Praxiteles

Praxiteles listened very carefull to everything Fr. Jones said at the Midleton hearing. Praxiteles can assure you that Fr. Jones was more than helpful to the Friends in the evidence he gave and especially under cross-examination. You obviously have forgotten his hilariously compromising coments under cross examination. I am sure you will have another opportunity to refresh your memory next week since the guru himself is coming to Cork!

As for the poor inspector. Well, he was on one of his first outings and while expert in planning etc. was not too well up on the interpretation of the law. Indeed, if the position he had espoused had been accepted by ABP, then it would have rendered the Planning and Development Act (2000) redundant as far as places (loca) of worship were concerend; and excluded the need for a planning authority and less still for ABP.

As for the grant of Planning Permission made by Cobh Urban District Council – well, that was such a farce that everyone -and most of all Cobh Urban District Coucnil – would rather forget about it. I am sure you will recall the little matter of something like 114 objections that the accomodating Mr. Heffernan did not bother his barney to even notice let alone look at or read!! And do not forget, that everyone of those people paid Euro 20 to make a submission and I understand that Cobh Urban District Council has not yet made restitution in this case.Then, there was also the question of when and by whom the Inspectors report was written. Then there was the case of the Town Manager rushing over to MIdleton truthfully to tell everyone that she had read 241 objections in 4 hours – which drew nothing but wild laughter etc. etc. etc. Need one go on?

PS: BTW, TOMAHAK, on a small point of detail, planning permission was applied for by, and granted to, the TRUSTEES OF ST COLMAN’S CATHEDRAL and not the diocese of Cloyne. These are two completely different legal entities which is important given the subsequent brainless sobbing that went on claiming that ABP had infringed the constitutional rights of the Catholic Church. It took a press release from the Friends to put everyone on the straight and narrow on that particular red herring.

Yesterday marked the bicentenary of the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne – otherwise the North Cathedral – in Cork.

The original building was burned down in an arson attack in 1820.

The interior has been wrecked by Richard Hurley who went so far as to strip the paint from the timber work installed by the Pain brothers in 1827. I suppose he was improving on the Pain brothers – in his own mind.

Does anyone know the person who is recommending Los Angeles Cathedral as a model for parish churches or has anyone readd his contribution tot he advancement of the human sciences?

The following appeared as a feature article on a new website ppublished by teh Irish Episcopal Conference:

‘Worship in Our Cathedrals’ seminar
A seminar organised by the Advisory Committee on Church Music, a subcommittee of the Bishops’ Liturgy Commission.

16 September 2008

Over sixty people, representing 22 of our 24 cathedrals, attended on seminar at Maynooth College on Tuesday, 16 September on ‘Worship in Our Cathedrals.’ Professor Gerard Gillen, chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Church Music, welcomed those taking part, including administrators of cathedrals, liturgy and music people of the cathedral and the diocese. The seminar, the first of its kind, was conducted under the auspices on the Advisory Committee on Church Music.

Rev Dr Michael Gilroy, Killala, Rev Prof Liam Tracey, St Patrick’s College
Sr Moira Bergin, National Centre for Liturgy

Morning prayer
The day began with a celebration of Morning Prayer in St Mary’s Oratory. Dr John O’Keeffe, director of music at St Patrick’s College, arranged the celebration with music, as he explained, according to a formula that he had developed from the time that he was organ scholar at Westminster Cathedral and since then in the seminary at Maynooth.

Cathedral as a Place of Worship
The opening paper on the ‘Cathedral as a Place of Worship’ was given by Dr Liam Tracey, osm, professor of liturgy at Maynooth College. He took as a key text the opening sentence from the chapter on cathedrals in the Ceremonial of Bishops: ‘The Cathedral church is the church that is the site of the Bishop’s cathedra or chair, the sign of his teaching office and pastoral power in the particular Church, and a sign also of the unity of believers in the faith that the Bishop proclaims as shepherd of the Lord’s flock.’

“The Cathedral Church is the Church that is the site of the Bishops’ Cathedra or chair, the sign of his teaching office and pastoral power in the particular Church, and a sign also of the unity of believers in the faith that the Bishop proclaims as shepherd of the Lord’s flock.” (Ceremonial of Bishops 42).

