Rhabanus
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@Praxiteles wrote:
From to-day’s Cobh Parish Newsletter:
“After a number of meetings and research we would like to announce that restoration work on the entrance and doors of St. Colman’s Cathedral will be taking place in the near future. Tenders are at this time being sought for the work which will be funded by the Cathedral Restoration Fund. We will be informing you again in more detail prior to works being carried out. We thank the people of Cobh and of the Diocese for their support in the restoration of the Cathedral for generations to come. Fr. Michael Leamy Adm.”
Now, I juit wonder if this was not brought on by the publication of The Restoration Fund Accounts on Archiseek? It is a bit much to say that in 2006 only Euro 4,000 was spent on anything directly to do with the Cathedral while Euro 150,000 was made available as a honeypot for various “professional” fees. JUst think of all those little pooh-bears dipping their little mitts into that luscious pot. Of course, the problem is that that money was subscribed for RESTORATION purposes and not for hungry little bears. We hope that Mr Paul Appelby of the Corporate Enforcement Office is watching and reading and moved to secure that the restoration funds in Cobh will be used for restoration purposes.
Prax, you have struck gold! The new decoration scheme for St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, can include a series of mosaics and statuary. The A.A. Milne figures of Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore et al. will be done in mosaic in the spandrels, whereas the Anthony Trollope figures (The Warden, Barchester Towers), sculpted in Carrara marble, will adorn the side chapels. Rhabanus pledges an endowment of the Archdeacon Theophilus Grantley statue for the Plumstead Episcopi Chapel. Any offers for a statue of Dean Arabin in the St Ewold’s Chapel? Who will pledge statues of Squire Wilfrid Thorne and his sister Monica Thorne for the Ullathorne Chapel.
Rhabanus warmly urges all readers of this illustrious thread to step into the Diocese of Barchester by reading all the Barchester novels: The Warden, Barchester Towers[THE masterpiece], Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset. Monsignor Ronald Knox argued that Barchester Towers was the best apologia for a celibate clergy that he had ever read. Once the gentle reader meets Mrs Proudie, the wife of Bishop Proudie, one will understand what Monsignor Knox meant.
The finances of St Colman’s Restoration Fund seem to have reached ursine proportions!
@ake wrote:
All Saints, Templetown, Wexford parish church; a small rural counterpart to the Wexford town churches.
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I personally prefer garden grottoes outside.
Thanks for the splendid shots of the interior of All Saints, and especially of the stencilling. Any chance at some closeups of the windows? They are quite striking even from a distance. I’d like to see which saints (of All Saints) were chosen to be featured in the beautiful windows – the great eastern window and those in the side chapels.
The flora does seem somewhat overdone in the final shot, but then we have viewed much worse cases on this thread. I recall pampas grasses risking a fire in an earlier pic. At least the garden here is still green.
Thanks again, ake, for the magnificent photos
@Praxiteles wrote:
Actually, they are not extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. They are extraordinary miniters of Holy Communion (cf. Eccelsiae de Mysterio of 17 August 1997).
Point taken. Nevertheless, despite legislation which circumscribes their role and function, they are ubiquitous. They have gone by so many different names and titles, that it is difficult for Rhabanus to keep up with all of them. They used to call themselves, and were called in local parlance (until Rome’s clarification) “Eucharistic Ministers.” Others, less charitably, call them “Eucharistic monsters.” In many parts, they are still called “Eucharistic Ministers” since they do just about everything except the words of the Eucharistic Prayer.
One of them recently told Rhabanus that he likewise blessed throats on St Blase’s Day (3 Feb). I wonder does he also perform ordinations of deacons and priests, or might he restrict himself to the veiling of nuns and the blessing of abbots and abbesses?
@Gianlorenzo wrote:
#3523
“The repacement of the big tabernacle with a smaller version was a bitter miscalculation. Who turned these charlatans loose on an unsuspecting Ireland?”The thinking goes something like this. God must diminish, that Man may be elevated !!!!
This of course is the answer to ake’s earlier question [#3524] as to how anyone came up with the notion to remove altar rails. One reason contends that the rail functions as a barricade, separating the laity, worshiping in the nave, from the clergy leading the liturgical prayer in the sanctuary. One can easily point to to the bema in early basilicae like S. Sabina, Rome. One teacher of liturgy in America refers to it as an early-Christian and medieval method of “crowd control.”
