Rhabanus

@Praxiteles wrote:

St. Joseph’s Church, Liscarroll, Co. Cork.

The latest we hear from the Cloyne HACK’s attempt to devastate the interior of this church is that 13 objections have been lodged with Cork County Council opposing the proposals to gut the interior and demolish the existing sacristy. Cork County Council wrote to the applicant on 24 May 2007 requesting further information – and well they might as it was not mentioned anywhere in the application that it was intended to demolish not only the altar rail but also the altar, the tabernacle and to erase the entire sanctuary platform – in true Will Dowsing fashion!

There were also a few hairy aspects to the application as lodged with Cork County Council. On a few headings, it should be possible to have the application declared invalid. We shall watch to see how that one works out.

This is an absolute outrage. There is no excuse for this kind of vandalism to go unchecked. Now that the case number is available, the folks are going to have to raise their voices in protest. How strange that during a period of relative prosperity Ireland’s churches are being demolished in increments. It took decades and in some cases centuries of saving to erect these monuments of faith, and now a cabal of iconoclasts are working hammer and tongs to destroy what their ancestors erected as monuments to faith.

This is all symptomatic of a much deeper crisis of faith. Who would have thought in 1958 that Ireland would be going down this path? What centuries of the fiercest persecutions could not uproot has been swept away in twenty years of prosperity. Is anyone examining this phenomenon?? Any analytical studies forthcoming??

@Praxiteles wrote:

Here are those very ladies!

Great shot! Thanks, Prax.

I hope that the Corpus Christi procession is making a comeback in Ireland. John Paul II certainly did his best to encourage Corpus Christi processions all over the world. He revived the procession in Rome and had it go down the via Merulana from St John Lateran to St Mary Major – the very route used in the Middle Ages by the papal retinue for the Easter morning procession before the first Mass of Easter Day.

In his younger days the Pope himself carried the Monstrance, but with the advance of age and infirmity, Pope John Paul would kneel on a priedieu before the Eucharistic Lord in the Monstrance and be drawn down the route on a float. The faithful dwelling along the route would hang fair linens and damasks from their windows, and display flowers to salute the Blessed Sacrament.

At the end of the procession, the Holy Father would wrest from the deacons supporting the canopy a promise to hold Corpus Christi processions once they returned to their native countries as priests.

The current Pope, Benedict XVI, has maintained this praiseworthy practice, and so he will go down the via Merulana in procession next Thursday on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (or Corpus Domini).

I hope that the main parishes in Ireland still maintain the beloved Corpus Christi procession. Tell Rhabanus that your parish still does a nice procession and restore his faith in Ireland as the Land of Saints and Scholars.

For petals to be strewn in this year’s procession, apply to ake or Prax. They have their finger on the floral pulse of ecclesiastical Ireland and are poised with machete in hand to provide plenty of petals on demand.

@Rhabanus wrote:

Thanks for the photo, ake. Allow old Rhabanus to ruminate a little on what he sees here. If any of the flowers placed on this altar are artificial, then shame on the perpetrators. If, on the other hand, the flowers are real, then a few comments are in order.

The altar is dedicated to Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary (depicted as the Seat of Wisdom [with Christ Child on lap for He is Divine Wisdom Incarnate] bestowing the Holy Rosary on St Dominic and St Catherine of Siena). Because of this dedication to Our Lady of the Rosary, it is altogether fitting that all the flowers presented and displayed here be roses. The colours, too, ought to follow the traditional scheme: the Joyful Mysteries (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation, Finding of the Christ Child in the Temple) are signified by white roses. The Sorrowful Mysteries (Agony in the Garden, Scourging, Crowning with Thorns, Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion and Death) are symbolised by red roses. The Glorious Mysteries (Resurrection, Ascension, Descent of the Holy Spirit, Assumption, Coronation) are portrayed by gold roses.

The roses were arranged in abundance during the month of May because this is the month dedicated to Mary and the faithful were expressing their devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary by placing at her altar the flowers most symbolic of the mysteries contained and celebrated in the Holy Rosary. Context is of utmost importance, particularly re the species and colour of flowers at this particular altar. Granted, they might perhaps have been arranged more artistically. Nevertheless, the general idea is quite valid and praiseworthy.

You and Prax should unsheath your machetes in the newer style of church where potted plants constitute a miniature jungle with water streaming across walls and irrigating the flora and fauna that flourish in the “sacred space.” The newly rebuilt Church of St Gabriel of the Most Sorrowful Virgin in Toronto, Canada, for example, boasts of being the most environmentally friendly church ever built. It is now styled an “eco-church.” Check out its website. It is the darling of the Green movement. Perhaps one of you more technologically deft threaders can cut and paste a few photos of this Green Phenomenon. I think, ake, you’ll be happy to return to Waterford once you’ve been to “eco-church.”

http://www.stgabesparish.ca/New_church/index.php
Take a look at the website of “St Gabe’s” church – pretty hip, no?

