Rhabanus

The more I think about it, the better seems the notion of Judge Judy sorting out the wreckage and saccage of churches in Co Cork. She would certainly not mince words when dealing with the scammers and scrimshankers who seem to have risen to positions of responsibility and who seem to proliferate on various councils and boards.

Can she be seconded to Ireland as an impartial third-party authority, something like a Resident Magistrate?
Her interventions would beat the living soap operas going on in some parts of the county. And at least “judgement will be rendered.”

Prax, please check to see whether Mrs Cadogan in Skebawn might be available to instruct the good judge on the peculiarites of the local situation. The judge will love Hare Island.

@ake wrote:

No harm closing the gates once in a while though.

As shocking as the philsophical implications are and everything.

Absolutely correct!! What happened to those gates? Where are they now? When are they to be returned? Who is responsible for their removal?

I notice that Judge Judy’s court has gates on its rails – and they certainly swing!!

@Praxiteles wrote:

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

Reading through the file which has now ben made available, some extraordinary little bits and pieces are already beginning to fall out of the tree:

1. Cork County Council granted a declaration to repair the doors of the church. WIthout declaration or planning permission, the main doors have disappeared and have been replaced by a pair of new doors. So far, no prosecution has been taken by the indolent enforcement officer of Cork County Council.

2. Extensive “repair” works are currently going on at the church. The exterior walls have all be beautifully re-pointed with gorgeous raised straps or bands. The re-pointing material is in the hardest available cement to ensure that no water will get into the church – and, more importantly, to ensure that no water will every get OUT either. A beautiful conservation move taht -why bother with lime mortar when there loads of cement about. Again, no complaint from Cork County Council -after all, it is just another old protected structure.

3. Cork County Coucnil was very willing to oblige the powers taht be here. Not only have they granted declarations and turned blind eyes to blatant breaches of the Planninga and Development Act, but IN ADDITION to the present grant of permission to wreck the interior, Cork County Council again rushed out at break-neck deference to grant another permission last year to build a meeting hall in the curtilege of the church and to connect the meeting hall to the church by DEMOLISHING the entie south gable of the sacristy – an original part of an original structure that happens to be a protected structure. Needless to say, the Council was not too concerned to establish the exceptionality of the circumstances that permitted it to grant planning permission for demolition of part of a protected structure.

Given all this, Cork County Council seems bent on ensuring that precious little will be left of this protected structure either inside or outside by the time it is finished.

When will the rule of law return to County Cork?

This mess is what comes of the high and mighty, the movers and the shakers living in everyone else’s pockets. The collusion is worse than reprehensible. Perhaps after all Judge Judy herself should be summoned as an impartial, third-party authority to give the matter a good airing and to render judgement. It could scarcely be more ludicrous, or pompous, than the Murphy screed and its dictatorial tone. In fact, JJ might just get to the source of the corruption!!

Readers of this thread may recall Rhabanus’ remark of last summer about the hideous purple paint on the doors of Liscarroll church. His suggestion was to restore the doors to their original dignity and to give them the appropriate licks of varnish. Now, it seems, they have been replaced! And not a peep from those in positions of responsibility. O tempora! O mores!

Note that skip snuggled between the nave and the transept! Just waiting to haul away the interior of that quaint little village church.

IS THERE NO ACCOUNTABILITY??

@Praxiteles wrote:

A drawing of the High Altar of St. Peter’s as left by Gregory the Great who died in 604.

Thanks for the isometric diagram, Prax. Note the serpentine columns carved in marble on the bema demarcating the area around the confessio and high altar. Bernini drew on these elegant marble columns in his glorious bronze columns that support the great baldachino over the high altar in St Peter’s today.

The original marble columns depicted in this isometric drawing were worked into the current St Peter’s: they frame reliefs of the secondary relics of the basilica depicted over the four tribunes surrounding the high altar: the veil of St Veronica, the Cross transported to Rome by St Helena, the lance of St Longinus, and the head of St Andrew [returned in the 1960s by Pope Paul VI to Greece]. So after all these centuries, these columns continue their humble service in St Peter’s Basilica.

It is characteristic of true genius that it finds brilliant ways to enhance that which is good, beautiful, and noble, taking from the vast storehouse of the Church things both new and old. If only such genius had been at work in St Saviour’s Dublin!

By the way, the relics of the Passion mentioned above will be brought out on the tribune of St Veronica just after Vespers on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, where one of the canons of St Peter’s will bless the faithful with each individual relic. St Peter’s-in-the-Vatican is the stational church on the Fifth Sunday of Lent.

Anyone with access to The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America and Detroit: Thompson-Gale, 2003), might take a look at the biography of Edmund Bishop in volume 2, page 409, and then, just for kicks, gaze upon the photograph on p. 412. What might the third edition hold twenty or thirty years hence?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Here is the Geburts Christi Altar [The Nativity Altar] in the North absidal chapel of Regensburg Cathedral. It was raise between 1410 and 1420. The altar is not square and it is canopied and approached by a step.

