Rhabanus

@Fearg wrote:

Re Longford. To replace the old altar, surely they could have found something more in keeping with the building that that cheap looking banner? it totally detracts from the architectural coherence of the apse.

It qualifies as an unmitigated “nightmare of incongruities” (AWN Pugin). The ‘tapestry’, of distinctly inferior design and rather dubious execution, clashes not only with the architecture of the sanctuary, but especially with the art on the apsidal wall. The saints stencilled in trompe l’oeil fashion really show up the banner for the monster of depravity that it is.

I don’t know what the artist got for it, but the bishop should have got 20 years on bread and water.

It calls to mind a phrase coined by Anne Roche Muggeridge in The Gates of Hell: “With shepherds like these, wolves become superfluous.”

@Praxiteles wrote:

On the positive side, here we have a development in Farragut, Tennessee that is perhaps a step in the right direction and an indication of where architecture is going in more plugged in Catholic circles. There are, however, elements that I would have reservations about: a day chapel AND an adoration chapel. Why cannot both be comdined into one chapel to be used for daily Mass and thereafter for Adoration thus allowing one the practical ability of renewing the Sacred Species frequently and the theological ability of maintaining a link between the Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. Also, I do not believe that it is appropriate for toilets to be included in the body of a church. These should be located in a sacristy, outside the church, or else in a separate building linked to the main body of the church. Perhaps Rhabanus can tell us more of these domestic habits of the Americans?

http://www.hdb.com/projects/st_john_neumann.html

This firm likewise designed the beautiful Church of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston.

See the fair sanctuary here: http://www.walsingham-church.org/

Don’t forget about Thomas Gordon Smith Architects. This is the firm which is erecting the Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek, Oklahoma and building the Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Denton, Nebraska.

Beauty is not sacrificed for funtion with the firms mentioned above.

As for one chapel serving as both the venue for daily Mass and adoration afterwards, this is the case with many churches where perpetual adoration has been introduced. Nevertheless, I have seen places where both are operative. I agree with Praxiteles that both functions can be accommodated in the one chapel, and this has a good pedagogical effect regarding the Blessed Sacrament as the Fruit of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. [Catholics seem in almost constant need of having this teaching reinforced. Where has the ‘Catholic instinct’ gone?]

As for the installation of washroom facilities, the churches with which I am most familiar provide these off the narthex, either in a corridor leading to the rectory offices or meeting-rooms, or else on the north side of the narthex (a more appropriate direction for the placing of washrooms than the tabernacle). Washrooms in older churches are generally located in the sacristy or in the hall beneath the church. Many of the latter churches are now installing elevators in the narthex for the convenience of the disabled.

Tell me, now, Prax, are there ANY churches in Ireland that were spared the efforts of the liturgical demolition squads? It strikes me as odd that the faithful in Ireland did not rise up in fury to stop the vandals from accomplishing their fiendish work. How did the barbarians make such deep inroads?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Let not the name Chupuncgo be mentioned – one of the great disasters of the Liturgical Renewal.

Let that name be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every dyptich and calendar. Stricken from every programme and syllabus. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Egypt. Let the name of C be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of liturgists, for all time.

So let it be written.

So let it be done.

I meant to add, Fearg, that the sanctuary of St Catherine’s Dominican church in Newry is currently too cluttered with extraneous stuff, eg the pulpit and the ‘ironing-board’ altarette. Certainly it is a blessing that the high altar was not hauled away and desecrated. Nevertheless, the beauty of the sanctuary is compromised by the modified pulpit – which ought to go in its original place – and the ironing-board which could be removed altogether and sent C.O.D. to PJ’s central depot. [“We re-ordered our churches!” “Rawrk! Polly-want-a-cracker? Rawrk!”] Why do the ‘renovators’ always fancy that everything, including the kitchen sink, has to be piled into the sanctuary? High time to get rid of some of the ‘trash and trumpery’ cluttering up St Catherine’s and restore its pure lines. Is there anything wrong with allowing the architecture draw the visitor deeply and reverently into the mystery of Our Lord’s Eucharistic Presence?

@Praxiteles wrote:

A. Flannery made a complete mess of the translation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At best, they are patchy and depend largely on who did the translating work. They are worse than useless for any sort of serious work because you cannot rely on the text of the translation and have to check every single reference and, more often than not, you end up having to translate the relevant Latin yourself.