Guest speaker
Benjamin Saunders, director of music for the diocese of Leeds was guest speaker. In the five years that he has been director, the diocese now become the largest church music programme for young people in Britain. Ben is responsible for three choirs in the cathedral and over forty other choirs, including two youth choirs in Bradford, 21 primary school choirs and five secondary school choirs. The cathedral musicians –Ben and three other full-time staff and some part-time musicians- come in contact with 1500 to 2000 children each week. Contact through the Catholic schools was the key to this programme. When Episcopal and diocesan liturgies are celebrated outside of the cathedral, the choir is made up of the school choirs of the local area.

Guest speaker Benjamin Saunders, Canon John Flaherty, Pro-Cathedral
Professor Gerard Gillen, ACCM

At the cathedral, there are ten sung services a week: Vespers and Mass are sung Sunday to Thursday. The services are sung on a rota basis by the choral scholars (18, boys and girls), the boys’ and girls’ choirs and other adults singers. The choirs combine for the special occasions.

The music used on the schools programme has a strong liturgical music repertoire, including much of the Latin tradition. This also has established a common diocesan repertoire, including Latin Mass XVIII and vernacular settings.

Cathedral as a liturgical space
The new Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, was consecrated in 2002, the first major metropolitan cathedral of the Third Millennium. Fr Michael Gilroy, diocese of Killala, did a study of this cathedral as part of his doctoral work on liturgical space. He presented an illustrated paper on the new cathedral that serves as a ‘model for all parish churches’ in a diocese of 287 parishes and communities. It design, art and furnishings reflect the cultural diversity of a city where Sunday Mass is celebrated in 42 different languages.

Open forum
Time was given to discussion that gave several participants an opportunity to present aspects of the work of Irish cathedrals and set many issues that participants agreed could be the focus of future seminars.

From to-day’s Daily Telegraph:

Catholic Church closures attacked by Victorian Society
The Catholic Church has been accused by a leading heritage group of failing to look after its buildings.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 8:59PM BST 20 Sep 2008

Dr Ian Dungavell, director of the Victorian Society, said there was widespread dismay at the Church’s “intransigent” policy of closing churches, many of which have thriving congregations.

St Marie’s Church in Widnes, an Italian Gothic church designed by Edward Welby Pugin, is on a list of the ten most endangered Victorian buildings in Britain, to be published by the Society this week.

Three other churches, including one of only three Swedish churches in the UK, are among those highlighted on the endangered list.

More than 7,000 people have signed up to support The Sunday Telegraph’s Save Our Churches campaign, which has been backed by politicians, celebrities and church leaders including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

The Archdiocese of Liverpool tried to have St Marie’s demolished last year despite protests from local residents and the local council.

It was saved at the eleventh hour after being designated as a Grade II listed building, but has remained closed and now faces falling into disrepair.

Dr Dungavell said that that the influx of eastern European Catholics into the area, and across the country, made the Church’s decision particularly baffling.

“The Archdiocese is refusing to talk to us about their decision and seems determined to ensure that no-one can use it if they can’t demolish it,” he said.

“With so many churches struggling on in the face of dwindling congregations and punitive maintenance costs, it’s particularly frustrating to see a church with an enthusiastic community around it which is forbidden to use the building.”

In the Catholic diocese of Leeds, seven churches were closed last month following a consultation that concluded that congregations of fewer than 200 are no longer viable.

The Archdiocese of Liverpool and the diocese of Lancaster are among other Catholic dioceses carrying out similar reviews of the use of their buildings.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese said that they had to close St Marie’s because it was too big for the congregation, but that they are looking for an alternative use for the building.

“Mass is celebrated in the parish hall instead, which caters for the needs of the parish much more adequately,” he said.

“There are ongoing discussions in different areas concerning how some churches are used in the future.”

Dr Dungavell claimed that the Catholic Church has a much more “intransigent” attitude to closing its buildings than the Church of England, which he said was more open to discussion.

He hopes that the Victorian Society’s list will draw attention to the plight of St Marie’s and the other nine buildings.

These include Gustav Adolfs Kyrka, a Swedish Church in Liverpool that served the city’s large population of Swedish mariners; Holy Trinity, Hove, a red-brick church threatened with demolition by the Church of England; and chapels in Cathays Cemetery, Cardiff.

