Praxiteles
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And again:
15 Aug 2007 07:16
And here is another bloomer from O’Callaghan:
“The end result to my mind was superb, an ideal solution in keeping with the character of the cathedral. AS the design plan for the extension to the sanctuary reached forward at a lower level it brought the congregation closer to the altar while providing an unobtrusive view of the original sanctuary as inspiring background”.
There is a mouthful of guff.
There is no evidence to suggest that PHYSICAL closeness to the altar assures the ends of liturgy – which, by the way, is worship of God.
As for inspiring backrund…..I ask you. Where does he think he is and what does he think he is up to?
As for the unobstructed view of the sancturay: well just how much of it would have survived his trusty friends from England who were prepared to dig hole in it during the night.
And here we ahve some more:
15 Aug 2007 07:10
Continuing our amble through the meanderings of Denis O’Callaghan’s account of the Cobh Cathedral debacle, as published in his groundbreaking work Hand to Plough, this morning’s first offering has the following to say:
“I was privilege to have been entrusted with the role of charing the SPECIALIST group which would recommend an architect for the work {of wrecking the interior of Cobh Cathedral}.”.
What we would all like to know is what specialization in architecture does Denis O’Callaghan have – apart form the usual bit of guffing that he goes on with? We certainly know that he has no LITURGICAL specialization. As far as ART is concerend, he has no qualification whatsoever.
This leaves us witrh the prospect of a SPECIALIST group chaired by someone UNSPECIALIZED chairing it. Is its any wonder that everything came to grief.
In the wake of a disaster of these proportions, surely those responsible for the recommendation, including O’C himself, should resign from all diocesan advice groups in the diocese of Cloyne? Obviously, the shipwrecked the bishop by foisting the Cobh disaster on him.
Here we are, the last being first:
11 Feb 2007 17:30
And here we have a prime candidate for the title of arch-vandal when it comes to the case of the attempted iconoclastic wreckage of St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork.
Denis Reidy, parish priest of Carrigtwohill, and the real Poltergeist of the Cathedral wreck scheme – and I use the term in its original sense of a spirit moving inanimate objects. From behind the scenes he has moved a series of inanimate objects not only to recommend but also to champion the lunatic plan proposed by Professor Cathal O’Neill for the superb revivalist interior in Cobh. Reidy is not only overall co-ordinator of the Cobh Cathedral project but also a member of the Cathedral Restoration Committee, the Briefing Committee that “recommended” the wreckage of the Cathedral interior, the Art and Architecture Committee convoked to “rubber stamp” the wreckage (and I cannot understand what qualifies Reidy for this committee since he knows nothing about art and even less about architecture), the St. Colman’s Roman Catholic Trust which has been collecting money under charitable pretences for the “restoration” of the Cathedral but has been disbursing them for that purpose, and to add to it all Reidy is a member of that highly eruidite body the Cloyne Historic Churches Committee (aka the HACK) which happily gave an unanimous vote of approval to the proposed wreckage of Cobh Cathedral when proposed by one Alex White and seconded by the Geist himself Reidy.
Reidy’s most offensive act was to enter St. Colman’s Cathedral in the dead of night and totally oblivious to the sacrednessness of the building proceeded to dig test holes in the floor of the sanctuary with two rude mechanics in a fashion that would probably have been highly approved by Will Dowsing. Needless to say, Reidy had no planning permission for such an act and his friends in the Cobh Urban District Council declined to prosecute him for his vandalism – lest it be seen that they might discourage would be vandals in Cobh!
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
Interesting little anecdote
Eamonn told me of a commission he had done some years back for Bishop Magee of Cloyne. A Christ the King figure in bronze to sit atop the cathedral. After the sculpture was complete, cast and patinated, the bishop, just back from Milan, said he had to have the figure gilded (like the one above Milan cathedral). Eamonn explained this would not be possible or practical or inexpensive. In fact, it would cost as much again as the original work. The bishop was adamant. Eamonn went through the procedure that would be necessary involved in gilding the bronze figure. He would have to plate it with nickel, then apply gold leaf; the Irish climate would destroy the gilding in a relatively short time and it would turn black. The bishop still insisted.
The statue was installed, by helicopter. Soon the gold leaf began to peel – and the corroding nickel turned black.
The Vicar General ( a man like the bishop, recently in the news on other matters) demanded a meeting. He explained that he and his boss were unhappy – and that it was likely the matter would end up in litigation.
“Very well, then,” said Eamonn. “My defence is already prepared. I will tell the court that the changes in the statue are God’s judgment on what has been happening in the diocese and, only when these wrongs have been remedied, a miracle would return the statue to pristine gold, showing God’s favour.” He heard no more from the bishop or his minions.