A second reason involves the actual function of communion rails – to provide for the reception of Holy Communion. As the Church’s doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist developed over time in response to various errors concerning the mode of Christ’s presence, and as genuine Eucharistic piety sought clearer and more reverent ways of expressing genuine faith in Christ’s real, substantial, supernatural presence under the Sacred Species, the faithful received the Sacrament on the tongue as they knelt in adoration. This kneeling posture assumed by the communicants, as the priest and deacon went from person to person along the communion rail, facilitated the process of distributing Communion and reduced the risk of dropping the Sacred Host.
Once ecclesiastical authorities agreed to allow the faithful to be communicated whilst standing, much began to change. Reception of Holy Communion now is a brisk, business-like affair with lines of moving individuals advancing toward the priest or deacon (or in many places the ubiquitous “exrtraordinary minister of the Eucharist”) often reaching, if not snatching, at the Host and stalking off either out the nearest door or back to the pew. Chewing gum, soiled palms (including telephone numbers scrawled in ink), tongue piercings, strange postures, and ambiguous hand gestures now feature with increasing regularity in the reception of Holy Communion in North America. Most priests whom I know have either hound Hosts in pews or in the floor, or have had perishioners find them and bring them to the sacristy.
Rhabanus notes that the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum 93 directs that the Communion patens are to be reintroduced in places where their use had been discontinued: “The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful should be retained, so as to avoid the danger of the sacred host or some fragment of it falling.”
Moreover, RS 92 instructs:
[[/INDENT]Although each of the faithful always has the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, at his choice,178 if any communicant should wish to receive the Sacrament in the hand, in areas where the Bishops’ Conference with the recognitio of the Apostolic See has given permission, the sacred host is to be administered to him or her. However, special care should be taken to ensure that the host is consumed by the communicant in the presence of the minister, so that no one goes away carrying the Eucharistic species in his hand. If there is a risk of profanation, then Holy Communion should not be given in the hand to the faithful.179One wonders whether the “extraordinary form of the Mass of the Roman Rite” safequarded officially by the motu proprio Summorum pontificum will become as ubiquitous throughout the Church as “extraordinary ministers” of the Holy Eucharist.
@Praxiteles wrote:
Well, here we are the mystery is resolved: St. Andrew’s Westland Row before th hackers got at it.
Notice that the Tbernacle on the High Altar has beenreduced in size thereby casuing a disproportion with respect tot he Altar Piece hanging over it. This kind of tomfoolery is reminiscent of the great Professor O’Neill’s hacking of Turnarelli’s High Altar in the Pro-Cathedral.
It has also entirely lost the tabernacle from the right altar and possibly the mensa of the altar itself.
The double railing is also gone.
The Stations of the Cross have been shorn of their crosses.
A real pity that this church of St Andrew has been so horribly stripped of its quondam glory.
The repacement of the big tabernacle with a smaller version was a bitter miscalculation. Who turned these charlatans loose on an unsuspecting Ireland?Too ironic about the Stations of the Cross: the only required part of the Stations is the actual crosses!! The rest is all ‘window-dressing’ as it were, at least in terms of the correct, liturgical erection of the Stations of the Cross. More idiocy from the liturgical “experts” and know-alls who charge oscene fees for their “consultations” and even more filthy lucre for their assaults on the sacred.
It makes one burst into laughter when these donkeys braying on their bagpipes whinge about Benedict XVI not having been trained as a ‘liturgist.’ In that lies his salvation. He was raised a Catholic, not a ‘liturgist.’
@Praxiteles wrote:
It is not the Madonna of the Roasry. It is a copy of Ruben’s Taking down from the Cross in Antwerp Cathedral. This picture originally hung over High ALtar of the the 18th. penal Chapel in Liffy Street which was replaced by this church. WHen they moved from it, they brough their pictures with them. The Ruben’s copy is in a beautiful Roccoco frame. This history explains the problem of proportion bewteen the pictures -from an earlier and smaller altar – and the present altar piece. I agree that the Baptism picyure is likely to have been in the original Baptistery and more than likely a picture of Our Lady hung in this location.
Thanks for the correction. I could make out only shapes from the distance at which the photo was taken and the less-than-idel resolution on my screen chez moi; hence the picture had looked to me like a reproduction of Sassoferrato’s Madonna of the Rosay, the original of which hangs in the Dominican church of Santa Sabina on the lovely Aventine Hill.
To whom had the other side altar been dedicated? I presume it was dedicated to Our Lord under the title of the Sacred Heart or some other dominical mystery. I speculate on this because the Lady Altar in this church is on the Epistle rather than the Gospel side of the main sanctuary.
