Well, of course the Diocese's response would be weak. The Crystal Cathedral is impossible to actually defend - at best, it's a mediocre fit for the liturgy of the Roman Rite. It's like trying to give the Mass of Christ the Saviour a top-tier, Duruflé-inspired Gregorian accompaniment - at the end of the day, you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

I don't think it's appropriate to call the orthodoxy of my faith into question

?

Almost? Hmm.

OK, which, then, of K's criticisms deserve to be seriously? Certainly I loose any appetite for re-reading by the time I get as far as:

a large-scale bas relief of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Tree, and the Serpent across their immense horizontal width. This first encounter with the “symbols” of Christ Cathedral sets the stage for a tour of unease, tension, and even creepiness.

Can you explain the logic behind that?

Does Bugnini's account of his maneuverings allow you or me to draw conclusions about other people's motivations?

Chonak,

When Bugnini asserts that (in spite of the strong admonition from the Council Fathers to the contrary) there simply is no case for continuing Latin, since the addressee needs to be able to understand what is being said to him, stupidity can't adequately explain it. I don't know about other people's motivations, if you mean the renovation committee at Christ Cathedral. Michael Rose documents a process he calls the Renovation Manipulation, in which the new design of a church is intentionally to look as little as a Catholic church as possible because the ideas of the past simply can't inform anything we do.....so stupidity is insufficient as an explanation.

Although these pavement lights are not particularly attractive, there is ample historical precedent for such lights. We have them here in the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, and in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham. Walsingham's are of brass, are very attractive and historic in appearance; those at the co-cathedral look like something out of Star Trek. The moral is: don't fault pavement lights as such, but the particular design of these, which appear to represent something from an imagined galaxy far, far away - a common enough pitfall for designers who are trying to be 'modern'.

To me, it seems like conscious decisions were made to pay lip service to traditional Catholic artistic norms while realizing them in the most banal and modernist ways possible. Nothing is particularly wrong, and little can be pointed to that is an outright abuse - but I still retain a funny feeling when looking at these images, like it's only superficially a Catholic church.

to pay lip service to traditional Catholic artistic norms while realizing them in the most banal and modernist ways possible

A fair description. Given that they were stuck with this modern building by the outgoing bishop, I think it was almost inevitable that they would have to make a "modernist" interior compatible with it. Could it have been done better?

What would improve the sanctuary? Perhaps a baldachino with a cloth canopy instead of the grille work above the altar? Something to offset the use of hard materials and boxy shapes might be a welcome relief.

You know what is overlooked as a fun solution? The 'church inside a church' structure. Like Saint Francis's little chapel, or the Holy House of Loreto. Given a cavernous modernist space, build a traditional church within it, or the elements thereof?

I am fascinated watching two hideously modern "empty concrete box" style churches near me be slowly returned to an approximation of traditional baroque architecture. Each year the congregation adds more decoration, in gilded wood or by buying antiques, so that the bare box for the statue of Our Lady is now framed in gold; the abstract Stations of the Cross replaced with Italian-style ceramic ones with life-like relief figures; antique statuary begins to fill the perimeter where in an old church there would be side altars, and so on. And the people are so happy!

I've only heard one common lay person ever praise a modern-style church - a cab driver who dropped me off at one said "I love that church! It's so bright inside! I hate dark gloomy churches!" Since most of the modern ones are lit brightly enough to give you tan, I see his point. It's a tropical country, and apparently people like sunshine. In my homeland in the north people value 'mood lighting' - ie dim spaces are considered intimate and mysterious and cozy. Oh well.

CatherineS Yes! like Cordoba

Not the artistic or architectural elements. The historical terrain is too vast to support that expectation.

It is the same faith with the same people, unfortunately. And they make mountains out of molehills. And this same faith is expressed in different missal editions promulgated by the church which has the authority to revise its rites. And it did. Nothing more. Most of the people using Christ Cathedral are likely not using the EF liturgy, the former rite of the Latin church. Whether any provision will be made for them in that building, I don't know.

