style foldings of the altar cloths?
fgordon,
Have you seen this one from the cathedral-basilica of Covington in Kentucky. Has this appeared on the thread before? Apologies if yes. This is a bizarely two-headed scheme (file under pointlessly conservative reorderings): From what I can understand of the literature surrounding this the diocese retained a Vosko-like clone to direct the scheme. When lay opposition mounted to make a defence of the baldachino and stalls the plans were redrawn and a compromise made. Nevertheless, the very beautiful and unusual altar rails and gates perished. But, still, the new high altar is five steps up; how V2 is that?!
This is a strange church altogether. I note on their website that they have an old rite mass every Sunday: A case of liturgical schizophrenia.
Yes, Praxiteles, I am aware of HH’s recent iteration of the “hermeneutics of reform”. My only point is that, with the best will in the world, there is no substantial institutional platform to initiate a palliative strategy. Is he going to talk over the heads of the bishops, as he needs to? He’s too much a man of the council to do that. I note that HE Card. Arinze made some comments recently about the liturgy. Any good content was enervated by his observation that BXVI would seek to promote such correctives with lovingkindness rather than the paternal firmness proper to the Roman church (But it’s about thirty years too late for that anyway…). I cheered when I heard of J.R’s election and I am still pleased. But you have to remember that even in the excellent ‘Spirit of the Liturgy’ his suggestions aren’t more concrete than mooting putting a crucifix on the reordered ironingboards. The sad fact is that I suspect that even this, let alone the eastward-facing posture, would be too much for some clergy because we are happy easter people dontchaknow?
Gianlorenzo, I didn’t know about Cobh being related to Milan, hence those cretinous proposed curved steps, I suppose. I went to mass there a while back. Maybe it was the gloriously renewed Ambrosian liturgy or the new sanctuary, but it felt like dead space to me. A place of prosaic assembly. Heightened I think by the fact that the architectural aesthetic of the intervention is conservative; it’s impossible to make a visual edit of the sanctuary. Do you have any visual or drawn information re Milan’s reordering?
So the moral is even if the Cobh wreckers have deigned to leave the faithful with their old high altar in tact the architectural meaning will be fatally subverted and the ‘presider’ will have to turn his back on the Blessed Sacrament. This is the central paradox of the conservative position when applied to historic churches. Logic and the ‘spirit’ of the modern rite would tend to demand a clean sweep of the sanctuary. Sacrosanctum Concilium rules this out for historic churches. It’s a syllogism; Use the old high altar! Therefore there is no such thing as a conservative reordering.
At my local parish church the excellent parish priest faces east with his congregation; when the the Archbishop of Southwark came to do confirmations he did likewise. Small gains for which I am thankful. But the pp could be taken away and one parachuted in who wanted to extend the mild, mid 60’s reordering, and I guess the bish would be equally supportive of him.
I’ve been following this thread with some interest and have written to foscc in support of the campaign to preserve the interior integrity of this fine church. I can very readily appreciate the emotive nature of this issue and the puzzlement it causes to the average catholic in the pew.
When I was a child of twelve my own parish and school church, the Sacred Heart in Wimbledon, London, was traumatically and expensively reordered. This is a fine revival of the curviniliar phase of english decorated architecture but it, unexpectedly, has a polygonal apse with 3 radiating chapels (2 of which have preserved the original altars).
I was serving mass regularly at the time. I endeavoured to extract from the parish priest a promise to conserve the sanctuary’s fine hand painted encaustic tiles. He did so with some force: The next week I came to church to find that these had all been jack-hammered and turned in with the concrete to form the base of the new altar platform. This event, as well as the scheme itself, has rather coloured my attitude towards the clergy’s guardianship of our sacred patrimony.
Please take a look at this church at:
http://www.sacredheartwimbledon.org.uk/
You will find the state as existing in the ‘history’ section and an image of the removed baldachino and high altar in the section marked ‘photographs’.
The problem we face is that, in contrast to the holy father and other sympathetic bishops priests and laity, the whip hand is under the control of those who believe that the council (V2) represents a juncture with the development of ecclesiology up to that point. This new ‘renewed’ church requires a radically different architectural manifestation. The liturgical action of the church is submitted to the higher authority of democracy and equality.
Unfortunately, ‘conservative’ resistance to this is at best ambivalent. Will there ever be a crack-down on liturgical abuses? No. Will Rome ever say anything as useful as ‘the eastward position for priest and people is desirable during the eucharistic prayer’- I’ll eat my hat, and in any case who’d obey?
The best we can do is offer ad hoc resistance to immediate threats to specific churches and hope that, over a number of years, if there are any faithful left, that the old high altars are once again used.
I am a student of architecture: For a number of years I have had an idea to compile a ‘before and after’ set of photographs of reorderings from all over the world. This would be free of an overly polemical text. The pictures would do the talking. This would show how we had all, apparently, become low church lutherans.
If anyone has any links to pictures, or pictoral data then I would be delighted to see it to start on the above project…
By the way, if you want to see a truely awful reordering or ‘adeguamento’ as the Italians call it check out the duomo in Milan. In its current state:
http://milan.arounder.com/milans_duomo_cathedral/fullscreen.html (excellent site, incidentally…)
Can’t find a link to its prior state; the 16th C high altar’s been mutilated, ditto the balustrade of the cancelli and, of course-obligatory…?- the tesserae floor’s been ruined.
Then, also, who could forget that the mensa of Bernini’s cathedra petri altar in St Peter’s itself was destroyed under the nose of JP II himself in the early 1980’s. If we’re waiting on any intervention on the side of tradition and sacrosantum concilium from Rome vis-a-vis architectural patrimony then it could only realistically come from BXVI. If he does say anything concrete, a big if, then it will be in such a way that it can be ignored by every iconoclastic bishop who wants to remake his church in his image and make for himself a Star-Trek chair where the tabernacle used to be: cf
In site of this, I try to remain optimistic.