New Church
A Roman Catholic “Passionist” Parish | 670 Sheppard Ave. E. | Toronto, ON | M2K 1B7 | (416) 221-8866 | office@stgabesparish.ca
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New Church
Fifty years ago the Passionist Community of Canada, at the invitation of Archbishop Cardinal McGuigan, built a beautiful new church in a farmer’s field. Today, that building stands in the centre of a vibrant and bustling urban landscape. Now it is time that, as a Parish Family, we bring to life our vision for a new church building.

The world has changed in a half-century. The Passionists’ original dream included a seminary for vocations to the priesthood. The Church’s understanding of ministry has broadened to include the profound call to lay people. The population of our parish has become wonderfully diverse. And our responsibility to creation has become a spiritual and practical priority. These contemporary realities must be reflected in our community vision. For the Passionists, this is an opportunity to renew their commitment to the future of St. Gabriel’s Parish, and to provide the lasting legacy of a new church.

The new church affirms and emphasizes the warm and inclusive sense found in the parish community over these fifty years. In addition, the architecture promotes an even deeper sense of inclusiveness, as it links our community of faith with the community of Earth. The Sun plays through skylights in our worship. The Garden is not simply beautiful, but also instructive about our interrelationship with all living beings. Our sense of sacred space extends beyond the walls to encompass the illuminating green of the Garden. This, beyond the financial investment, beyond the actual architectural beauty, is the legacy that the Passionist Community feels privileged to present.

It is with great gratitude and a deep sense of mission that we embrace this new vision, and walk together into a promising future.

More on the new church
Do you want to know more about the new church?
Read about the eco-theology behind the church and its application in these two articles recently submitted to the Celebrate Liturgy Magazine:

St. Gabriel’s Church: A LEEDâ„¢ church building project #1 (deals with theology)
St. Gabriel’s Church: A LEEDâ„¢ church building project #2 (deals with practical application)

A look inside the new church

South wall of church

Our entrance called the Gathering Space

Living wall/entrance to the offices/elevator

Ceremonial Doors – the entrance to our Worship Space

Baptismal font

Baptismal font – picture taken from the front. Lecturn is in back of picture.

Standing behind the altar looking at the parishioners

Altar

Statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

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@Praxiteles wrote:

I agree with ake. The flower situation is completely out of hand and needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, we have moved from flowers as decorations for the principal feasts and festivals to a situation where the church has become an amphitheater for the local flower club. Not only are flowers supplied but also rags, banners, dross, junk, posters,etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. whicyh are subsequently discarded in the sacristy. Worst of all is when the local flower club gets “expressive” and we find all sorts of meaningless junk dumped in front of the altar in such a way that you cannot walk around it and you cannot approach it from the front. Where are the liturgists now?

Interestingly, the Jansenists hated flowers and the famous Jansenist Synod of Pistoia banned any flowers in a church. Now we have the opposite extreme. Time to bring out the machette.

Just get home from Pistoia, did you, Prax? I hope you haven’t picked up any nasty habits from the Jansenist friends you met on the weekend. Your tone sounds distinctly militant.

Rhabanus is of the more pacific mindset that floral arrangements for church, like sacred architecture, ought to be left to the experts rather than the hacks and the HACKS. The problem lies, after all, not in the flowers or greens themselves, but in the tasteless way that they are strewn about sanctuaries without a clue as to the canons of good taste and common sense. The churches maintained by the Fathers of the Oratory, for example, on nearly any continent you can name, can boast with reason of tastefully and beautifully decorated altars, sanctuaries, and shrines. Many Anglican churches, too, do a pretty good job with flowers in church, and have published informative and improving books on the matter. Plenty of good reading there!

Flowers in church demand care, sense, and taste – all too lacking in many of today’s local parishes where sloppiness and the lowest common denominator abound. Some priests’ taste is all in their mouth. Relying on highminded but inept volunteers to decorate one’s church is akin to inflicting similar punishment on the faithful by letting generous but inept musicians twankle their guitars, bash their tambourines, or pound on the organ during liturgical functions. Sir Edward Elgar, who wrote some simple but exquisite settings of well known hymns and motets once complained about his parish organist, who, according to Elgar, had “one foot on the pedals and the other in the grave.”