You know, you could go down many wrong roads by believing polls. Most folks I know don't share that poll's conclusions.

the EF liturgy, the former rite of the Latin church

Ummm... it is still a current rite.

I certainly know quite a number of "Catholics" who deny the real presence, deny transubstantiation (including priests, sad to say), deny Church teachings on contraception. In fact, I remember touring the cathedral in Santa Fe, NM in the early '80's. Got into a discussion with several priests attached to the cathedral who dismissed transubstantiation and described the consecration in thoroughly Protestant terms (transignification).

While polls may not be a guarantee as to percentage, they certainly indicate a trend and can't simply be dismissed as "not in my experience".

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/09/28/poll-finds-many-us-catholics-breaking-church-over-contraception-abortion-and-lgbt

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/08/10/survey-on-catholic-belief-in-the-eucharist-prompts-calls-for-better-catechesis/

https://time.com/6048/poll-catholic-beliefs-at-odds-with-vatican-doctrine/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics/

There are palpable reasons for the satement Lex orandi, lex credendi; for pointing out that art, architecture, and music reflect a belief or lack thereof; reasons that can't simply be dismissed as "personal preference".

I agree the EF is still being used. What the future will hold on that is anybody's guess. However, it isn't anywhere near the majority rite and I doubt it ever will be again.

I don't see anything in Christ Cathedral that is contrary to the faith or anyone's faith.

I wouldn't say nothing is wrong, but much of what is wrong runs across all lines in the culture and society. It isn't specific to the Catholic Church. Especially in this country which has never been what you could call a Catholic country.

Liam,

There are saints from many walks of life, and there are many kinds of beautiful architecture, and there are many Rites within the Catholic Church, all of which share the same faith (else, they wouldn't be part of the Catholic Church). If I understand correctly, there are even situations in which two contemporaries who have both been declared saints really wouldn't have liked each other much.... so I'm ok with beautiful and unusual or strange in the same box. Last Sunday's High Mass in my parish was in the Dominican Rite, so I have some very small familiarity with rites other than my own.

On the other hand, there's much which is intentionally banal, intentionally iconclastic or syncretistic in places like the new Cathedral. For the sake of comparison, use TAC's chapel in California (I don't know the chapel in MA): modernly constructed doesn't have to mean banal or repulsive or syncretistic. Even the idea of noble simplicity isn't (necessarily) repugnant. Ask if the new Cathedral qualifies as nobly simple and simply noble.

Maybe I am a die hard aesthetic modernist, but I often wonder if architectural style hasn't become a kind of kitsch, substituted categorically for beauty. This would not just be a modern problem: Pugin himself, though extraordinarily capable of crafting beauty within his preferred style, nevertheless epitomized this category error, and had almost nothing nice to say about church buildings that deviated from the Gothic, which was, to his mind, the truly traditional expression of Christian architecture. He famously jeered even at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

So, this is a mistake that can be made even by the best of us, and, sometimes, when I read comments like,

or the sake of comparison, use TAC's chapel in California (I don't know the chapel in MA): modernly constructed doesn't have to mean banal or repulsive or syncretistic

I wonder if our categories of "beauty" and "architectural style" are not getting muddied and blended together. After all, TAC's chapel, while I find it quite lovely, is modern-in-date-only, other than (probably) in construction techniques.

It's worth mentioning, too, that changes in taste do not occur without some reason: I'm sure some observers would find the strict adherence to traditional architectural forms in the TAC chapel "banal" and "uninteresting" and, perhaps more controversially in this crowd, the overall effect of the space "opulent" and therefore tacky, showy, and, for these reasons, "repulsive." Those are quite subjective statements, after all, and it is in no way obvious, unless you take an enormous number of propositions and statements of taste as givens, that the TAC chapel succeeds in avoiding either banality or repulsiveness.

An example of this confusion is, I think, the renovation that just happened in Kenosha, WI, of OL of Mt. Carmel.