Absolutely, Praxiteles. It is now standard practice in academic circles and in scholarly journals to insist on using Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (2 vols), edited by Norman P. Tanner, S.J., original text established by G. Alberigo, J.A. Dossetti, P.-P. Joannou, C. Leonardi, and P. Prodi, in consultation with H. Jedin (London: Sheed and Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). The work presents the conciliar texts from Nicea to Vatican II with the Greek and/or Latin text on one page and English on the other, If you dispute the translator’s efforts, you can see right away what the original text says.

Flannery makes a good door stop or, by times, a useful weapon to settle the cat when he’s harassing the budgey.

I see from the devastation wrought in St Saviour’s that Flannery used the same documents that Paddy Jones did to justify the wreckovation (completed and still intended) of Irish churches: “When you read the Liturgy Constitution you will not find any reference to moving altars, having an ambo, removing altar rails, providing a presider’s chair. But …” So … no document justifies the sackage? Are we dealing, then, with Gnostics who have some internal illumination that the rest of us lack?

Riddle me that one, Praziteles!! And I remember when Catholicism used to be an organised religion!

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

They did something similar at Monaghan and ruined it. And the bishop is still a little sensitive about criticism.5 or 6 years back I said something negative here, and the next thing I get a letter from a dioscesan flunkey asked me to desist.

Diocesan flunkey or no diocesan flunkey, they cannot suppress the truth. The word has long been out. The very stones themselves will cry out!

I draw your kind attention, gentle readers, to a comment on St MacKartan’s Catholic Cathedral, Monaghan in Jeremy Williams, A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland[/I], 1837-1921 (Blackrock, Eire and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1994): “Elaborate Telford organ remains in its intact western gallery. Not so the furnishings at the eastern end. Hague’s altar, baldachino, unconventional throne and pulpit have been replaced by fittings devised by Michael Biggs to conform with liturgical trends of the 1960s following a formula already deployed in Longford Cathedral. But what has been successful in a neo-Classical setting here dispels all sense of the celestial.”

Kudos to Fearg on inaugurating a new thread dedicated to organs, cabinets, and lofts – which survived with far more dignity and respect than the glorious sanctuaries of yesteryear.

Please tell me, Fearg and Paul, that St Saviour’s was spared the ravages of Paddy Jones’ euphemistic boast “We re-ordered our churches!” PLEASE tell me that St Saviour’s survived intact. That spectacular photo in sharp black and white shows off the celestial glory of that pearl of a church. “Tell me, kind Spirit, did Tiny Tim survive? Are these the shadows of things that must be or things that only might be?”

Dare we see a photo of St Saviour’s today? “I see an empty stool beside the hearth, and a little crutch without an owner ….”

@Rhabanus wrote:

The retro-fitted vents in the sanctuary on either side of the throne-like chair do nothing to enhance the ensemble. Che tackezza!

Where is the tabernacle located, anyway? I know that it’s perched parlously on that ridiculous plinth, but where? In some side chapel? The north transept? The south transept? Where is it hiding?

As the Magdalene once famously complained, “They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put Him!”

Peek-a-boo! I am sure that He sees us, but where are we to see Him?

Peek-a-boo!

“L’oeil etait dans le tombe – et Il regardait Cain!”

Peek-a-boo!

Thanks to the investigative skills of Fearg, it has been determined that the peek-a-boo tabernacle is located in a northern chapel. In a Gothic shuch this constitutes a solecism at the very least, a gaucherie at least, and perhaps even a blasphemy, if not an outright sacrilege. Follow, for but a moment, the internal logic of a Gothic church, with its liturgical directions firmly in place. The East, whence riseth the morning sun, affords a natural icon of the Risen Christ who is the Sun of Justice. The East conjures up in the Catholic imagination the garden of Eden, Paradise (St Cyril of Jerusalem) and the place from whence shall come the Lord of all who will judge the quick and the dead. (Byzantine and Romaneque churches would depict Christ the Pantocrator in an apsidal fresco or mosaic – for He is Lord of All and will return on the Eighth Day.

Again, in the early Church [St Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Lecture I, St Ambrose of Milan, De Sacramentis], by contrast, the west, as source of darness (the setting sun) was the point most assocoated with the devil. Hence the candidates for baptism would turn westward, the direction ftowards which they would pronounce the apotaxis (renunciation of the devil, his works, and all his pomps)

But in the Gothic churches built in the Middle Ages, it was the north end/transept/side which was regarded as the least favoured place. It was in this direction, toward the north, that the Gospel was proclaimed: in the teeth of the devil. All that was bad and threatening seemed to come from the north (Norsemen, other invaders, ill winds etc.) In Gothic churches, consequently, the north door or transept was the place to display figures of the Old Testament, rather than the New. An exception is the cathedral of Chartres, where St Anne is portrayed in the north transept. This was because Chartres cathedral housed some of her relics (her head). Of course, St Anne would have been somewhat of an Old Testament or at least an Intertestamental figure, hence the north trnsept would not have been an utterly incongruous for her in the iconographic programme of that cathedral, especially since Our Lady would have taken precedence in the cathedral whoch took its name from her.