The statue remains black.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/1024/1224306388630.html
Another example of just how disastrous the Magee/O’Callaghan/Reidy “restoration” of Cobh Cathedral actually was. If anything the efforts of the “restorers” accelerated the natural decay of the Cathedral fabric by about two centuries. It was not for nothing that all of these characters have received the Will Dowsing prize – and without the expense of a public enquiry!
Praxiteles has now had an opportunity of looking at Richard Hurley’s proposals for the sanctuary lay-out in St Mel’s Cathedral. We take this mock-up to be the plan, or at least the plan as of 18 September 2011:
http://www.longfordparish.com/cathedralopenday.htm
Here we have another classic (indeed literal) example of RH in the process of salvaging the Second Vatican Council from the ashes -again in a certain literal sense. And, here again, we have the same old trite approach that we have all over the place with RH – even down to the signature Japenese trellis work (except split here, presumably to help us distinguish the “solution” from that adapted in Cork.
Then, we have the nonsense of(what seem to be ) banked tiers of spectatorial seating to the right of the sanctuary. Difficult to know what this is for. It would indeed be ironic were its purpose to promote “active participation in the liturgy” since this form of gladiatorial spectatorship surely would only reinforce the old canard that no one participated in the liturgy before the Second Vatican Council with the sole difference of providing seating for the spectators ney gawkers.
The matter of the positioning of the tabernacle has not been addressed and quite obviously little or no notice taken of the recommendations of the second last Synod of Bishops (held only a few years ago) on the subject of the placement of the Tabernacle and reiterated in the post Syndoal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis.
Then, there is the question of the Altar. Clearly, RH does seem to think that in a neo- Palladian building -albeit rebuilt- that there is absolutely no need whatsoever to pay any attention to proportions. If he did pay attention to proportion between the size of the altar and its immediate environment, Praxiteles cannot imagine why the results were so “off”. Size, I am afraid, does matter. Presumably RH can (still) use a measuring tape. But, sic transit Vitruvius Hibernus cineris redevivus !!
Then there is the problem of the praedella. It is not suitable for the altar and its shape more at home in the Antwerp of diamond-cutting. It is not clear what distance is allowed to the front and to the back of the altar between the altar base and the step. No effort has been made to follow the Biblical signicicance of the number of steps. And, I suspect that those at the back of the Cathedral will hardly be able to see the altar. The problem also occurs in the modern make-over in Cologne Cathedral. It is all on the flat. Indeed, it is all a bit too flat and at this stage of time it is beginning to show signs of wear. Please Mr. Hurley, try and come up with something a bit more imaginative.
The tough-fleshed old Phoennix needs to molt and grow a few new feathers!
Repairs were carried out on the statue by Randel Hodkinson, of J Hodkinson and Sons Ecclesiastical Decorators, who collected the statue for repair in his Henry Street workshop and restored it to its original condition.
Congratulations to J. Hodkinson for a job well done!!
Irish Times
FINTAN O’TOOLETall cross at Monasterboice, ninth century
A HISTORY OF IRELAND IN 100 OBJECTS: When hurlers and Gaelic footballers describe their ultimate ambition, they often use a simple shorthand: “A Celtic cross”. Since the late 19th century, the Gaelic Athletic Association has used a high cross for its logo and for All-Ireland medals. The modern use of the cross as a symbol of Irish achievement goes back at least to the 1853 Irish Industrial Exhibition, in Dublin, which displayed them as “fine monuments of the artistic skill and devoted piety of our Celtic ancestors”.
The crosses are so deeply embedded in the Irish imagination that it seems almost sacrilegious to ask why they were made in the first place. There was no native tradition of building in cut stone, so the appearance of high crosses in the eighth century was a major cultural innovation. So, as we have seen, was the idea of depicting, in a relatively realistic way, human subjects and stories. The crosses are, indeed, unique to Ireland and Irish-influenced Scotland. They required a huge investment of skill and resources and, as Roger Stalley has put it, “It is hard to believe they were undertaken for purely altruistic or religious motives.” And yet they were erected on a very large scale: about 300 of them survive, of which 100 are decorated with carved images.
The crosses were undoubtedly used as gathering places for prayers by monks and pilgrims, but their scale and complexity far exceed this basic function. This cross, from Monasterboice in Co Louth, is almost seven metres tall, and every available face is covered with elaborate carvings of a dazzling variety of scenes. The east face alone has Christ walking on the water, King David, St Anthony tempted by demons, St Paul and St Anthony killing a devil, an angel shielding three children in the fiery furnace, and images of Elijah, Moses, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath, and David (again) killing a lion.
Some crosses are inscribed with the names of kings or abbots, suggesting that they functioned as potent symbols of the power and status of these dignitaries. Like so many objects from pre-Christian Ireland, part of their function is to claim territory and mark boundaries. It is striking in this regard that the crosses are highly individual, with distinctive styles associated with different regions.