Other buildings on the list are: Stonebridge School, Brent, London; Newsome Mill, Huddersfield; the Red Lion pub in Handsworth, Birmingham; the Palace Theatre, Plymouth; Fletcher Convalescent Home, Cromer, Norfolk; and Moseley Road Baths, Balsall Heath, Birmingham.

The Liebfrauenkirche in Oberwesel am Rhein (1308-1375) mentioned in Fr. Symondson’s review of the Pugin biography above.

An important review of Rosemary Hill’s biography of A.W.N. Pugin (could usefully be read by the attendees (sic) of the upcomming Ballingcollig Conference organised by Cork County Council and the Cloyne HACK):

Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain.
Penguin, 2007, 602 pp.
£30.00 hdbk,
ISBN 978 0 713 99499 5
Reviewed by Anthony Symondson, SJ
The following article appeared in Issue 40 of Ecclesiology Today, the journal of the Ecclesiological Society (http://www.ecclsoc.org). The text of the article is reproduced in full here for the New Liturgical Movement, by kind permission.
‘Strange as it may appear to some,’ wrote Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) in a letter published in The Tablet on 2 September 1848:
‘Rome has been, and ever will be, the corner and key-stone of pointed architecture [his italics]. Every Gothic church throughout the world was erected when the signet of the Fisherman was the talisman of Christendom, and the foundation of every vast abbey and mighty cathedral is based on the Rock of Peter.’
Pugin’s letter was written in defence of rood screens at a time when he was disillusioned by the coolness of Catholic bishops and clergy towards his aims. He was dismayed by the adoption of Italianate architecture, devotions and worship by Newman, Faber and many of the converts to Rome and their ill-disguised distaste for medievalism and the Gothic style.This dispute is well known but what is rarely emphasized is their point of unity.What made these factions one was a common loyalty to the Papacy; what divided them was the style and form in which their fidelity was expressed. Papal Catholicism was the foundation of Pugin’s perception of faith, held by him as strongly as the ultramontane convictions of the Italianizing party.
Pugin was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1835 at the age of twenty-three; he died seventeen years later in 1852 at the age of forty, exhausted, broken and mad. His early experience of religion was Presbyterian in a charismatic form under the influence of Edward Irving. He declared that he ‘had crowded a century’s work in forty’ and had transformed British architecture in nineteen by moving the revived Gothick style from a picturesque, ornamental, literary form into one informed by scholarship and the structural logic of Gothic. No architect had more influence on the Gothic Revival than him; scarcely a medieval or new Victorian church escaped the consequences. When the vicissitudes of Pugin’s life are considered the acceptance of two factors is necessary in order to understand him: his youth and his consent to receive Catholicism not merely as a vehicle of taste and architectural opportunity but as revealed truth. The two were inseparably associated and to divorce or reduce one at the expense of the other is to distort the fundamental motivation of his life, work and principles. Archbishop Ullathorne, writing to Ambrose Phillips de Lisle on 10
October 1852, said ‘I wish very much to see something written about Pugin to show how completely his genius sprang from and was directed by religion’.
With the exception of Michael Trappes-Lomax’s study of Pugin, published in 1931, Pugin’s religion has been an embarrassment to his biographers. If you want to learn more of Pugin the Catholic, read Trappes-Lomax, if only because Pugin is given a voice; his words are quoted extensively and maintain the narrative drive. Benjamin Ferrey did not welcome Pugin’s Catholicism and reflected the mid-Victorian prejudices of the year of its publication: 1861. Phoebe Stanton’s short book on Pugin is valuable for being an architectural inquiry and for paying attention to his work in Ireland, in 1971 something of a revelation. Surprisingly, Pugin and her excellent articles are not included in the select bibliography, though there are unattributed references to her theories. While God’s Architect is not an architectural study, Rosemary Hill has accomplished the fullest and most complete modern biography so far published; it will be hard to supersede and is likely to be regarded as the orthodox view of Pugin for the foreseeable future. I have never before read a book about an architect as substantial as this more quickly and with such pleasure; when finished I experienced a palpable sense of loss. Pugin’s religion is, however, seen as part of a greater whole rather then the driving force of his life.
Pugin is, by now, a familiar Victorian architect due to Pugin: a Gothic Passion, the exhibition mounted by Clive Wainwright and Paul Atterbury in 1994 which caused a sea-change in the public appreciation of his work. It was a controversial exhibition that presented Pugin in terms of the applied arts at the expense of architecture and began a subtle process of secularising his life, work and influence on the development of the Gothic Revival. Despite a central display of church plate and other religious artefacts (some of which were not designed by him but were manufactured by Hardman in his style) the emphasis was more on his early years as a theatrical designer, his principles of design, his furniture and ceramics, his influence on the later Arts and Crafts Movement and his perceived, if erroneous, role as a precursor of the Modern Movement.