In the language of Gothic architecture, positioning a tabernacle in the north end of a Gothic building is so utterly tasteless and foolish an act that I daresay it may well constitute an insult to the Blessed Sacrament. Clearly the notion of a squint in the very door of the tabernacle is perhaps the single most egregious gaff of that particular arrangement. Nevertheless, the positioning of a tabernacle on the north side of a Gothic church would never have been perpetrated by serious architects like Pugin, MacCarthy, Ashlin, and Connolly, who were thoroughly conversant with the grammar of Gothic architecture and whose personal dedication to their holy religion would have kept them aloof from such pernicious folly.

I would be most interested to know which ‘liturgical expert’ advised the local bishop to permit the placement of a tabernacle in the north wall of a Gothic church. And people accuse our forebears living in the Dark Ages of quackery!

@Fearg wrote:

I’m fairly sure the crucifix in St Peter’s is brand new and was commisioned as part of the recent renovation project.

It’s a dead ringer for the other one in the Praxiteles’ photo. Note the finials at each end of the vertical and horizontal arms.

I do in fact have access to some recent books on Irish churches and cathedrals, so will do some more routling about in search of the mysterious rood.

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

That is not Monaghan

The crucifix hanging in St Peter’s Belfast, portrayed in 3046 was taken from the rood beam in the church under question. I thought that it was the same church (ie St Peter’s Belfast). No?

@Praxiteles wrote:

More guff from Paddy Jones, the Director of the Pastoral Liturgical Institute in the October number of Intercom. We will shortly have to start a guffers corner!

Perhaps Rhabanus would like to walk us over this particular one.

A Feeble Attempt at Damage Control

Paddy Jones (“The Liturgy Corner,” Intercom, October 2006) may prattle away as much as he likes about the notion of “active” participation in the sacred liturgy. He ought to be told, however, that the word used by Pope St Pius X and the Second Vatican Council was actuosa, translated as “real” or “actual.” Latin, after all, is a precise language and has a term that means “active.” The Latin equivalent for the English adjective ‘active’ is activus, -a, -um, as in vita activa (‘the active life’) as opposed to vita contemplativa (‘the contemplative life’). What Pius X and Vatican II were encouraging was something more subtle and profound than simply particpation that is “active” or an“activity.” An appropriate translation of actuosa here would be ‘involved.’ Paddy Jones, though, would do much better to consult Joseph Ratzinger, Report on the Faith (with Vittorio Messori, San Francisco CA: Ignatius, 1981), pp. 34-35 for an authoritative treatment of th ereal meaning of participatio actuosa.

The sacred Liturgy is essentially a form of prayer, indeed the Church’s official, public prayer. Both Pius X and Vatican II strove to involve the lay faithful more deeply in the mysteries being celebrated by the Church in that priestly office of Jesus Christ which we call the sacred Liturgy. In practical terms, they urged a remote preparation for participation in the sacred Liturgy by the frequent reception of the sacrament of Penance and the avoidance of sin, both mortal and venial, in order to enhance the fruitfulness of participation in Mass and the reception of Holy Communion.

Prayer manuals like Bishop Richard Challoner’s Garden of the Soul and, in later generations, The Key of Heaven tutored the faithful in the ways of prayer, so that their participation in the Mass and the sacraments would be more fruitful. Dom Gaspar Lefebvre’s pastoral explanation of the contents of the Mass and the liturgical year in the St Andrew’s Daily Missal enhanced the liturgical participation of countless Catholics. An ongoing conversion of heart was fostered by such spiritual exercises and pious devotions as the novena of the Nine First Fridays, and after 1917 the Five First Saturdays, membership in sodalities and fraternal organizations like The Holy Name Society, the Children of Mary, the Divine Childhood Association, The St Vincent de Paul Society, the Rosary Guild, etc, etc, etc.

As the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy aptly put it, “… the liturgy itself inspires those who have eaten their fill of the ‘easter sacraments’ to become ‘united in holiness and mutual love’. It prays that, ‘as they live their lives they may hold fast to what they have perceived through faith’. The renewal of the Lord’s covenant with human beings in the eucharist really does have the effect of drawing believers into the overwhelming love of Christ, and fires them with it. From the liturgy, then, especially from the eucharist, grace comes flowing to us as if from a fountain] 10). This is much broader a vision than simply “active” participation understood in functional terms such as making a reponse or singing an acclamation, however worthy these may be in themselves.