The basic form is common to all of them: a pyramidal base, a rectangular shaft culminating in a capstone, and a large circle enclosing the arms of the cross. This circle may be intended to represent a halo around the figure of Christ, but it can also be seen as a continuation of a much older Irish tradition of representations of the sun.
One way of looking at the crosses, though, is that they represent a new assertion of biblical Christianity in the face of a new pagan threat. By the time the cross-builders were at their most active, that threat was all too real.
Where to see it Monasterboice, Drogheda, Co Louth, 041-9837070; a replica is on display at the Irish High Crosses exhibition at the National Museum – Decorative Arts History, Collins Barracks, D7; museum.ieSt Colman’s Roman Catholic Trust
The trust fund established as a public company to received and disburse money for the “restoration” of Cobh Cathedral has published its accounts for the year ending 31 December 2010. It makes for sad reading. Not only are funds shrinking, grants from public bodies are evaporating and even the composition of the trust itself is in terminal decline and is now reduced to merely three people – which will soon cause problems finding a public quorum. Saddest of all was departure of Bishop Magee who received a glowing encomium for having founded the Trust.
The details of the crisis may be perused here:
From the Longford Leader
St Mel’s Cathedral’s bitter sweet opening
Published on Wednesday 21 September 2011 16:46
On Sunday September 25, an air of chilled awe enveloped St. Mel’s Cathedral as its doors once again opened and over three thousand Longford poeple took the opportunity to survey its scorched interior.
In total, over 3,000 people turned up on the day, giving a clear indication of the depth of feeling about the Cathedral.
Many spoke of celebrations and family events that had taken place in the landmark Cathedral, others just stood back silently and took in the devastation caused by the Chiristmas Day Fire in 2009.
Silently they walked the short narrow gangplank that took them from the western entrance to the eastern exit; a walk that crossed what was once a beautiful and ornate building.
“I’m devastated,” whispered Rose Kenny, a native of Longford town. “I was baptised here and all of this is bringing back memories of Christmas 2009.”
“I didn’t believe that the damage was so extensive,” she said. “All we can do is pray that it will be restored because it was so beautiful.”
Michael Masterson of Dromard, Moyne, was shocked. “It’s shocking to see the scale of everything, but that quickly gives away to the rebirth that’s going on here. There are great people in charge of this project and it’s great to see the work and the attitude that it’s creating around the town.”
Bishop Colm O’Reilly agreed that memories of that fateful day were once again to the fore of many minds. However, he believed that those memories should offer hope on a day such as the open day.
“For those who were here on Christmas Day 2009, it was such a chaotic day and it looked like there being no hope of repair at that stage,” he told the Leader. “A lot is being done and the most important part of the work is done to date. We set a timeline at the start and we’re still on target.”
According to Seamus Butler, chairperson of the St. Mel’s Restoration Committee, the open day afforded the committee the opportunity to show the public just how severe the interior damage was.
“A lot of people will now realise the exterior belies the appearance of the inside. It was absolutely devastated and that devastation is clear as you look around you today,” he said. “We have a massive job ahead of us but we hope to have a functioning cathedral once again by December 2014. We are somewhat daunted by it, but we know we have the goodwill of the people.”
For more pictures and a further report, see this week’s Longford Leader. Alternatively, subscribe to our E-Paper: http://www.longfordleader.ie/epaper where you can read the entire newspaper on your PC or Mac.
From the Irish Independent
Thousandsget look at burnt-out cathedral
By Allison Bray
Monday September 19 2011
IT was reduced to a shell in a fire on Christmas Day almost two years ago.
But yesterday, thousands of people gathered at St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford town to get a glimpse of the work so far to restore the gutted landmark.
About 3,000 people waited patiently outside the cathedral all day in order to survey the damage caused by the devastating Christmas Day blaze.
Construction began on the historic church in 1840 and it eventually opened in 1856.
“It’s been at the heart of the community for generations,” said parish priest Fr Tom Healy. “There’s a great sense of loss.”
Restoration will take about five years to complete and will cost into the millions. However, church officials are hoping to re-open by Christmas 2014.
Now that the building has been made safe, the next phase of the restoration will be to design its reconstruction, with construction due to begin next summer. Insurance will cover the cost of rebuilding, while donations are being collected for additional refurbishment.
The cause of the blaze remains unknown.
– Allison Bray
Irish Independent
St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford
Published on Wednesday 14 September 2011 18:01
A unique opportunity to get a close-up view of the damage caused to St Mel’s Cathedral following the devastating Christmas Day fire in 2009 will present itself on Sunday, September 18 next when the building will be opened to the public for the first time.
Speaking to the Leader, Fr Tom Healy said that an open day had been organised and members of the public would be invited into St Mel’s Cathedral to see for themselves the impact that the fire had on its once beautiful and ornate interior.
“It is an opportunity for people to visit the building firstly,” explained Fr Healy, adding that they would subsequently be in a position to evaluate the extent of the damage done. “It is also the beginning of the restoration project, so people will be required to wear hard hats.”