Any clues?
@ake wrote:
St.Andrew’s, Dublin; One of the side altars is now a backdrop for the quite beautiful font.
[ATTACH]6293[/ATTACH][ATTACH]6292[/ATTACH]This church has a fine mortuary chapel and also a very fine nuptial chapel. I can’t remember if it had a separate baptistry…
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Note the wreck-up of the former Marian chapel, now being posed as a baptistery.
Notice, in particular, the Latin words of the Angelic Salutation, “Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum” inscribed over the side altar in question. My guess would be that the copy of Sassoferrato’s Madonna of the Rosary, currently hanging over the main altar, once hung in this side chapel. The shape of the frame and canvas would have fit perfectly here.
As it stands now, the Madonna of the Rosary is disproportionate with the main altar, and the painting of the Baptism of the Lord is entirely the wrong shape and dimension for that wall. The baptismal font, in any case, ought to be removed to its proper place, i.e. the baptistery, and the tabernacle on the opposite side altar translated to its original place in the sanctuary.
An administrator with most elementary modicum of an exposure to art and architecture [not to mention liturgy] would have known better than to have proposed the current arrangement, and would certainly have disallowed it.
Any photos of the original arrangement of this once-beautiful church?
Thanks, Prax, for the reference to the Four Masters.
Now two questions arise from the most recent correspondence above. What is a GUBU and what is a sliveen? My Gaelic is non-existent, except for a few expletives reserved for only the rarest occasions. Are these terms, GUBU and sliveen worthy of addition to the Index sententiarum prohibitarum?
@Praxiteles wrote:
It was begun in 1891 to designs drawn by William Hague and completed in 1902 by T.F. Mcnamara. The High Altar, the altar rail, throne and pulpit are all by the Pearse brothers. The external sculpture was mostlly provided by Purdya dn Millard of Belfast. the mosaic of the sanctuary is by Willicroft of Hanley,. The Lady Chapel was decorated by the Amici brothers of Rome. The glazing is by Mayer of Munich, Michael Healy and Harry Clarke.
I know the Four Evangelists.
Who are the Four Masters who figure on the pulpit?
@Praxiteles wrote:
Gianfrancesco Penni’s depiction of the Baptism of Constantine in 326. The fresco is located in the Sala di Constantino in the Apostolic Palace and forms part of Raphael’s cicle of frescoes in the Stanze. It was completed by Penni bewteen 1517 and 1524 following Raphael’s death. The scene is set in the Baptiestery of the Lateran. Pope St Sylvester is depicted as Pope Clement VII.
The Baptism of Constantine marked the definitive emergence of Christanity from the catacombs and the infusion of late antique culture with a new vigour.
Not much water in that font! The fresco depicts Constantine being baptised by affusion rather than immersion.
Having celebrated yesterday the Dedication of the Basilica of the Most Holy Saviour, it was difficult to avoid recognising the reference in the first lesson (Ezekiel 47) to water flowing from the East Gate of the Temple as an allusion to the saving waters of baptism.The Lateran basilca was the first Christian church to be dedicated in a public ritual. On the cornerstone of this magnificent edifice, one reads in Latin: “Mother and Head of all the churches of the City [of Rome] and of the world.” The statues on the facade measure 23 feet tall – the tallest outdoor statues in Rome.
The baptistery is adorned with doors taken from the ancient Roman Senate. If one purchases the cooperation of the sacristan by means of a small coin, one can have the senatorial doors opened. The sound produced by this movement resembles the groaning of a pipe organ or the rushing of great waters.
The name St John Lateran derives from the patron saint of the baptistery – St John the Baptist. The term Lateran refers to property that came to Constantine from the family of his wife Fausta.
St Augustine of Canterbury named his cathedral in Canterbury “Christ Church” in honour of the Lateran basilica (Most Holy Saviour). He named the monastery he founded after Sts Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles.
Obviously St Saviour’s in Dublin was named after the Basilica of the Most Holy Saviour, Rome. Too bad it still suffers the effects of the wreckovation wrought by Austin Flannery.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The remains of two Irish medieval Baptismal Fonts stored in the Cathedral at Roscarbery
What is the detritus sitting atop the bigger one?
One might have expected the fonts to have been mounted on some kind of stands. Plenty of fonts in Britain and Gaul to have some idea as to how they may have looked in situ once upon a time. How much imagination does that take?