I'll say it upfront: I'm not going to dispute (1) the quality of the new altar, (2) the quality of the painters' craft, (3) the good intentions and incredible devotion of the parishioners and clergy that brought this project about. But I think the motives and results were confused, and I am going to observe what I think are some negatives about the project that illustrate certain attitudes that I think were in play there, and are at work in the criticism currently being leveled at Christ Cathedral:

For a 1965 building, the church as it was had amazingly good bones. The tabernacle was under a baldachino on a three-step footpace, at the top of an elevated sanctuary with solid, uncarpeted flooring separated from the nave by a rail. Hanging above the tabernacle was an image of the Crucified Lord. St. Joseph and Our Lady were on either side of the sanctuary, in small niches.

The sanctuary was spare in its color design, apparently deliberately. The arresting feature of the space, setting off the main altar and tabernacle, was the baldachino, a flower of color in apparent mosaic, the Holy Ghost as a dove descending through the blue sky in a golden sunburst, to a modern design. As best I can tell from images available, abstract stained glass flanks the apse on either side, meaning that, in the room as a whole, the bare walls of the sanctuary set off the main altar, surrounded by the colorful baldachin.

The mensa has, since that time, been moved forward to allow versus populum celebration. It has sadly left the footpace, but is still elevated from the nave, and central in the sanctuary.

Decoration, in keeping with the style of the time and of the building, was, to my eye at least, quality craftsmanship, minimal but not barren, and with a distinctly modern aesthetic.

The sanctuary alone was recently redone. Now, the following has happened:

(1) A newly-crafted Romanesque high altar with reredos was installed under the existing baldachino. The forward altar remains in place, directly in front of and below the new high altar.

(2) The entire sanctuary, floor to ceiling, has been painted with colorful depictions of Saints and mottos, surrounded / enclosed by three-dimensional painted architectural features (pillars, galleries, frames, etc.) also in a Romanesque style.

(3) The Crucifix has been removed from the center of the baldachin, and has been replaced with a statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. A small altar cross, on which the Corpus does not appear to be visible from the nave, does remain on the high altar.

(4) The statues of St. Joseph and Our Lady, formerly within the sanctuary, have now been installed on faux-pillars (painted) flanking the sanctuary on either side.

To me, this looks more like a category error, than a liturgical or artistic success -- but it is being trumpeted by some as a major victory for beauty, I think, because the paintings and the furnishings installed are in a particular style. But one should have major reservations about the space as it now exists, I think, both aesthetically and liturgically:

(1) There are now two altars on an axis in the sanctuary. Where, in any liturgical book or church law, of any age, is this desirable?

(2) The image of the Crucified Lord has been rendered less visible from the nave.

(3) The architectural style of the space that exists has not been respected. The sanctuary is a world apart from the nave, and clashes, rather than harmonizing with it.

(4) The striking baldachin has been rendered, by the false architectural elements in the painting, the strong colors of the decoration, the presence of a large high altar with reredos (!) underneath it, and its unique, decidedly un-Romanesque shape, a strange piece of clutter in the sanctuary.

For these reasons, the project, in what I think is a reasonable appraisal, fails to create (1) a new, beautiful space that sympathetically and effectively retains key elements (primarily the baldachin and forward altar) of the old arrangement (a deliberate goal), (2) a liturgically sound space, or (3) a beautiful, harmonious space. But it is touted as a major success and, I feel safe in assuming, in the right crowd my criticisms would be instantly dismissed, and my preference for the overall arrangement of the former sanctuary roundly mocked, because the old sanctuary was Modernist, and the new one is Romanesque, basically.

The overall project fails, because it was apparently conceived (although this was not conscious), not to beautify the existing space, but to re-style the existing space in an architectural / artistic style that, for some, has become exclusively synonymous with "beauty." This, for me, is especially jarring in Western Christianity, because we do not have a singular, highly-sacralized tradition of iconography in the same way as the Christian East. Our openness to stylistic variety has, in fact, given birth to these styles that are being mistaken for absolute values in themselves.