Saint Pius X (pope 1903-14) and Vatican II (1963-65) certainly urged the faithful to learn to pray the Eucharistic Liturgy by reciting (saying or singing) those parts of the Mass which pertained to them. Consider, for instance, the effort that went into the 28th International Eucharistic Congress of 1926, held at Soldiers’ Field in Chicago, Illinois, USA, when, for the Solemn Pontifical High Mass celebrated by His Eminence John Cardinal Bonzano, a choir composed of 60,000 parochial school children chanted Gregorian Mass VIII (Missa de Angelis or Mass of the Angels). “Involved”? I should say they were. How many school children today, whether in Dublin, New York, or Chicago, have even heard of “The Mass of the Angels,” much less know how to sing Mass VIII.

I hope that Paddy Jones and his ecclesiastical superiors have not utterly shed their training in Latin, for it would do them credit to read, with comprehension and suitable reflection, section 11 of Sacrosanctum concilium: Ut haec tamen plena efficacitas habeatur, necessarium est ut fideles cum recti animi dispositionibus ad sacram liturgiam accedant, mentem suam voci accommodent, et supernae gratiae cooperentur, ne eam in vacuum recipient. Ideo sacris pastoribus advigilandum est ut in actione liturgica non solum observentur leges ad validam et licitam celebrationem, sed ut fideles scienter, actuose et fructuose eandem participent.

Section 12 of Sacrosanctum concilium reminds all that the spiritual life does not stop with the liturgy, but must penetrate one’s entire life: ‘However, the spiritual life has more to it than sharing in the liturgy. Christians, though called to prayer together, must nevertheless also go to their own room and pray to their Father in secret. Indeed, according to Paul’s teaching, they must pray without ceasing. Again we are taught, also by Paul, always to carry round the dying of Jesus in our bodies, so that the life of Jesus also can be manifested in our mortal flesh. It is on this account that, during the sacrifice of the mass, we pray the Lord, “to receive the offering of the spiritual victim”, and then raise our very selves” to their perfection in becoming “an eternal gift” for himself.’

And this is where the example of the holy pastors of the Church comes in. How are the faith of the Church and the reality of the Liturgy to take root in the hearts and souls of the faithful, when they witness the clergy (higher and lower) denigrate and destroy the very houses of worship that were designed by internationally renowned (and historically acclaimed) archtiects like the Pugins, George Aslin, and James Joseph MacCarthy, and erected by their (the lay faithful’s) ancestors at great, even overwhelming expense met by personal sacrifice? [Consider, for example, the cathedrals of Killarney, Monaghan, Armagh, Belfast and devastation wrought upon the Neo-Gothic interiors.] “You will find,” Paddy Jones jauntily declares, “a renewed emphasis on the Liturgy of the Word.” This “renewed emphasis” on the Liturgy of the Word coincided most ironically with the removal of every magnificent pulpit from the cathedrals of Ireland. Has an explanation of this irony ever been tendered? Are the people in the pews taught to make the correct responses in Latin to the parts of the Mass that pertain to them, as stipulated by the Sacred Congregation for Divine worship under Pope Paul VI in its Letter to Bishops on the Minimum Repertoire of Plain Chant Voluntati obsequens? Some words simply remain unspoken (or unsung).

Paddy Jones exclaims: “In brief, we reordered our churches!” With what preparation of the faithful? To what degree of consulting them on the planning and execution of such reordering? And with what results? Was the wreckovation of churches the length and breadth of Ireland a “grassroots” movement? Are there more Catholics (or others) attending Masses in Ireland in 2006 than in 1966? Surely there are relaiable statistics, available from the Irish government if not from the chancery offices of the Irish Church, which provide the answer to this question. Perhaps Paddy Jones would care to trot them out for our perusal and further discussion. That would make for a most interesting “Liturgy Corner.”

He then rationalizes: “We learned by doing what was required by whom or what?? to translate the vision into reality.” What did ‘we’ learn, anyway? It seems that some dioceses made several not-very-deft attempts to reorder their churches with varying degrees of success (or not). “It is a task not fully achieved yet.” How many more churches have to be sacrificed to the wrecking ball before the experiment is declared “unsuccessful”? Is this a veiled threat against St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh – the last intact Pugin church in all Ireland? I am fully aware that St Colman’s is not the work of Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-52) but that of his son Edward Pugin and George Ashlin (1837-1921). In Irish Churches and Monasteries: An Historical and Architectural Guide (Cork: The Collins Press, 1997), Séan D. O’Reilly points out, “Their finest achievement in church building was Cobh Cathedral, County Cork, begun in 1868 but not completed until the second decade of this century” (pp. 170-171). Is the renovation of St Colman’s the “task not fully achieved yet?”