With nearly two years gone by since the cathedral was gutted by fire on that fateful morning and the impact still etched on the hearts and minds of Longfordians across the world, Fr Healy expects that that while the open day will be very well attended – it may become “emotional” for some. “I have no doubt that it will be an emotional day for some people,” he said. “The cathedral was gutted inside, so seeing it as it is now, will be very difficult.”
On a positive note, the plans for the restoration project will be on view on the day at the assembly hall in nearby St Mel’s College and those arriving at the cathedral are invited to drop over and see for themselves what the restoration will involve.
“This will show everyone what the future plans for the cathedral are and they will be invited to put forward suggestions and ideas,” Fr Healy said.
“I think there will be a tremendous reaction to the open day. The restoration is going to be complex, there is no doubt about that but there are restoration trails taking place now and that is a very positive step in the right direction.”
The open day takes place from 10:30am to 3pm and everyone is invited to come along.
From the City Journal
The Handwriting Is on the Wall
July 09, 2011
By Theodore Dalrymple
Fifty years from now, no one in Indiana—or at least, no one born and raised in Indiana—will be able to write cursive. On the other hand, everyone there will be able to type, and by then technology might have made the ability to sign your name redundant. If it has not, perhaps you will be able to hire an out-of-stater or immigrant to sign your will or marriage certificate for you.
State officials recently announced that Indiana schools will no longer be required to teach children to write longhand, so that students can focus on typing. This is because writing by hand is so very—well, so very 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2010. We have now entered a new era: A.H., After Handwriting.
The schoolchildren of Indiana—and those of an increasing number of other states—will therefore never know the joys of penmanship that I experienced as a child. In those days, we still had little porcelain inkwells in the tops of our desks. The watery blue ink eventually evaporated to a deep blue gritty residue, and we used scratchy dip-pens with wooden handles, whose nibs were forever bending and breaking.
Our whole world was inky. Our desktops were soaked in ink; it got into our skin, under our nails and into our clothes. We even began to smell of it. For those of us who were even slightly academically inclined, the callus that formed on the skin of the side of the middle finger as it rubbed against the wood of the pen was a matter of pride: We measured our diligence by the thickness of the callus and longed for it to grow bigger.
I still remember my pride in my first full-length handwritten composition: an eight-page account of crossing the Gobi Desert in a Rolls-Royce, accompanied by blots, smudges and inky fingerprints. To my chagrin and everlasting regret, my teacher was not impressed by my formidable effort. She said that I must keep to reality and not be so imaginative.
Despite many hours first of tracing, then of copying copperplate examples, my handwriting never became other than serviceable at best. I was left-handed, and this made things more difficult because, whether I pushed or pulled the pen, smudges followed my writing across the page. Luckily, though, we had emerged from the dark ages when left-handers were forced to use their right hands. Little did we know, it was the beginning of the pedagogic liberalism that has now brought us to the abandonment of writing altogether.
Another character-building joy that may be denied to Indiana schoolchildren is the handwritten exam. They will never know that peculiar slight ache in the forearm, produced by fevered scribbling as thoughts rushed through your mind in answer to questions such as “Was Louis XIV a good king?” (my answer was a firm and uncompromising “no”) and struggled to find written expression, only to slow down once it became clear that there were not enough of those thoughts to fill the allotted time. So then you deliberately made your handwriting deteriorate to make it appear that you could have written much more if only you had had the time, but unfortunately you did not. This kind of game continued into my early 20s.
Were my teachers ever taken in by it? I doubt it, but even then I knew it was all really a rite of passage, a slow induction into the adult world that I so longed to join. Since the need for such rites seems to be permanent in human societies, no doubt new such rites will develop for those who focus on the keyboard, but I do not know what they will be. Having reached the age when pessimism is almost hard-wired into the brain, I think they will not only be different but not as beneficial to the developing character.
Indeed, my first reaction to the news from Indiana was visceral despair, not only because the world I had known was now declared antediluvian, dead and buried, but because it presaged a further hollowing out of the human personality, a further colonization of the human mind by the virtual at the expense of the real.
When I scrawled and blotted and smudged my way across the page, I had the feeling that, for good or evil, what I had done was my own and unique. And since everyone’s writing was different, despite the uniformity of the exercises, our handwriting gave us a powerful, and very early, sense of our own individuality. Those who learn to write only on a screen will have more difficulty in distinguishing themselves from each other, and since the need to do so will remain, they will adopt more extreme ways of doing so. Less handwriting, then, more social pathology.
Good news from the Mayer glass company in Munich: THree of its 19th. century accounts books have turned up and contain useful material about glass shipments to Ireland and elsewhere. The archive of the company was destroyed in 1942 but these three items escaped the conflagration.