God’s Architect is partly a fruit of this enterprise. It was then that Hill began research on a biography of Pugin and Wainwright’s views had a strong influence on her in the early stages. The problem with Wainwright in relation to Pugin was that he was an atheist who had little sympathy with and no understanding of Pugin’s religious views and their powerful motivation on his understanding of the Gothic style and social reform. In his lectures we had Pugin the sailor, the pirate, the womaniser, his supposed lack of interest in Catholic doctrine, his misreading of Catholic politics, his eccentric dress, his functional principles, his influence on the applied arts, his role as a proto- High Victorian. Pugin the Catholic was played down, Pugin the character emerged; a secularist, post-Christian understanding of Pugin was established.
Engaging though God’s Architect is to read it is under-girded by a sequence of questionable angles that motivate Hill’s thesis and fit Pugin’s life into a pre-determined pattern. These I want to address. Early in the narrative it is suggested that Pugin was syphilitic and this affliction was the cause of progressive madness. In the epilogue she acknowledges that syphilis ‘can never now be determined with certainty’ yet she consistently maintains this inference to the point of fact as an explanation of his erratic behaviour, emotionalism and madness. Alternative medical opinion is disregarded, the evidence presented by the birth of Pugin’s many healthy children
ignored. Pugin’s early involvement with low life in the theatre is not only identified as a possible cause of the infection but as an explanation of his later planning. As a youth he worked with the Grieve family, the leading scenepainters of the day, at Covent Garden. This experience is pinpointed as having had a fundamental influence on many of his later architectural solutions rather than a study of medieval precedent and liturgical function.
We know from Pugin’s writings, as well as his command of the grammar and vocabulary of Gothic design, that he had an unrivalled grasp of medieval architecture and detail. The theatrical interpretation is not only forced but untenable. It reaches over-confident lengths in her understanding of the plan of St Barnabas’, Nottingham (1841-4), where the choir and sanctuary are described as a ‘freestanding space within the larger volume’ and described as ‘the perfect Picturesque interior landscape, the three-arch effect he had learnt at Covent Garden from the Grieves, made solid, sacred,“real”.’ Hill includes no plans but one of St Barnabas’ would demonstrate comparison with many medieval English cathedrals and collegiate churches. The same applies to the T-planned chapel at St Edmund’s,Ware (1845-53). She believes that the stone screen, with its integral altars contained beneath the overhanging, vaulted loft, is derived from the Grieves’‘old three-arch device from Covent Garden, but made more dramatic, not merely theatrical’. It is, rather, a close copy of the fifteenth-century screen in the Liebfraukirche, Oberwesel, on the Rhine, which Pugin described as ‘one of the most perfect, as well as the most beautiful screen in Germany’. Ware provided the only opportunity to use the precedent. Multiple altars were needed in a collegiate institution; the choir had to be enclosed; the screen provided a liturgical solution. Pugin himself deplored theatrical effects in church design.
There are also other debateable architectural assertions founded on a selective use of evidence. Of these the most significant is the maintenance of Wainwright’s claim that Pugin anticipated the High Victorian style and his work would have developed on the lines of his immediate successors. Evidence for this is found in the occasional use of strong masonry, asymmetry in planning and offset arches, and the plan and structure of St Mary’s, Rugby (1847). Consistently Pugin’s churches were in the Decorated style with occasional works in Early English and Perpendicular. Off-set arches were a structural rather than stylistic solution and in the case of the unexecuted designs for St Peter Port, Guernsey (1845), which Hill describes as an exercise in imagining ‘more complex space’, this implementation can be seen in medieval English churches such as SS. Peter & Paul,Aylesford, for purely practical reasons. The realization of this plan occurs if separately expressed chancels and eastern chapels are designed using a common party wall, often with an arch or arches therein. It is a pragmatic engineering solution, not something ‘quite original, mysterious and uneasy’.The reason why it was not built was because the Guernsey priest wanted a larger church; there is no evidence that he thought the design ‘too peculiar, or too expensive’. Equally, strong masonry used in other buildings was related to cost rather then choice and in the cases where it was used economic factors explain the difference. In her desire to establish Pugin as a proto-High Victorian the evidence is pressed too far.