Several more questions naturally arise: How carefully have the clergy of Ireland read the documents of Vatican II (and for that matter the writings of Pope St Pius X, particularly Tra le sollecitudini with its clarion call for the revival of Gregorian chant in the life of the sacred Liturgy)? Have the clergy also read the FIVE later instructions on the correct application of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium? Did, or does, each bishop in the cathedrals mentioned earlier regard it as his prerogative to bulldoze the sanctuary and reappoint it according to his personal taste with little or no sensitivity for the harm done to the integrity of the sacred architecture itself and the effect that all of this might have on the lay faithful who are constantly being dunned to pay for wreckovation after senseless wreckovation? Is it reasonably to be expected that each bishop, upon episcopal ordination, will proceed to alter his predecessor’s sanctuary according to his own “inspired” designs? And, more concretely, how “actively” were the lay faithful consulted on the inauguration of the abominable whale’s-tooth-tabernacle in Armagh? Or the peek-a-boo tabernacle in once-glorious St Peter’s, Belfast? How about those tapestries in Monaghan? Does Paddy Jones think, even for a heartbeat, that the average, common-sensed lay person with two eyes and a functioning brain in his head, would have opted to destroy the priceless nineteenth-century retables and pulpits of the great cathedrals of Ireland and replace them with either hideous monstrosities that hinder any devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, or overdone palanquins retro-fitted from Eucharistic canopies to exaggerate the importance of bishops?

It seems that the lay faithful and clergy connected with St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh recognise the value of their ecclesiastical heritage and are “actively” “involved” in preserving it from the wiles of architects and prelates alike. They seem fully, actively, and consciously aware that involvement in the sacred Liturgy has nothing to do with chancel-prancing and doing a bit of liturgical soft-shoe or “dance” whenever one feels the humour coming on. They seem intent on keeping their church, their house of worship, intact so that it may glorify God in its artistic integrity, and serve subsequent generations of “pray-ers” as a venue of liturgical and devotional service of God. An Bord Pleanala has concurred with them.

It would behoove Paddy Jones, then, to take as his next text for commentary John Paul II’s last encyclical letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, or the Instruction Redemptionis sacramentum of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. If he should feel particularly “plucky and adventury”, he might even deign to comment on Joseph Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy [trans. John Saward (Ignatius, 2000)]. An excellent section on “The Body and the Liturgy” has this to say: “We are realizing more and more clearly that silence is part of the liturgy. We respond, by singing and praying, to God who addresses us, but on the greater mystery, surpassing all words, summons us to silence. It must, of course, be a silence with content, not just the absence of speech and action. We should expect the liturgy to give us a positive stillness that will restore us. Such stillness will not be just a pause, in which a thousand thoughts and desires assaults us, but a time of recollection, giving us an inward peace, allowing us to draw breath and rediscover the one thing necessary, which we have forgotten. … For silence to be fruitful … it must be an integral part of the liturgical event” [p. 209].

Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, exhorts the faithful – and celebrants – to observe a period of silence after Communion: “This, in all truth, is the moment for an interior conversation with the Lord who has given himself to us, for that essential ‘communicating’, that entry into the process of communication, without which the external reception of the Sacrament becomes mere ritual. … whenever possible, this silence after Communion should be used, and the faithful should be given some guidance for interior prayer” [p. 210]. Perhaps with more fervent interior prayer on the part of people, priests, and prelates, there would be less inclination to propose new schemes of “reordering” churches, and more real “reordering” of one’s spiritual life. It would certainly go a considerable way to creating more peace in the Church.

Abandon the sources of controversy, and there will be no controversy. A sober reconsideration of the perils of resorting to the sledge hammer in a bid to make over a Victorian sanctuary as the solution to declining church attendance and general ecclesial malaise seems the easiest way forestall further unrest and unpleasantness. Perhaps it is best to leave it to another, less restless generation to sort out the arrangement of the liturgy in the light of a more authoritative reading of Vatican II.

In the meanwhile, every effort should be made to learn about the Gothic ideal in art and architecture. It may well be the key to authentic Church renewal in Paddy Jones’ own bailliwick. I leave the final word to Augustus Welby Pugin: “All I have to implore you is to study the subject of ecclesiastical architecture with true Catholic feeling. Do not consider the restoration of ancient art as a mere matter of taste, but remember that it is most closely connected with the revival of the faith itself.”