Here's pictures of the Kenosha project: Liturgical Arts Journal

I know several other churches that preserved the high altar while installing a "modern" altar table for Novus Ordo worship. I don't find anything about it particularly concerning.

I know several other churches that preserved the high altar while installing a "modern" altar table for Novus Ordo worship. I don't find anything about it particularly concerning.

That isn't what they did here. Read the article.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply ignorance at all!

Maybe it's a mental quirk of mine, but whereas a high altar with built in reredos cannot facilitate v.p. celebration, and this is (apparently) encouraged by Vatican documents, the installation of a portable altar to facilitate this mode of celebration, while I think it is unnecessary (since one could just celebrate a.o. and respect the design of the church), is understandable, if for no other reason than perceived normalcy. It was, after all, and in probably most places, still is, a different time. Doing so without wrecking history in situ, seems sensitive and sane. In many places, where v.p. celebration became the de facto expectation of the bishop, or was mandated by the pastor, pastors or parish councils that chose to install a small forward altar in front of their historically and artistically significant high altar, rather than having the high altar that their grandparents sacrificed to have installed wind up in pieces in the dumpster out back, were probably taking a path of least destruction, and I think it's commendable in that situation.

It's a different matter, however, when a church, possessing an altar that can be used in either orientation, commissions and installs a separate altar, on the central axis of the church, specifically to celebrate ad orientem. This is not necessary, as the v.p. altar does not preclude that orientation by its design. In that case, I don't see the reason, other than aesthetic, for doubling the main altar. But that, to me, seems a very grave thing to do symbolically, for such a light reason.

I'm surprised to see another detail of that Kenosha church's decoration: the famous Carmelite "scapular promise" is painted on the sanctuary wall: "whosoever dies wearing this scapular will not suffer eternal fire".

Carmelite tradition says that St. Simon Stock, an English Carmelite, received this promise in an apparition in 1251; and legend claims that Pope John XXII wrote of having a similar vision in 1322.

Now, we don't actually know as a matter of historical proof that that apparition and that vision really took place. The old Catholic Encyclopedia states in its article on the Scapular: "it has now been sufficiently shown that this testimony [about St. Simon Stock having seen and heard Our Lady] cannot be supported by historical documents." Is it prudent to put those words on the wall of sanctuary, usually a place where one finds the words of Scripture inscribed?

And if those events did happen as the tradition describes, then the text of a private revelation is being placed in the sanctuary of a church, even though Catholics are not obliged to accept any particular private revelation. That, by itself, is a debatable choice.

But maybe my hesitation is too scrupulous: can anyone reassure me? There certainly are depictions of private revelations in Catholic art, and perhaps even in the sanctuaries of churches, and perhaps other cases in which texts of private revelations are painted in sanctuaries. Can anyone cite some examples to show that such a practice [quoting a private revelation in sanctuary decoration] is actually a longstanding one?

NihilNominis,

I missed something. Do you mean that in the "refurbished" "cathedral", which previously had only a podium for an Evangelical missionary preacher, there is both an altar which presumes the posture of v.p. and one which presumes a.o?

There's a joke somewhere about High Church Anglicans wanting the chalice to be dropped with a bang during every Eucharist because it happened once by accident. I can understand a high altar and multiple side altars, but I can't fathom a high altar and what my wife calls a low altar as part of a restoration project or a refurbishing project.

Still about the Kenosha church -- see my previous post! Sorry for the confusion.

chonak,

But maybe my hesitation is too scrupulous: can anyone reassure me? There certainly are depictions of private revelations in Catholic art, and perhaps even in the sanctuaries of churches, and perhaps other cases in which texts of private revelations are painted in sanctuaries. Can anyone cite some examples to show that such a practice [quoting a private revelation in sanctuary decoration] is actually a longstanding one?

The renovation seems like a triumph of devotionalism.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness there of.

Though we are beset in the battle, the Lord knows all, reigns over all, and will triumph at the end of all things.