Hill depends heavily for her understanding of Pugin’s varying attitudes to the Oxford Movement, the Church of England and the proleptic ecumenical implications on Margaret Pawley’s book, Faith and Family: the Life and Circle of Ambrose Phillips
de Lisle (1993). Pawley’s work is marred by an anachronistic understanding of nineteenth-century ecumenism, derived from experience of the ecumenical developments following the Second Vatican Council, 1962-5. These she had known through her husband, Canon Bernard Pawley, Archdeacon of Canterbury, an Anglican observer at the Council and a founder of the Anglican Centre in Rome, and she projects them onto the early-Victorian age. It is impossible to interpret the nineteenth-century ecumenical forays between Anglicans and Roman Catholics of Pugin’s time in this way because they had no official backing and relations were confined to infrequent meetings, correspondence and occasional pamphlets.
Yet Hill’s belief that Pugin was intent on belonging to an ‘English Catholic Church’ in the way that the Tractarians understood it is misleading, reflects her own moderate High Church position, and a shaky understanding of ecclesiology. Assisted by the research of Dr Daniel Rock, Lord Shrewsbury’s learned domestic chaplain (whose acquaintance Pugin made in 1836, a year after his conversion), and drawing upon his detailed knowledge of English medieval liturgical furniture, Pugin sought the revival of an English liturgical rite and ceremonial and furnished his churches accordingly. This was the restoration of the Sarum Use which mysteriously Hill describes as ‘that continuous, native Catholic tradition, a tradition in communion with but independent of Rome.’ And she believes that for Pugin after his conversation Salisbury alone was ‘now confirmed as the hub not just of his own world but of the true English Church, past and soon to come.’
The Use of Salisbury was a local medieval modification of the inessentials of the Roman Rite (of which many variants existed throughout the Western Church prior to the Counter- Reformation) used in Salisbury Cathedral, traditionally ascribed to St Osmund (d. 1099) but really much later. The Customary was not compiled until c1225 by Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, to coincide, after receiving papal approval, with the building of the new cathedral. By the late Middle Ages the Sarum Use was followed, in whole or in part, in other English dioceses, and in 1457 was stated to be in use in nearly the whole of England. In addition there were also the uses of Bangor, Hereford and York. But to see it as a ‘continuous, native Catholic tradition’ represents a world of make-believe that ignores the conversion of England by St Augustine in 597 at the instigation of St Gregory the Great, and the Synod of Whitby in 664 when the young St Wilfrid, Bishop of York, secured the replacement of the existing Celtic usages by the Roman Rite, and Celtic by Benedictine monasticism. St Bede the Venerable saw this as the turning point of his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Tutored by Rock, Pugin’s liturgical ideals were essentially Gregorian, from the chant onwards. He included St Gregory and St Augustine with St George in the stained glass windows of his private chapel in the Grange, Ramsgate. Given his allegiance to the Papacy, it is impossible to squeeze him into an incipient High Church mould, however sympathetic he was to the aims of a significant minority in the national Church, with whose rhetoric he sympathized. Though Pugin enjoyed working for Tractarian clients, and (with Wiseman and a few others) had hopes enkindled by the Oxford Movement, he, and they, could no more have been Anglicans than Drummondites
What was Pugin’s legacy beyond being the father of the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival in England? In an epilogue Hill maintains that ‘he was largely forgotten by the end of the century’ and when Herman Muthesius published Das Englische Haus in
1904-5, Pugin was ‘all but invisible’. She identifies the limitations of Muthesius’s understanding of the significance of Philip Webb,W. E. Nesfield and Norman Shaw as the fathers of modern domestic architecture by ignoring, or not recognizing, the fact that they were Pugin’s immediate inheritors and that it was ‘he, not they, who invented the English House that Muthesius so admired’ and leaves it there. In domestic architecture echoes of Pugin’s influence survive to this day, but what of the main body of his work and interest: church architecture?
After the abandonment of a design in the Early French Gothic style, in 1863 G. F. Bodley designed All Saints’, Cambridge, in the fourteenth-century Decorated style verging on the Perpendicular preferred by Pugin, and brought the brief parenthesis of High Victorianism full circle. After visiting Germany in 1845 Pugin wrote to Bishop Sharples that he believed ‘that something even grander than most of the old things can be produced by simplicity combined with gigantic proportions’, and that ‘lofty arches & pillars, huge projecting buttresses grand severe lines are the true thing’. Hill sees this as an anticipation of High Victorianism but it is a prediction of the mature achievement of Bodley & Garner at St Augustine’s, Pendlebury, (1874) and George Gilbert Scott Jnr at St Agnes’, Kennington, (1877) rather than the restless northern Italian constructional polychromy and solid mass of Butterfield and Street and the powerful Early French structure of Burges; forget what J. T. Micklethwaite (another of Pugin’s successors) described as the ‘loud, coarse, vulgarity’ of Teulon, Bassett Keeling and E.B. Lamb and the developments of E.W. Pugin and George Ashlin, both of whom certainly embraced what is known as ‘High Victorianism’. Had he lived, Pugin’s work could well have developed on Bodley’s and Scott’s lines; he was the father of the late Gothic Revival.