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
That’s from way before Bishop Duffy – that’s probably the 1950s
Monaghan was hacked twice – once in the late 60s / early 70s and then later by Duffy.Utterly glorious!
What a crime to have reduced it to the wreck it now is.
@Praxiteles wrote:
I wonder does the Chief Fire Officer in Wexford realize that he has a potential prairie fire on hands with all that pampas grass and if he does what does he intend doing about it?
Perhaps the pastor plans to start next year’s Easter Fire in the pampas grass. Let us hope that no one beats him to it.
I should have thought that the pampas grass constituted a distinct fire hazzard. Where are the authorites when you need them?
Good point, Prax! The American practice of standing flags in the sanctuary, as though in a court room, dates only to the Second World War. Seems it was done as a [misguided] patriotic gesture.
Flags or pennants (whether captured or preserved in war) were given to churches and HUNG there as ex-votos.
Don Juan of Austria, for example, presented Pope St Pius V with the Sultan’s flag. The holy pontiff sent the flag to St Mary Major, where it was kept just off the Blessed Sacrament (or Sixtine) Chapel until Pope Paul VI in the 1970s gave it away to Turkey as a gesture.Historic churches in Britain, Canada, and the USA all display flags and pennants wrested from the foe or preserved by their own forces.
This business, however, of standing flags in a sanctuary is tasteless, and suggests an undue incursion of the state into the Church’s sanctuaries.
If flags must be introduced into church buildings, then why can they not be hung either in the vestibule/narthex or on the interior of the west wall up by the gallery? Or at least in a votive chapel? Flags are meant to be unfurled and flying, preferably only on flag-flying days, in order to mark significant anniversaries, not on every.day that ends in the letter “y”.
By the way, the wretched pampas grass looks rather weedy. I should think that it constitutes a fire trap as well as an eyesore. I suppose that someone in authority fancies himself (herself?) an artiste. I can just hear the rejoinder, “Well, I don’t claim to be an artist, but I know what I like.” Indeed! NEXT!!!
@Praxiteles wrote:
Notice the even more idiotic Amrican flag-flying-bit! Not very consistent with St. Paul and his Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free men etc…..
And those pampas grass…well they remind me Buenos Aires!!
Is there a baptismal font here?
@Praxiteles wrote:
Of all the fonts we have seen so far, this is by far the most serious travesty of the Sacrament of Baptism that we have come acorss.
You have guessed accurately, it is from the now infanous Dromaroad Church, and is a product of Brian Quinn’s Tablet inspired approach to liturgy.
As can be seen from our tour of Baptisteries, this has no connection at all with anything Christian. It is merely a joke in bad taste.
What? No dead twig in a brass vase? How demode! BQ, I’m disappointed in u!
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. No we’re in Drumaroad! Prax, get us out of here, before someone drops a house on us, too. Follow the yellow brick road! By the way, was that Tin Man over there actually wearing a donkey jacket? Take me back to the world of organised religion, please! Now click those ruby buskins!
@Praxiteles wrote:
The Bapistery of St. Mary’s and ST. Anne’s cathedral in Cork.
To return to Richard Hurley’s absurd horse puddle inside the main door of the Cathedral in Cork, here we have a clearer image of this absurdity and of the sheer Disneyland dynamic of its association with the Sacrament of Baptism – and all this to replace a fine quasi detached Baptistery!
It is laughable to see the font left without most of its plinth.
Ans as for the bandy design of the floor, I do not believe we have seen anything like this in our tour of Easter and Western Baptisteries.
Doesn’t all that undulation may you seasick? Gotta run (in the opposite direction). I’m getting liturgical vertigo!
@Praxiteles wrote:
Derry Cathedral
This font cannot have been the original font of Derry Cathedral. Neither can its present location have been the location of the font as per the original design and ground plan of the Cathedral.
It is hard to know where to begin pointing out the problematics with it.
The design of the font only loosely attaches to anything we have seen. It is more reminiscent of style of whiskey tumbler produced by certain crystal manufacturers.
Placing it directly on the floor with plinth speaks of the prominence and importance to be attached to the font and the Sacrament administered at it.
Placing it on an undifferentiated floor is also significant.
Placing it against the wall makes it partially redundant from a functional point of view and makles it appear of minor thological importance.
The demotic script is lamentable. It would be useful to know what version of the psalm it comes from.
Again, the monumental hood is absent and thus the font cannot be closed when the Sacrament is not being administered.