The prevalent tendency toward “folk art,” as opposed to true artistic excellence in art, architecture, and, yes, even floral decoration, often succeeds only in turning people away from devotion and religion, rather than leading them to pray and to meditate more deeply on the mysteries being celebrated.

Not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater, Rhabanus urges closer attention to the canons of good taste in floral displays in church, and cautions local pastors and altar guilds against the danger of throwing out the baby and drinking the bath water.

Put down the machette, Prax, and think ‘flower power.’ You’re not in Pistoia any more!
Consider these memorable lines from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience:

‘Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an Apostle in the high aesthetic band,
As you walk down Picadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand.
And ev’ryone will say,
As you walk your flow’ry way,
“If he’s content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man
this pure young man must be!”‘

@ake wrote:

Very interesting rhabanus thanks. Alot of churches way over do it with the flowers- in Waterford, that church I mentioned before is particularly bad- with one of the side altars (an absolute beauty) totally bombarded with flowers in not very nice vases. The arrangement is unthoughtful, and does not recognise the architectural/artistic design- a flower is put wherever there is level surface. I didn’t want to photograph it like that and the only other option was to move all of those pots on to the ground momentarily- I gave up there were so many.

Sounds like a purveyor of schlock hath invaded the church at Waterford! Interesting that you should comment on the poor quality of the vases. If a decorator were serious about doing up an altar in proper fashion, vases specifically designed for the altar would be used. The architect of the church would have provided such at least in the nineteenth century. Can you imagine Pugin, for instance, allowing a reredos to be cluttered up with tasteless vases and deplorable flower arrangements? Methinks that good old Pugin would have “cleansed the temple” forthwith. The sacristans would have been sweeping up plenty of smashed glass after that event!

Good architects design tasteful furnishings and accoutrements that lend coherence to their overall work, all the components complementing one another.

An amusing story is told about the London Oratory on Brompton Rd. I hope that I am getting all the facts right. During a solemn high Mass on a great feast, the priest celebrant proceeded with the deacon and subdeacon to incense the main altar. There was so much foliage and frondage on the reredos and throughout the sanctuary that when the deacon went down to incense one of the attendant clergy, he found himself brushing back overhanging branches until he could actually find the priest waiting to be incensed. The deacon’s comment, uttered sotto voce, and doubtless inspired by another renowned encounter in the jungle: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

I wish you had taken the photo of the altar in the Waterford church anyway, even if only as an object lesson in how not to decorate an altar. Sometimes we learn by the via negativa – learning what NOT to do.

Please keep the photos coming, ake. They are splendid. If you return to Waterford and click the jungle, I’ll try to spot Dr Livingstone.

@Rhabanus wrote:

John Henry Newman remarked in the nineteenth century that he found it odd that there was never any money to be had for beautifying or decorating churches, but there always seemed to be enough in the kitty to renovate, remodel, and redecorate the rectories and presbyteries of his day. How interesting that today money can be found to wreckovate the church, while the rectories are looking ever so much more posh, bedecked with the latest gadgetry and techno-toys from automatic garage-door-openers to plasma screens and virtual reality computer games. There seems no end of improvements to rectories whilst the House of God is stripped down right to the bare stone work and every thing of beauty swept into the rubbish bin or sent round to decorate pubs.

I think that the faithful should form an organisation to put an end to this reckless frenzy of artistic and architectural nihilism. If the clergy are not going to educate their successors in art, architecture, sacred music, and cultural heritage – as Vatican II called them to do! – then the faithful who do have human and cultural formation, as well as a deep commitment to the Catholic Faith, are going to have to assert themselves firmly
and brook no opposition on the matter of preserving the good, the true, and the beautiful in the works of art and architecture which their forbears provided at great sacrifice for the glory of God and the good of the Church.

All it takes is a small group of faithful stalwarts who can stand up and be counted to articulate the vision, draft the mission statement, and then proceed with all due decorum to announce the foundation of the Church Preservation and Conservation Institute.

This is all too reminiscent of the Arian crisis back in the fourth century. Don’t you remember? The lay faithful and the pope of the day were in tune with the orthodox faith, professing that the Word-made-flesh (God the Son, Jesus Christ) is consubstantial with the Father, whereas the bishops ran the gamut of dissent from avid profession of Christ being “of like substance” to the Father, to useless dithering and flip-flopping on the issue. Nevertheless, St Athanasius sounded the clarion call and galvanised orthodox Catholicism for a new generation. Newman in the nineteenth century noted parallels between the England of his day and that world which had awakened to find itself Arian. [Read his Arians of the Fourth Century!]