St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork
Finally, a clear picture of the central light of the West Rose:
http://macsfieldimages.smugmug.com/Art/Stained-Glass-Windows/9426232_pMnnst#632488188_3UZT9-XL-LB
St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork
A very useful gallery of the some of the stained glass in St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, is available here:http://macsfieldimages.smugmug.com/Art/Stained-Glass-Windows/9426232_pMnnst#632476869_DJRSp
A Note on Antonio Begarelli of Modena and his terracotta masterpieces in Modena
Fourteenth Annual Conference
The interior of the Victorian church
Saturday 1st October 2011
10.15 – 17.15From the Ecclesiological Society
St Alban’s Centre, Baldwins Gardens, London EC1N 7AB
The location provides disabled access: please contact us for details.Our conferences combine serious intent with an enthusiastic and friendly atmosphere, and are enjoyable both for experts and those new to the topic being considered. A hot lunch is included. Everyone is invited to finish the day with a glass of wine. There will be a second-hand bookstall.
SPEAKERS Geoff Brandwood: Introduction James Bettley: ‘All its glory is from within’: the importance of colour in church interiors, 1843–1903 Michael Hall: Textiles in paint: recreating a forgotten form of medieval wall decoration Tony Herbert: ‘To pave the sweet transition / He gave th’ encaustic tile’: ceramics in 19th century churches Geoff Brandwood: ‘Substitute kneeling for sitting, sitting for lolling, wakefulness for sleepiness’: the Victorian revolution in church seating Mary Schoeser: ‘Fair and Beautiful to Behold’: church embroidery 1845–1915 Martin Harrison: Absolute Fidelity or Servile Imitation? Stained glass in the 1850s
COST: (incl. refreshments, hot lunch, glass of wine) £42.50 for members & guests;
£48 for non-members; £35 for under- & post-graduate students. Tickets are non-refundable.
Society’s website: http://www.ecclsoc.org General conference enquiries: conference@ecclsoc.orgBOOKING FORM FOR THE 2011 CONFERENCE – PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY
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Post to: Ecclsoc Conference, 32 Repton Road, Orpington, Kent BR6 9HS
Late booking and urgent enquiries telephone: 01689 840309 (office hours only please)More on Harry Clarke
Louis Bouyer and Church Architecture
Resourcing Benedict XVI’s The Spirit of the Liturgy
by Uwe Michael Lang, appearing in Volume 19 of the Journal of Sacred ArchitectureThe present Holy Father’s thought on liturgy and church architecture was considerably influenced by Louis Bouyer (1913-2004), a convert from Lutheranism, priest of the French Oratory (a religious congregation founded by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle in the seventeenth century and distinct from the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) and protagonist of the liturgical movement in France.1 Bouyer has left an enormous oeuvre extending not only to the study of the sacred liturgy but to other fields of theology and spirituality. Although he taught for several years in American universities and many of his books were published in English, Bouyer’s passing away on October 22, 2004 at the age of ninety-one seemed to have gone largely unnoticed in the Anglophone world.2
Father Louis Bouyer (Photo: wikimediacommons.org)
Joseph Ratzinger and Louis Bouyer were friends who held each other’s work in high esteem. Both were called to the International Theological Commission when it was instituted by Pope Paul VI in 1969. Bouyer recalls the working sessions of the Commission in his unpublished memoirs, and comments especially on Ratzinger’s clarity of vision, vast knowledge, intellectual courage, incisive judgment, and gentle sense of humour. In his remarkable book-length interview of 1979, entitled Le Métier de Théologien (The Craft of the Theologian), which has unfortunately not yet been published in English, Bouyer praises the appointment of the outstanding theologian Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop of Munich.3 Cardinal Ratzinger, in his turn, in a contribution published originally in 2002, recalls the founding of the international theological review Communio Initiated by a group of friends, Communio including the noted theologians Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Jorge Medina Estévez, who later became the Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.4
In The Spirit of the Liturgy, the present Pope’s debt to Bouyer is especially evident in the chapters “Sacred Places – The Significance of the Church Building” and “The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer”, where the French theologian is cited throughout.5 In the short bibliography, Bouyer’s book Liturgy and Architecture features prominently. This work was published originally in English in 1967 by the University of Notre Dame Press; its German translation, used by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, appeared as late as 1993. The theme of orientation in liturgical prayer occupied the theologian Joseph Ratzinger as early as 1966, at the height of the post-conciliar liturgical reform;6 his first significant contribution to the debate dates from the late 1978 and was included in the important volume The Feast of Faith, published in German in 1981.7 However, it appears to have been the work of his friend Bouyer that led Ratzinger to a more profound approach to the subject as is reflected in The Spirit of the Liturgy.