In 1886 J.Wickham Legg, the liturgiologist, wrote an essay,‘On some ancient liturgical customs’, published in the Transactions of the St Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, and said ‘I am sure we must raise the cry Back to Pugin, to the principles Pugin advanced’ in his campaign to apply authentic medievalism to Anglican worship and church architecture. These views also motivated Edmund Bishop, the leading English Roman Catholic liturgiologist, who, like most of his generation,was uncritically devoted to Pugin and pugnaciously English in his ecclesiastical preferences. Legg founded the St Paul’s Ecclesiological Society to further his aims in 1879; Bishop and others the Guild of St Gregory and St Luke ‘for ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY 40 · JULY 2008 108 the purpose of promoting the study of Christian antiquities and of propagating the principles of Christian art’ in the same year. Pugin’s Gothic romanticism and scientific liturgical research were, in company with Wickam Legg’s goals, their watchword. Under the Guild’s influence, Pugin’s theories found a recrudescence in late-Victorian Catholic church architecture, principally in the work of J. F. Bentley (with the exception of Westminster Cathedral), Leonard Stokes, J. A. Hadfield, Thomas Garner and F. A.Walters (all of whom were members).The school of Bodley, most notably in the early work of J.N. Comper, brought Puginism to its ultimate fulfilment, reinforced by the church architecture of Temple Moore, the sole pupil of the younger Scott. These architects all revered Pugin and achieved his potential.
In a wider sphere, Paul Waterhouse recognized the roots of the late-Gothic Revival in Pugin in a serialized biography of him published in the Architectural Review under the editorship of Henry Wilson, illustrated by some of the leading architectural
draughtsmen of the day including F. L. Griggs. This prestigious monthly magazine was founded in 1897 and published all that was best in British architecture, regardless of style, and was in the vanguard of taste. From 1901 onwards newly-discovered drawings by Pugin and correspondence were published intermittently and these reflect continuing interest in his work and principles. At the turn of the century Pugin was far from invisible.
The strength of Hill’s book lies in her depth of research, especially in the beginning, and the way that she sets Pugin’s life and achievement into the panorama of early-Victorian England. For this I and others are grateful; she lays bare a forgotten world. In nearly 500 pages Hill presents an epic narrative of the times in which he lived and the influence he had upon contemporary architecture and taste. She relieves him of the reputation of being seen as the father of twentieth-century functionalism and repudiates Henry Russell Hithcock’s opinion that this development constitutes ‘the core of Pugin’s long-term significance as a theorist’. She believes that as a theorist ‘he has no “long-term” significance at all’ and that is true as far as Modernism is concerned. Her research into the lives and ancestry of Pugin’s parents casts new light on his origins in France and the minor tributaries of the Lincolnshire gentry. Auguste Pugin’s harmless pretensions to an aristocratic lineage are uncovered without censure and the facts of his French kinship extensively researched. Above all, Pugin’s mother, Catherine Welby, is rescued from the derision to which she was subjected by Ferrey and later jovially disseminated by Trappes-Lomax. A difficult, intensely religious and over-bearing woman, unsympathetic to her husband’s pupils, the Belle of Islington emerges as an intellectual in her own right and a positive influence on her son. The treatment of the Barry-Pugin controversy in the design of the New Palace of Westminster is judicious, and her skills of characterization exemplary. She deals with Pugin’s volatile opinions well and writes perceptively of his marriages and relations with women.
But, above all, it is in the power of writing that Hill’s book succeeds and will be found by many to be persuasive. God’s Architect (a title that I dare say suggests the wit of a spirited dinner party rather than an accurate description of the subject; Pugin made no such claims) is an outstanding achievement, a landmark in architectural biography, and will find a place among the bestwritten biographies of the present time. But its literary merit is also a hazard because it subtly masks the biases from which it is written and is, I regret to say, more likely to misrepresent an understanding of Pugin’s life and achievement than otherwise.
Anthony Symondson, SJ