Today it would seem that Ireland has awakened to find itself in the grip of an iconoclastic fit. The twofold solution is to restore a more robust appreciation of the mystery of the Incarnation, and to celebrate (recover) Catholicism’s rich heritage of ICONOGRAPHY. Teach the Faith through icons. The pre-literate (eg infants and children) will thank you for it, particularly as they read magnificent iconography in fresco and window and statuary during dull homilies. [Arians of the Fourth Century makes for good adult reading during particularly boring, ill-prepared, and long-winded sermons that go nowhere fast.]

Our young people deserve to read sacred signs, symbols, and sacraments with comprehension and facility. If they are to inherit the Faith, then we, like Benedict XVI, have to teach them through sacred art and architecture. Note the number and high quality of illustrations in the monumental Catechism of the Catholic Church. In the much more compact Compendium Catechism of the Catholic Church, then-Cardinal Ratzinger insisted on inserting even MORE illustrations in order to teach the Faith with clarity, and to show the consistency of the Catholic Tradition throughout the ages.

Ireland’s religious heritage is far too precious to be allowed to slip through the fingers of the current generation. This requires PRO-ACTIVE policies and a clear VISION for the future of Ireland’s churches and cathedrals. Anybody out there?

@Praxiteles wrote:

This, I take it, is what is called a “measured response”!

What can you possibly expect from Cobh Urban District Council? I hope that the whole thing can be closed down by absorbing it into the greater Cork area. The think is just too incompetent and would cause the former rotten boroughs to blush! No, in the case of Cobh UDC drastic remedial work is urgently required.

There seems to be an inability to create and to sustain serious watchdog enterprises. Why is this so?

@ake wrote:

We could also use a National Trust for country houses and estates, yet after all these years incredibly there’s still no such body. I would be very pessimistic about the remaining churches and valuable features and about any group for their protection. I think Cobh got lucky.

I agree with you, ake, when you point out the need to protect country houses and estates by means of a National Trust. These constitute an invaluable and irreplaceable part of the national patrimony. Yet these fall into a category apart from churches and cathedrals in which a greater segment of the population has a different kind of vested interest and to which it has a different relationship.

The majority of people avail themselves of church buildings in more ways than they do of the country houses and estates. Churches and cathedrals are used for liturgical, religious, devotional, and sometimes even civic purposes in ways much different from country houses and estates, worthy as these properties certainly are.

Did Cobh get lucky or just get smart? I suspect the latter. Cobh was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and we all know that a camel is really only a horse designed by committee. The faithful in Cobh had had enough, they had smelled something fishy, and decided to get to the bottom of the whole corrupt and sordid mess. Result? The cathedral stands untouched (and, we all regret, untidy – they really ought to clean the place and give it a good once-over to smarten it up just a bit.)

When one considers the invective, the cheek, the unmitigted gall, and the untold sums of money squandered on the vain proposals which came to naught, one must conclude that time, energy, and money could be better spent on forming a Church and Cathedral Trust for Ireland.

I wonder how the pezzi grossi felt after they had lost face, credibility, and plenty of money? The average Joe and Mary in Cobh rejoiced that their cathedral was no longer under threat. Pat and Susan Ireland probably would like to see their parish church, chapel, or cathedral preserved from the liturgical bruisers and wreckers; hence the need for a nation-wide institute or entity to preserve, conserve, and protect church buildings all over Ireland. Naturally the destructive tendencies of a superannuated hippy, yippy, or yahoo priest would militate against such a foundation, not to mention those of the architects in donkey jackets. These self-made irrelevancies, though, scarcely figure in the future of Irish churches. The future lies with Joe and Mary Cobh and Pat and Susan Ireland, not with Bishop Humperdink, Canon Crumpet, Architect Zen Bumble and the luminous facade of St Sardine’s Bungalow-Church-of-the-Lowered-Ceiling.

Why not be part of the solution and return Catholicism to its former status as an organised religion?

@ake wrote:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58086761@N00/474788951/in/set-72157600141174376/ Look here for an exampl e of remarkably fine plastering in a medieval church. The interior of the nave however is not plastered but in consolation the rubblework is about as attractive as could be.

Speaking of ‘rubblework’ look at the masonry break in Clonamery church http://www.flickr.com/photos/58086761@N00/477261589/in/set-72157600157077521/ How infinitely superior the pre-norman tradition was aesthetically.