Jewish origins of Christian worship
One of the characteristics of Pope Benedict’s theology of the liturgy is his emphasis on the Jewish roots of Christian worship, which he considers a manifestation of the essential unity of Old and New Testament, a subject to which he repeatedly calls attention.8 Bouyer pursues this methodology in his monograph Eucharist, where he argues that the form of the Church’s liturgy must be understood as emerging from a Jewish ritual context.9
In Liturgy and Architecture, Bouyer explores the Jewish background to early church architecture, especially with regard to the “sacred direction” taken in divine worship. He notes that Jews in the Diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem or, more precisely, towards the presence of the transcendent God (shekinah) in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. Even after the destruction of the Temple the prevailing custom of turning towards Jerusalem for prayer was kept in the liturgy of the synagogue. Thus Jews have expressed their eschatological hope for the coming of the Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the gathering of God’s people from the Diaspora. The direction of prayer was thus inseparably bound up with the messianic expectation of Israel.10
Bouyer observes that this direction of prayer towards the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem gave Jewish synagogue worship a quasi-sacramental quality that went beyond the mere proclamation of the word. This sacred direction was highlighted by the later development of the Torah shrine, where the scrolls of the Holy Scripture are solemnly kept. The Torah shrine thus becomes a sign of God’s presence among his people, keeping alive the memory of his ineffable presence in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. Ratzinger notes in his Spirit of the Liturgy that in Christian sacred architecture, which both continues and transforms synagogue architecture, the Torah shrine has its equivalent in the altar at the east wall or in the apse, thus being the place where the sacrifice of Christ, the Word incarnate, becomes present in the liturgy of the Mass.11
Syrian Churches
[15]
Bouyer’s Liturgy and Architecture made available to a wider public in the 1960’s current research on early Christian sacred architecture in the Near East.12 The oldest surviving Syrian churches, dating from the fourth century onwards, mostly follow the model of the basilica, similar to contemporary synagogues, with the difference, however, that they were in general built with their apse facing towards the east. In churches where some clue remains as to the position of the altar, it appears to have been placed only a little forward from the east wall or directly before it. The orientation of church and altar thus corresponds to the universally accepted principle of facing east in prayer and expresses the eschatological hope of the early Christians for the second coming of Christ as the Sun of righteousness. The bema, a raised platform in the middle of the building, was taken over from the synagogue, where it served as the place for the reading of Holy Scripture and the recitation of prayers. The bishop would sit with his clergy on the west side of the bema in the nave facing towards the apse. The psalmody and readings that form part of the liturgy of the Word are conducted from the bema. The clergy then proceed eastward to the altar for the liturgy of the Eucharist.13 Bouyer’s theory that the “Syrian arrangement” with the bema in the nave was also the original layout of Byzantine churches has met with a very mixed reception among scholars.– What is widely agreed, however, is that the celebrant would have stood in front of the altar, facing east with the congregation for the Eucharistic liturgy.
A Louis Bouyer Church plan (Photo: wikimediacommons.org)
Roman Basilicas
Early Roman churches, especially those with an oriented entrance, such as the Lateran Basilica or Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (which is unique in many ways), present questions regarding their liturgical use that are still being debated by scholars. According to Bouyer the whole assembly, the bishop or priest celebrant who stood behind the altar as well as the people in the nave would turn towards the east and hence towards the doors during the Eucharistic prayer.15 The doors may have been left open so that the light of the rising sun, the symbol of the risen Christ and his second coming in glory, flooded into the nave. The assembly would have formed a semicircle that opened to the east, with the celebrating priest as its apex. In the context of religious practice in the ancient world, this liturgical gesture does not appear as extraordinary as it might seem today. It was the general custom in antiquity to pray towards the open sky, which meant that in a closed room one would turn to an open door or an open window for prayer, a custom that is well attested by Jewish and Christian sources.16 Against this background it would seem quite possible that for the Eucharistic prayer the faithful, along with the celebrant, turned towards the eastern entrance. The practice of priest and people facing each other arose when the profound symbolism of facing east was no longer understood and the faithful no longer turned eastward for the Eucharistic prayer. This happened especially in those basilicas where the altar was moved from the middle of the nave to the apse.