Then we have the Betrueger planked before this masterpiece. Note the cube, dropped on the floor and left uncovered. This fashionable arrangement has nothing whatsoever to do with the earlier Christian traditon and is historically unconnected with it. Let us be perfectly clear about this phoney, there is nothing to it vaguely having to do with the altar tradition from about 800-1500 and, by the absence of even the slightest hint of Christian iconography, it is not even vaguely related to Christianity. Anyone who was dope enough to plank this piece of junk before the real thing must have a pretty big ego and is deserving of all the criticism the arrangement invites- I mean it does not even have a smooth surface settling instead for the Fred Flintstone look!

When confronted with the eyesore of the plunked-down cube, it is useful to read the following remarks of the great medieval historian and pioneer liturgist Edmund Bishop (1846-1917). It is conveivable how a selective reading of this passage may have led to some of the more outrageous excesses of the last ‘run’ of ripping and snorting that has laid waste many a sanctuary and altar in great churches. Nevertheless, the passage in its entirety (with anticipatory apologies to johnglas) bears careful consideration:

“With the fourth century the Church stands out in the face of the world, free in a new and sovereign manner to fashion her outward adornment in accordance with her own spirit, or under the external influences from which, as no mere abstraction but a very mixed body of living men and women, she has at no time been free – in the fourth century less than most other ages. As is manifest at the first glance, the particular, the distinguishing, feature of the altar then and in the centuries that follow, in fact during the first period – whether the material be stone or wood, whether the altar be solid or whether it be hollow – is the prominence and respect given to the holy Table, as the place of sacrifice. It was in form not oblong as now in the West, but usually a cube; and stood as a table in the utmost simplicity. The Lord’s board was too holy (too ‘awful’ is another view) to bear anything else but the Mystic Oblation itself, and such objects, the cup, the paten, the linen cloth, as were necessary for the offering up of the sacrifice. If indeed the Book of the Gospels lay on the altar from the beginning of the mass until the gospel was read, it is to be remembered that the Gospel Book was regarded as representing our Lord Himself, just as the altar came to be conceived of as the throne of the Great King. The rich altar coverings may be taken, I conceive, as an integral part of the altar itself. Everything of the nature of ornamental accessory was around, above, but apart from, the altar. And of these ornaments or accessories that which would most strike the eye, perhaps, was largely determined by a consideration uppermost in the minds of many Christians of those days, an idea new in the now triumphant Church, viz. that the holy sacrifice was not merely a ‘mystery of faith’, the ‘unspeakable mysteries’ that must be withdrawn from the eye of the unbeliever, but a mystery so ‘dread’ that upon it not even the Christian himself might gaze. Herein we have in great measure the explanation of the ciborium, as it was then called, of baldaquin on four columns, which, as I may say with the old proverb, hit two (nay three) birds with one stone. First, strict use and requirement: the altar must be veiled; here was a convenient means for hanging up veils or curtains. Secondly, it served for honour: the existence of a covering, umbraculum, dais, umbrella, over, and marking, the seat or station of the ruler, magistrate, pontiff, existed in the general instinct of the peoples; it was surely fitting to render the same honour to the seat of Majesty of the King of kings. Lastly, it must be admitted that a mere square table, be it raised on many steps or on few, is not in itself a dignified object; the ‘ciborium’ therefore satisfied the eye and fell in with the sense of the fitness of things in the mind of the common Christian worshiper in the fourth century and onwards; moreover, it afforded (as was found little by little) all the opportunities for adorning the altar which the devout fancy might exercise without infringing on the idea of the inviolable sanctity of that holy board. Was it desired to have lights over and above the altar? they could be hung from t he ciborium; flowers? they could be twined round its columns; how could precious metals, gold, gems, more fully enrich the altar than by means of crowns hanging directly over it, suspended by chains from the roof of the ciborium within? Was it desired to raise on high the banner of the Great King, the Cross, it could find no more fitting place than the apex of the ciborium. But it is unnecessary to proceed in further detail. From almost every point of view the altar of our first period (with its adjuncts) may, I think, be considered the ideal altar. I do not mean for imitation nowadays; quite the contrary; that would be a make-believe. But given the requirements and the ideas of those days (not of earlier times), it appears as a model of fitting adaptation of means to ends.”

– Edmund Bishop, “On the History of the Christian Altar’ in Liturgica historica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), 21-22. Emphasis in the original.

Note the remark about the cube-shape table: “a mere square table … is not in itself a dignified object.” Yet this is what often replaces or, in the case of the ‘betrueger’ plunked down in front of the Geburts Christi Altar in the cathedral of Regensberg, offends magnificent works of art which actually constitute the finest expression of a school, a style, or a period.

