Architects eager to begin Crystal Cathedral's renovation

The leading architects in the massive undertaking of renovating the 'Crystal Cathedral' into Christ Cathedral for the Diocese of Orange, Calif., have expressed their excitement about the daunting project.
 
On Sept. 18, Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Orange announced that Johnson Fain and Rios Clementi Hale Studios had been selected to collaborate on the transformation of the landmark building and its 34-acre campus.

The Diocese of Orange purchased the 3,000-seat Crystal Cathedral in February of 2012 from the Protestant church which founded it. The purchase was made after Crystal Cathedral had filed for bankruptcy in October 2010 when some of its creditors sued for payment.

“That the Catholic Church would take on a project like this, that they would be able to move to a site with this much promise in it, both in terms of the breadth of the site itself and the possibility of a campus of multiple buildings and multiple activities…is exciting,” Scott Johnson, design partner at Johnson Fain, told CNA Sept. 17.

“And, that they would take on as the site of their cathedral, and in particular, the former Crystal Cathedral, which is quite an important landmark building…(the diocese) had great regard and respect for what it means in the cultural community, and they were very thoughtful about it, as they were about the other buildings.”

Johnson Fain will focus on re-vamping the interior of the cathedral to make it suitable for Catholic worship, while Rios Clementi Hale Studios will oversee the integration of the rest of the campus, including its six other buildings, into a unified whole.

“The site has three really important pieces of architecture,” Mark Rios, principal of Rios Clementi Hale Studios, explained to CNA. The campus buildings “really were never collectively designed,” he added: “one building was added in sequence after another, and the parking lots were modified to receive a new building, but the exterior spaces here can be really fantastic.”

Rios will be focused on master planning, examining how the buildings “all sort of tie together and support each other.”

He explained some of his beginning conversations with Johnson – the two have collaborated before – by saying they have discussed “how do you arrive at the site, what makes the site sacred, how do you park your car, how do you get out of your car, how do you move through that procession to the cathedral or to the school or other facilities: how it all really tells the story of the Catholic Church and the ritual opportunities which might be available.”

“In southern California, a lot of the services could happen outside, or processions may start outside and end inside. Scott and I will really be looking at how to sort of make all of those (come together) from all parts of the site into the cathedral.”

Johnson emphasized the importance of being able to re-vamp the entire campus, an opportunity rarely availed to architects re-designing a site.

“We can think of the carpet of the cathedral – in a sense, from the building design point of view – of the carpet of the cathedral actually extending beyond the inside of the building and out into the edges of the site.”

Because American society is so automobile-driven, he said, the architects want to consider “our experience as you see it from the highway, and as you, if you will, drive onto the carpet of the property. So we want to have an entirely integrated experience: not just jumping into the building and jumping out of the building.”

He said that his strategy will be “essentially to conserve and restore the exterior” of the cathedral, which is made of more than 10,000 panes of glass, and that “the new architecture will really be in the refashioning of the operational aspects and the interior elements of the shell.”

Johnson was in the office of the Crystal Cathedral's original designer, Philip Johnson, when the building was being created in the late 1970s and worked on parts of it then, giving him a particular familiarity with it.

“Something of very intense interest architecturally, is that the building was conceived as an evangelical building, one of the first mega-churches…and then further it has a very unique history because of Reverend (Robert) Schuller and his beginning years of giving sermons to the out of doors.”

He explained that Schuller “wanted a building that was both a building and not a building, so that in a sense he could be in an enclosure, but it would be as if he were out of doors, which is where he began his ministry: so this building was an entire shell of glass.”

“As we think now about a Catholic cathedral, our initial thoughts that it is really so different from that in so many ways, and it's meditative, it's processional, it's focused. The evangelical life it had was somewhat of a production studio, as a television ministry: that aspect really isn't relevant here.”

The goal in the transformation process will be to “maintain the wonder and beauty” of the cathedral’s structure and light, he said, while at the same time seeking “to modify it slightly in some ways, to make it more appropriate for Masses, Catholic devotionals, reading, hymnals.”

Having maintained the glass shell of the cathedral, Johnson Fain will “significantly rework the bottom: everything from the mezzanine seating down to the ground level.”

“There are some very interesting ways we might do that, and in the process we will look at how the altar and the sanctuary should be laid out. But I believe that whole bottom register will change meaningfully, all inside the shell of the original glass building.”

Neither Johnson nor Rios are Catholic, though Rios' partner on the project, Frank Clement, is. Rios is himself Episcopalian, and Johnson has worked before on a Benedictine monastery. They both said they will be asking many questions throughout the design process, and it was pointed out that Brother William Woeger, director of the Omaha archdiocese's office for divine worship, is a liturgical consultant in the operation.

“The beginning of the process is listening, and that's absolutely true: there will be weeks and months of listening,” Johnson said.

Among the concerns included in the re-design is the acoustics of the cathedral, ensuring that modifications “will allow people to both understand the spoken word as well as musical celebration.” 

The cathedral is currently carpeted, and Johnson said that the existing carpet will be removed and may be replaced with an alternative floor surface.