Just to facilitate the people in Cork County Council who will be looking for Smasher’s page, here it is:

http://smasher-lagru.blog.com/

From the blogg site of Smasher-Lagru:

Robert the Bruce’s spider is visiting Cork

What do you do if you’re a bishop who has wasted possibly hundreds of thousands of euro on
architects fees, consultants and lawyers, you’ve planned the wreckovation of your cathedral, you’ve
sought planning permission, been successful, had it appealed and then lost at An Bord Pleanála after
a massive campaign by ordinary punters who don’t want their church turned into the sort of place
where grooms think it perfectly acceptable to lift their mott up in the air while motts lie on the steps
with their daughters attached?

For those who missed it I mean the Bishop of Cloyne and the cathedral of Cobh.

So anyway, what you do is organise a conference so that at least you get the last word in (or perhaps
this is a prelude to a new campaign). “Places of worship, planning and heritage” will be held at
Ballincollig Friday 3rd October, 2008.

But perhaps, you’re wondering, perhaps this is the diocese reaching out the opposition, an attempt at
dialogue, a teaching and learning moment by all concerned?

I don’t think so. One of the main speakers is Fr Patrick Jones, Director of the National Centre for
Liturgy. At the time of the great defeat, he wrote:

The design was a contemporary plan to express the liturgy of the second Vatican Council, which is characterized by “full, conscious and active participation”. Wishing to have our liturgy as it was before
the council or wanting it revised according to a “reform of the reform” agenda may be strongly held opinions.

It is a matter of grave concern that there are several different positions on liturgy adopted today, characterized by a strong element of disagreement, some of which oppose the charter of reform
given in the council.

But given the vision of Vatican II and applying it to matters of architecture and the environment for worship, the overriding weight must be given to a design plan that is thoroughly documented in
accordance with liturgical guidelines.

It must be endorsed by those charged in a diocese to offer advice on liturgy, architecture and
heritage and which is certified as meeting liturgical requirements by the bishop who is “the chief
steward of the mysteries of God” and has to act as “moderator, promoter and guardian” of the
liturgical life of the diocese. Where this overriding weight is not given, it is a matter of grave concern.

Which basically means, we should do what the bishop and his advisors (i.e. me) want – and when I
mention liturgical guidelines, I don’t mean those annoying things from Rome, I mean the helpful stuff
we produce ourselves which somehow always seems to involve tabernacles moving off side, kneelers
disappearing and aids to devotion going the way of the burse (anyone seen a burse in use in the
Ordinary Form anywhere recently?).

I can’t say I know much about Fr Jones. I don’t think he has a doctorate in any branch of theology.

Certainly the Centre hasn’t produced anything of academic substance – nothing which would suggest
it has the right to be consulted as an expert body.

During the appeal, the Friends of St Colman’s Cathedral presented their arguments making specific
reference to the official documents of the Church on the liturgy as published in the Code of canon
Law, the Institutio Missalis Romani, and the Praenotanda of the liturgical books as well as their interpretation given by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Fr. Jones made reference to the liturgical requirements of Vatican II – which of course mandated
not one single change to architecture. The only thing mandatory that I can think of was a requirement
that ladies who were doing readings be accommodated outside the sanctuary in a suitable place.
I’m pretty sure Fr Jones wasn’t suggesting that.

Posted by smasher-lagru@hotmail.com at 11:00:44

The HACK “heritage” Conference will be co-chaired by the Kanturk Alwahabi and the present Fine Gael Chairman of Cork County Council, Noel Harrington, from the Bantry electoral district of County Cork. He will certainly have a lot of illuminating things to add to any discussion of “heritage” to say nothing of “liturgy”.