The Byzantine development of the richly decorated east wall as “liturgical east” as illustrated by the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna (Photo: wikimediacommons.org)
Another line of argument can be pursued if we start from the observation that facing east was accompanied by looking upwards, namely towards the eastern sky which was considered the place of Paradise and the scene of Christ’s second coming. The lifting up of hearts for the canon, in response to the admonition “Sursum corda,” included the bodily gestures of standing upright, raising one’s arms and looking heavenward. It is no mere accident that in many basilicas (only) the apse and triumphal arch were decorated with magnificent mosaics; their iconographic programmes are often related to the Eucharist that is celebrated underneath. These mosaics may well have served to direct the attention of the assembly whose eyes were raised up during the Eucharistic prayer. Even the priest at the altar prayed with outstretched, raised arms and no further ritual gestures. Where the altar was placed at the entrance of the apse or in the central nave, the celebrant standing in front of it could easily have looked up towards the apse. With splendid mosaics representing the celestial world, the apse may have indicated the “liturgical east” and hence the focus of prayer.17 This theory has the distinct advantage that it accounts better for the correlation between liturgy, art, and architecture than that of Bouyer, which must accommodate a discrepancy between the sacred rites and the space created for them. Pope Benedict alludes to this theory in the beautiful comments he made on orientation in liturgical prayer in his homily during the Easter Vigil 2008.18
Even if we assume that priest and people were facing one another in early Christian basilicas with an eastward entrance, we can exclude any visual contact at least for the canon, since all prayed with arms raised, looking upwards. At any rate, there was not much to see at the altar, since ritual gestures, such as signs of the cross, altar kisses, genuflections, and the elevation of the Eucharistic species, were only added later.19 Bouyer is certainly correct in saying that the Mass “facing the people,” in the modern sense, was unknown to Christian antiquity, and that it would be anachronistic to see the Eucharistic liturgy in the early Roman basilicas as its prototype.
Bouyer acclaims Byzantine church architecture as a genuine development of the early Christian basilica: those elements that were not appropriate for the celebration of the liturgy were either changed or removed, so that a new type of building came into being. A major achievement was the formation of a particular iconography that stood in close connection with the sacred mysteries celebrated in the liturgy and gave them a visible artistic form. Church architecture in the West, on the other hand, was more strongly indebted to the basilican structure. Significantly, the rich decoration of the east wall and dome in Byzantine churches has its counterpart in the Ottonian and Romanesque wall-paintings and, even further developed, in the sumptuous altar compositions of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, which display themes intimately related to the Eucharist and so give a foretaste of the eternal glory given to the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass.20
The Liturgical Movement and Mass “facing the people”
Drawing on his own experience, Bouyer relates that the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century had two chief motives for promoting the celebration of Mass versus populum. First, they wanted the Word of God to be proclaimed towards the people. According to the rubrics for Low Mass, the priest had to read the Epistle and the Gospel from the book resting on the altar. Thus the only option was to celebrate the whole Mass “facing the people,” as was provided for by the Missal of St Pius V21 to cover the particular arrangement of the major Roman basilicas. The instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites Inter Oecumenici of September 26, 1964 allowed the reading of the Epistle and Gospel from a pulpit or ambo, so that the first incentive for Mass facing the people was met. There was, however, another reason motivating many exponents of the Liturgical Movement to press for this change, namely, the intention to reclaim the perception of the Holy Eucharist as a sacred banquet, which was deemed to be eclipsed by the strong emphasis on its sacrificial character. The celebration of Mass facing the people was seen as an adequate way of recovering this loss.
Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Mass ad orientem (Photo: Vatican Photo Service)Bouyer notes in retrospect a tendency to conceive of the Eucharist as a meal in contrast to a sacrifice, which he calls a fabricated dualism that has no warrant in the liturgical tradition.22 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord’s body and blood,”23, and these two aspects cannot be isolated from each other. According to Bouyer, our situation today is very different from that of the first half of the twentieth century, since the meal aspect of the Eucharist has become common property, and it is its sacrificial character that needs to be recovered.24
Pastoral experience confirms this analysis, because the understanding of the Mass as both the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Church has diminished considerably, if not faded away among the faithful.25 Therefore it is a legitimate question to ask whether the stress on the meal aspect of the Eucharist that complemented the celebrant priest’s turning towards the people has been overdone and has failed to proclaim the Eucharist as “a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands).”26 The sacrificial character of the Eucharist must find an adequate expression in the actual rite. Since the third century, the Eucharist has been named “prosphora,” “anaphora,” and “oblation,” terms that articulate the idea of “bringing to,” “presenting,” and thus of a movement towards God.
Conclusion
Bouyer painted with a broad brush and his interpretation of historical data is sometimes questionable or even untenable. Moreover, he was inclined to express his theological positions sharply, and his taste for polemics made him at times overstate the good case he had. Like other important theologians of the years before the Second Vatican Council, he had an ambiguous relationship to post-Tridentine Catholicism and was not entirely free of an iconoclastic attitude.27 Later, he deplored some post-conciliar developments especially in the liturgy and in religious life, and again expressed this in the strongest possible terms.28
Needless to say, Benedict XVI does not share Bouyer’s attitude, as is evident from his appreciation of sound and legitimate developments in post-Tridentine liturgy, sacred architecture, art, and music. It should also be noted that Joseph Ratzinger does not take up the later, more experimental chapters of Liturgy and Architecture, where new schematic models of church buildings are presented. Despite its limitations, however, Bouyer’s book remains an important work, and it is perhaps its greatest merit that it introduced a wider audience to the significance of early Syrian church architecture. Louis Bouyer was one of the first to raise questions that seemed deeply outmoded then, but have now become matters of intense liturgical and theological debate.29
Rev. Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Germany and priest of the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in London, is the Coordinator of the Master’s program in “Architecture, Sacred Art and Liturgy” at the Università Europea di Roma/Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum and a Consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. He has published in the fields of Patristics and liturgical studies, including Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2nd edition 2009.