He concluded that the “many ways to look” at the site of the Crystal Cathedral, including its status as a tourist destination, “will also continue…which will make it an extremely exciting design problem.”

Rios reflected that “we're both really excited to make this an inclusive place for the Catholic community of Orange County, and the Catholic community has a lot of wonderful, sort of diverse communities within it.”

“One of the things I'm looking forward to is to really understand the slight…differences, or celebrations that may happen from one Catholic community to another, and how to find a place for those,” he said.

“The Latin Catholic community may have celebrations the Vietnamese Catholic community may not have, and vice versa; so our job is to really understand all of those and look at all the overlaps, and make sure there are spaces for all those kinds of really wonderful rituals to happen.”

Pius XII knew he would be misunderstood, theologian says

A priest who knew Pius XII personally and had access to “every strip of paper” in the Vatican archives says the pontiff believed he did the right thing during the holocaust despite knowing he would be questioned.

Ninety year-old Father Peter Gumpel, a former professor at the Gregorio University in Rome for 25 years, was simultaneously appointed as a Theological Consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and as Assistant Postulator General.
He was personally acquainted with Pope Pius XII, and has met every pontiff since with the exception of John Paul I.
The work that Fr. Gumpel was assigned as a theological consultant was to “examine everything” related to Pius XII and other causes of interest, and to present the information in a “historically and theologically accurate way to the congregation before they start to discuss it,” he told CNA in a Sept. 17 interview.
The cause of canonization for Pius XII was overseen by Fr. Gumpel, who was in charge of the research needed in order to prove the late pope’s heroic virtue.
“I had absolute access to every strip of paper that is in the Vatican archives,” he said. “The period of Pius the XII is not yet accessible to scholars, but as a responsible investigating judge, I had to see everything.”
The priest added that he studied “about 100,000 pages” in documents and correspondence in the life of the pontiff.
In his research, Fr. Gumpel confirmed that there were already some who opposed the Pope’s course of action during the Nazi persecution of World War II in the 1940s, and that Pius XII himself was aware of it.
The late pontiff faced criticism then and in subsequent decades for being perceived as silent or inactive in the face of the holocaust. It is believed, however, that the Pope chose to help the victimized secretly so as not to provoke increased persecution by the Nazis.

“He knew that some of his measures were not pleasing to everybody,” Fr. Gumpel noted, and that “at a certain moment he said, ‘I know that what I am going to do will not be pleasing to everybody, but I am going to do it because in conscience I feel that it is my duty to do it.’”
“So he was aware that there would be opposition. It is an attitude that any person with higher responsibility has to take.”
Fr. Gumpel recalled how some during the time of the war thought that the Church should publicly react against the holocaust, but stressed that this “was totally useless.”
“Anytime anybody made a public protest, it aggravated the situation.”
“If you find documents from the Polish episcopacy during the occupation of the Germans of Poland,” he said, it was clearly pleaded “‘don’t speak out, it doesn’t help anything, it only makes things worse.’”
“The same happened in the German resistance movement against Hitler. They said, ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t say anything because it will make the situation, the persecution will be even worse.’”
Pius XII, he emphasized, “knew that this in the future would be misunderstood.”
“People who had no responsibility in government, who had never dealt with a situation like this, would not understand it,” Fr. Gumpel said, quoting a Jewish lawyer named Kempner who defended Pope Pius XII by saying “the only thing to do was to help people in secrecy as much as possible.”
Another aspect of Pius XII that Fr. Gumpel believes is “very much unknown to people,” is the pastoral heart of the late pope.
“He was always presented as a diplomat,” Fr. Gumpel said, referencing the late pope’s natural gifting and service in this area.
The priest explained that Pius XII had been a bright student, and was asked by a high-ranking official of the Secretary of State on behalf of the Pope to come into the diplomatic service of the Holy See.
However, “he wanted to become a parish priest,” Fr. Gumpel noted, stressing that Pope Pius XII was always primarily concerned with the care of souls. He “didn’t want to become a diplomat,” but did so out of obedience.
Among the causes for canonization under Fr. Gumpel’s jurisdiction that have reached the end of the process, meaning the person was approved for beatification, are Mother Katherine Drexel, Fr. Casey, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and Pius XII.

Don’t Let Pope Francis Fool You – It’s the Same Old Catholic Church (Opinion)

Given the sheer amount of praise that social liberals and atheists are heaping on Pope Francis recently, you would’ve thought that he had served as the grand marshal of a gay pride parade, cut the ribbon at the opening of a new Planned Parenthood, and written the foreword to Richard Dawkins new book — all in the same day.

The catalyst for this unlikely lovefest was an interview the newly-minted pontiff gave in which he said of gay marriage, abortion, and contraception, “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” 

He also said elsewhere that he’s not in a position to judge gay people — after all, that’s what homophobic God is for — and asserted that atheists have been “redeemed,” though a Vatican spokesman later clarified that no one goes to heaven unless they accept Jesus as their savior. 

While Francis has been widely lauded for seemingly bringing a shift in tone and focus to the Church, ultimately his remarks are of no great consequence. And the accolades being showered on him are indeed strange but understandable.