To return to Ireland, for just a moment, it seems to me that a national organisation for the conservation of Catholic churches in Ireland ought to be formed in order to stem the tide of wreckovation and ill-advised tampering with an important dimension of Irish and Catholic heritage. The parlous state of neo-Gothic churches and the proposed gutting of some of Br Michael Augustine O’Riordan’s churches cry out for a seriously constituted institute or society which will not let bureaucratic muddle and uneducated clerics get away with destroying churches and cathedrals significant to national and religious heritage. It is to be regretted that such an institute or society has to be considered; nevertheless, the more that time elapses, the more these important sites are at risk. Organise!!!

@Praxiteles wrote:

Here is the rototype for the first statue: Raphael’s Sixtine Madonna of 1513/1514

The canvas with the Virgin, Child and Saints Sixtus and Barbara, usually called the Sistine Madonna, is characterized by an imaginary space created by the figures themselves. The figures stand on a bed of clouds, framed by heavy curtains which open to either side. The Virgin actually appears to descend from a heavenly space, through the picture plane, out into the real space in which the painting is hung. The gesture of St Sixtus and the glance of St Barbara seem to be directed toward the faithful, whom we imagine beyond the balustrade at the bottom of the painting. The Papal tiara, which rests on top of this balustrade, act as a bridge between the real and pictorial space.

The painting was probably intended to decorate the tomb of Julius II, for the holy pope Sixtus was the patron saint of the Della Rovere family and St Barbara and the two winged ‘genii’ (visible at the bottom of the picture space) symbolize the funeral ceremony. The canvas was located in the convent of St Sixtus in Piacenza and was later donated by the monks to Augustus III, King of Saxony. It was carried to Moscow after the Second World War, and was later returned to Dresden.

Generations of visitors to the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden have been deeply impressed by the way in which Raphael portrayed the Madonna in this painting. It has been reproduced over and over again, and almost everyone is familiar with the putti leaning on the balustrade. The Madonna appears from behind a curtain, confident and yet hesitant. The curtain gives the illusion of hiding her figure from the eyes of the onlooker and at the same time of being able to protect Raphael’s painting.

Thanks for the informative description, Prax. I did not know that the patron saint of the della Rovere family was St Sixtus. This explains why Pope Julius II’s uncle took the name Sixtus IV upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter. St Barbara is a logical co-patroness for Julius on account of his devotion to war. St Barbara is the patroness of war. She features prominently in this capacity, for example, in the National War Museum in Ottawa, Canada. Julius might have done better to treat her with more devotion, as her intercession was in little evidence during his many (expensive) defeats. He so depleted the papal coffers by his penchant for battle that his tomb – slated to be the centrepiece of the ‘new’ St Peter’s – was never completed. What is recognised now as Julius II’s ‘tomb’ in the church of S Pietro in Vincoli (across town not far from St Mary Major)is a considerably pared-down version of the original plan. The Moses, so lifelike that Michelangelo struck it on the knee with a mallet as he shouted “Speak!” was but one of a series of great statues designed to adorn the tomb. Several unfinished statues of ‘slaves’ are on display at the Accademia which houses Michelangelo’s David.

It was commonly held that Julius II was more at home riding into battle in the saddle of his charger than celebrating Mass at the high altar of St Peter’s. One can scarcely believe that Sixtus and his bellicose nephew were Franciscans!! [There may be some doubt about whether Julius was ever a Franciscan, but Sixtus certainly was]

The story of Julius II’s tomb is instructive. Although Julius’ “tomb” is in the church of san Pietro in Vincoli (St Peter-in-Chains), the pontiff is actually buried in an obscure spot beneath St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It is marked by discreet brass lettering set into the floor over by the pipe organ donated by Pope Pius XII – on the viewer’s right as one looks at the Altar of the Chair. You’ll have to move a few stacks of chairs or benches, and perhaps a barricade or two, in order to view it. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The story serves as a cautionary tale against bold bishops whose schemes of self-aggrandisement and the vainglorious attempt to leave behind them a lasting monument of (or TO) themselves in the house of God only point up their own folly. As bishops age and advance inexorably toward their particular judgement, it behooves them to devote themselves more assiduously to works of piety and the frequent consideration of The Four Last Things [death, judgement, heaven, and hell] rather than to tinkering with architecture and dabbling in exotic renovations that they may never see either to completion or to payment. Clearly Julius II was not the only prelate “out of touch” with his constituents and his bankers. Read Erasmus’ hilarious send-up of Julius’ approach to St Peter at the Pearly Gates. It parodies the ancient Roman satirist’s Apocolacintosis [or Pumpkinification] rather than apotheosis of the Emperor Claudius. Erasmus’ satire is titled Iulius exclusus or Julius Locked Out of Heaven. Take along a copy to read under a plane tree with a nice glass of wine on your next picnic to Cobh.