Note likewise the notion that steps, be they many or few, always led up to the place of sacrifice. Those interested in pursuing the matter in greater detail would do well to read the complete essay by Bishop, then peruse Cyril Pocknee’s The Christian Altar (Oxford: University Press, 1960). Canonists and historians of canon law, no less than architects and soi-disant liturgists, might profit from reading a dissertation written at The Catholic University of America in 1927: Nicholas Martin Bliley, The Altar in the Code of Canon Law, Canon Law Studies 38 (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America, 1927).

Thoughts?

@Praxiteles wrote:

From the students of the university of Vienna;

http://www.gloria.tv/?search=die+auferstehung+einer+kirche

A glorious restoration indeed! Who would have thought it possible?
God bless the students of the University of Vienna!

Thanks for posting this link, Prax!

Did anyone note, however, that the Stations of the Cross were installed backwards?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Looking at the St. Saviour’s site is very interesting. They now afford the possibility of contrasting the church before and after the wreckage and devastation. Rumour has it that some of the breathren in St. Saviour’s are anxius to do something about restoring the interior -hence the information on the site. I think we can assure them taht public opinion is about 600% behind any effort to recover in any measure the original interior.

The devastator – Austin Flannery – is now certified gaga and so the possibility of doing something is beginning to emerge.

As for the interior: from what we hear, great quantities of it were simply dumped into a skip and ferried off. However, as for many of the fittings, one of the breathren has carefully hoarded them and is sitting….waiting….for retoration.

Took them long enough to certify AF.
At least with the photographs one has the possibility of imitating the original masterpiece.
Let the restoration of St Saviour’s begin!!

@Praxiteles wrote:

Do not forget to take the cabbages with you!

And, please, would someone ask him to try to get over his Japanese screen phase -it is getting very tedious stretching as it is from Kanturk to Galway and anywhere else Mr Hurley has been.

“Do not forget to take the cabbages with you!”

Your remark reminds me, Prax, of a brief exchange in one of the funniest films ever made, A NIght at the Opera (1935):

Rodolfo Lasparri [Walter Woolf King]: Never in my life have I received such treatment. They threw an apple at me!

Otis B. Driftwood [Groucho Marx]: Well, that’s because watermelons are out of season.

With so many Japanese screens in abundance from Kanturk to Galway, perhaps a costumed performance of The Mikado could follow the lecture. Just picture Margaret Dumont as Katisha, with Groucho as Ko-Ko! Rhabanus would pay good money to see that show!

If the troupe decided to take the production into the counties, might Rhabanus propose the Drumaroad Church as a particularly suitable venue? A few Japanese screens there would not be entirely out of place. Might actually break up the monotony. Any other possible venues out there?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Here is an interesting one from to-day’s IT:

Conservation officer says claim ludicrous

Gordon Deegan

Clare’s conservation officer has come under fire after a councillor claimed his intervention cost the Catholic Church an additional €4.5 million in restoring a church in Kilrush.

At the council’s January meeting, Tom Prendeville (FF) asked: “Is there no limit to the powers of the Conservation Office?” Mr Prendeville said conservation works at St Senan’s Church in Kilrush were delayed for almost two years by the council’s conservation officer Risteard Ua Croinín, resulting in the costs increasing from €1.5 million to €6 million.

He said: “I am reliably informed that even the Stations of the Cross, which were removed for conservation purposes before the works were carried out at St Senan’s Church, later became the subject of a tête-a-tête between the local parish priest and the Conservation Office long after the project was completed.”

In response, Mr Ua Croinín said it was “absolutely ludicrous” to suggest that he was responsible for delaying the project or adding to its cost.

Mr Ua Croinín said he actually helped to bring costs of the project down by holding numerous meetings with the church authorities in Kilrush and issuing declarations that allowed them to press ahead with works without the need for planning permission.

He said he advised the church not to lodge a planning application for additional works as they were inappropriate and would be refused.

“Planning permission was refused and An Bord Pleanála also refused planning permission for most of the works.”

Mr Ua Croinín said he came across the Stations of the Cross in a function room.

He said: “They are valuable mid-19th century crosses and I said that they had to be removed from the room to avoid coffee or drink being spilt over them.”

Mr Prendeville sought to dispute Mr Ua Croinín’s claims. However, Clare mayor councillor Patricia McCarthy said the debate had ended.
© 2008 The Irish Times

Why all the recent hostility toward the Stations of the Cross? Folks ought to review the Vatican’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (Vatican City, 2001). This is easily accessible online. Just go to the Vatican website and download it, then print it out. Or just google it. There is no excuse for being bamboozled by soi-disant liturgists and other charlatans.

Fortify yourselves and read the actual documents, then invite the liturgistas to explain the texts!