This Baptistery appears to be located in the Sanctuary area of the the Cathedral -and we have seen plenty of examoples to understand why this reflects a theologically inaccurate view of the Sacrament of Baptism.
Placing a dead twig next to the source of life is surely incongruous -unless of course it is saying somethinmg about the odd notions curently running around about the nature of teh Sacrament of Baptism.
The impurities of the stone, reflected in the black veins running though it, also make it inappropriate for use as a Baptismal font which is de per ser directly related to purity re-birth and everythinmg new. In this respect, it is in stark contrast to the purest Carrara marble used in the fonts originally placed in churches.
The whole thing exudes blandness, fatigue and simple could-not-botheredness.
The dead twig in the brass vase goes perfectly with the varicose veins of the font. The whole ensemble is dead tired, looks it, and is screaming for removal. The age of Aquarius is now old news, and has turned to stronger stuff – whiskey (hence the tumbler shape, as Prax points out).
I dare any reader or contributor to come up with anything more dead-looking than this pathetic little accident. This thing has sapped the vitality from its ecclesial surroundings. It repulses the soul, It offends the eyes. It cries to Heaven for vengeance. Ecrasez l’infame!
@Praxiteles wrote:
Newry Cathedral
This font is cleraly out of place. The iconographic surroundings are clearly not related to Baptism and in fact have no apparent connection with the font.
Again, we have the open hood problem -derived as we pointed out from the American “Green Book” rather from any authentic document of the Church. The hood, just hanging from the ceiling like that looks ridiculous. The modern cover could just as well be used for kitchen pantry.
Again, the font has been shorn of its plinth.
Presumably, it has been re-located into the Sanctuary -which is theologically and sacramentally aberrant.
Utterly tasteless. Looks like an antique shop. No coherence and certainly no harmony. Who is the bright bulb in that chandelier?
The theology dominating the cruciform baptismal fonts is obviously that of Romans 6, where Christian baptism is described in terms of dying with Christ and being buried with Him, then rising with Him to newness of life in the Resurrection. Thus the Christian descends into the cruciform font, dies to sin, then emerges in newness of life by the power of Christ’s own resurrection from the dead. This is the paschal mystery into which teh Christian is baptised.
For a new baptisery built along these lines, see the parish of St Charles Borromeo in Bayswater. That font is one of the most interesting and tasteful fonts Rhabanus has seen in a modern church.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The Church of St Theodorus at Avdat in the Negev desert -South West of the Dead Sea dating rom 541.
The Baptistery is external
The font is cruciform.
@Praxiteles wrote:
Both of these Irish examples derive from the Baptistery in Pisa which is circular and to whih Praxiteles hopes to come to-morrow.
Rhabanus commends the exploration of the baptisteries.
Note that in Florence and Ravenna and elsewhere, as at Rome, the baptisteries are octagonal, reflective of the new creation that is Christian baptism. The number of humans on Noah’s ark was 8: Noah, Mrs N., Shem, Ham, and Jepeth with their respective wives. Seven is the Hebrew number of completion (the 7 days of Creation – 6 days of work + one of rest), but eight represents a new beginning. Hence the significance of the Easter Octave. Each day of the Easter Octave is as much Easter as Easter Sunday itself. Therefore they are named Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, etc. until the Second Sunday of the Easter Octave or Dominica in albis, when the neophytes would put off their white baptismal robes.
The celebration of Easter Monday in Catholic countries and regions is the last vestige of the cultural observance of the Easter Octave.
Pentecost used to have an octave, culminating in Trinity Sunday, but Annibale Bugnini nixed it to the dismay of Pope Paul VI. Some maintain that this was “the beginning of the end” for Bugnini, who ended his days plucking his lyre on the banks of the rivers of Babylon (modern-day Baghdad). The name Whitweek, or Whitsuntide stood for this now-defunct octave. The term Whitmonday is still in use in some English-speaking places and in many Catholic regions still is observed, like Easter Monday, as a civil holiday.
The Christmas Octave is really a defective octave because of the peculiar dynamics of having to observe the feastdays of various saints in the Mass and Office of the days between 25 December and 1 January (St Stephen the protomartyr (26), St John the Evangelist (27), Holy Innocents (28), St Thomas Becket (29), St Silverster (31), not to mention Holy Family Sunday (first Sunday after 25 Dec).
The eight-sided baptistery is a powerful statement of Christian faith and an eloquent attestation to the new creation in grace inaugurated by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Paschal Mystery, particularly His glorious Resurrection from the dead.