1 Cf. the more recent contributions of J.-F. Thomas, “Notes sur le sacré et la liturgie chez Louis Bouyer et Joseph Ratzinger,”Communio 31 (2006): 45-62; and K. Lemna, “Louis Bouyer’s Defense of Religion and the Sacred: Sacrifice and the Primacy of Divine Gift in Christian Liturgy,” Antiphon 12 (2008): 2-24.
2 Unlike in France, where an obituary by J.-R. Armogathe was published in Le Figaro, October 27, 2004 and one by H. Tinq in Le Monde, October 27, 2004.
3 L. Bouyer, Le Métier du Théologien. Entretiens avec Georges Daix (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1979; republished Geneva: Ad Solem, 2005), 166.
4 J. Ratzinger, “Eucharist–Communion–Solidarity: Christ Present and Active in the Blessed Sacrament,” in On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans. M. J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 112.
5 J. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. J. Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 62-84.
6 In a lecture at the Katholikentag in Bamberg, also published in English translation: J. Ratzinger, “Catholicism after the Council,” trans. P. Russell, The Furrow 18 (1967): 3-23.
7 J. Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986. 2nd Ed. 2006), 139-145.
8 See, for instance, Spirit of the Liturgy, 66.
9 L. Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. C. U. Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).
10 Cf. Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 17-20.
11 Cf. Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, 70-71.
12 For example, J. Lassus, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1947); and G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord: Le Massif du Bélus à l’époque romaine, 3 vol. (Paris: P. Geutner, 1953-1958).
13 See Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 24-39.
14 Cf. the criticism of R. F. Taft, “Some Notes on the Bema in the East and West Syrian Traditions,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 34 (1968): 326-359 (reprint with supplementary notes in R. F. Taft, Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), 327, 359.
15 Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 55-56.
16 Daniel 6:10, Tobit 3:11, and Acts 10:9; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 5,1 (31a); 5,5 (34b); Origen, De oratione 32. There is archaeological evidence of Galilean synagogues from the late first century A.D. with the entrance facing towards Jerusalem. It would seem that the assembly turned towards the open doors for prayer and thus looked towards the direction of the sacred city.
17 See especially S. Heid, “Gebetshaltung und Ostung in frühchristlicher Zeit,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 82 (2006): 347-404.
18 Benedict XVI, Homily for the Easter Vigil, March 22, 2008.
19 See Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 56-59.
20 Ibid., 60-70.
21Missale Romanum (1570/1962), Ritus servandus in celebratione Missae, V,3.
22 Cf. Bouyer’s postscript to the French edition of K. Gamber, Tournés vers le Seigneur! (Zum Herrn hin!), trans. S. Wallon (Le Barroux: Sainte-Madeleine 1993), 67: “il n’y a jamais eu, dans aucune religion, un sacrifice qui ne soit pas un repas, mais un repas sacré : reconnu comme enveloppant le mystère d’une spéciale présence et communication divine.”
23 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1382.
24 Cf. Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture, 106-111.
25 Cf. the telling comments of R. J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies. Foreword by E. Schillebeeckx (London: SCM Press, 1985), 67.
26 Council of Trent (1562), Session XXII, Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass, ch. 1: Denzinger-Schönmetzer 1740, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1366.
27 In fact, his position on Mass “facing the people” developed: see his letter to Father Pie Duployé, O.P., of 1943, a text that proved to be very influential for liturgical renewal in France. Bouyer writes that, in order to promote the participation of the faithful in the liturgy, certain changes need to be made: “Cela doit, dans beaucoup de cas, signifier l’autel face au people, comme dans les basiliques romaines; et c’est, dans tous les cas, la disparition irrémédiable des retables, des pots de fleur, des gradins, … des tabernacles inutiles ou inutilement volumineux.” The letter is conveniently added to the Ad Solem edition of Le Métier du théologien, 281.
28 L. Bouyer, in The Decomposition of Catholicism: “We must speak plainly: there is practically no liturgy worthy of the name today in the Catholic Church … Perhaps in no other area is there a greater distance (and even formal opposition) between what the Council worked out and what we actually have” (trans. C. U. Quinn [London: Sands & Co., 1970], 99). See also Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1975), 12.
29 Cf. the preface written by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 for the first volume of his collected works: “Zum Eröffnungsband meiner Schriften,” in Theologie der Liturgie: Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2008), 5-8. An English translation by M. Sherry is available on http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/208933?eng=y (accessed on August 11, 2010). The English-language edition of this important work is being prepared by Ignatius Press.