Here we have a leader of an institution with a staggeringly archaic view on sexual morality – one in which contraception use, sex out of wedlock, and gay sex are sinful – being hailed by social progressives because he essentially said the Church shouldn’t emphasize these prohibitions as much as they have been. 

Francis’ position essentially amounts this: We’re still anti-gay, anti-women’s reproductive rights, and oh yes, still against ordaining women priests. But we’re going to downplay it so we don’t repulse everyone by the fact that we stink to high heaven.

Basically Pope Francis is a scented candle in an outhouse, and people can’t stop talking about how good the toilet smells.

All of this is completely understandable, given our tendency to lower the not-an-asshole bar for people and institutions that have previously espoused regressive and hateful positions. 

Just take a look at televangelist Pat Robertson. He’s so anti-LGBT, that it’s news when he says something tolerant. At which point you can’t help but think that that was nice of him — despite his bigotry — and that there just might be hope for the crazy son of a bitch after all.

It’s similar to the phenomenon at work in people who suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. 

Given the voluminous amount of dickish behavior from the Catholic Church, any glimmer of kindness or even mere absence of intolerance — however superficial — can be interpreted as true beneficence. 

But it’s not. 

Witness Francis’ recent excommunication of a priest in Australia for advocating the ordination of women priests, or the fact that several notable Catholics have correctly pointed out that there was nothing new in Francis’ comments, and that he will not be upending established Church doctrine anytime soon, or ever.

While millions of Americans and perhaps billions of people worldwide have accepted gay people for who they are, recognized the necessity of contraceptives and women’s reproductive freedom, the Catholic Church remains mired in a bygone morality. 

And yet Pope Francis is commended — not for recognizing same — but for simply placing less emphasis on the fact that he and the rest of the Church do not. 

If this is what passes for moral epiphanies in the Catholic Church, it’s yet another reason why I was right to leave it.

Brigidine Sisters rise to challenge for Guinness Book of Records

Hundreds gathered the ancient Irish monastic town of 5th century Saint Brigid of Kildare,  on Saturday 21 September 2013, to set the world record for the most people to weave a St Brigid’s cross at the same time in the same location.

The event was organised by Brigidine sisters at Solas Bhríde and Cairde Bhríde (friends of Brigid) Kildare Heritage Centre and local community groups. 

The event was part of a week-long Gathering festival celebrating the 5th century saint and her legacy. 

Weaving of crosses took place inside the church and the record attempt finished with a procession into the Town Square led by piper, David Usher. Participants held their Brigid’s crosses high in celebration.

At the close of events, Sister Rita Minehan of Solas Bhríde thanked all involved and spoke of how “the spirit of Brigid lives on in Kildare Town today.” She said “Brigid was renowned as a woman of extraordinary faith, a spiritual leader, a woman of the land, an advocate of the poor, a peacemaker and a woman of legendary hospitality who is still relevant today. The beautiful procession of crosses in her name is a fabulous reminder of this to us all.”

The ‘most people to weave a St Brigid’s cross at the same time’ category was created by Guinness World Records earlier this year, following an application by Solas Bhríde and Cairde Bhríde of Kildare Town.

Saturday's gathering of people in St Brigid’s parish church marks the first attempt to set this record. 

The next stage is for Guinness World Records to inspect witnesses, photo and video evidence submitted by the organisers. 

If approved, then the record will enter the Guinness House of Records which will be a significant achievement for Kildare Town. 

It will spark other community groups to come together in the years ahead to challenge the record!

Fore more information see: www.solasbhride.ie

Methodist Council's Homosexuality Rulings Will Be Reviewed After Pressure From Ministers

Facing a wave of open defiance to church law, the top court of the United Methodist Church is set to consider rulings challenging church teaching on homosexuality.
 
The United Methodist Judicial Council will decide whether church ministries can advocate for the acceptance of homosexuality, whether ministers can officiate at same-sex ceremonies and whether a regional conference can urge members to ignore portions of Methodist law.

The rulings made by regional conferences are among 17 items the court will consider at its Oct. 23-26 meeting in Baltimore.

The United Methodist Church has repeatedly voted to retain language in its constitution, the Book of Discipline, that says “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and that “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” are not allowed to serve as clergy.

In addition, the church explicitly says that churches may not host, and ministers may not celebrate, “ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions.”

Multiple regional conferences called for greater acceptance of gay couples during the recent conference season, saying the church’s current teachings are unjust and ought to be ignored.

The Judicial Council hearings come as at least four United Methodist ministers — including the former dean of Yale Divinity School — are facing trial for officiating at same-sex weddings, and more than 1,500 clergy have signed a statement offering to marry gay couples.

The court has no power to change existing church policy — only the quadrennial General Conference can do that — but it can set boundaries on how far clergy and congregations can go in adhering to current policy.

Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president of Good News, a conservative group within the United Methodist Church, said he believes the high court will maintain church doctrine and that accepting the resolutions would entirely undermine church law.

“What is concerning to us at this point is that so many people are attempting to essentially disregard our church’s position,” Lambrecht said. “If people are putting themselves forward as United Methodist clergy and bishops and are not willing to abide by United Methodist policies, that seems to us to be somewhat dishonest and reflects moral confusion . . . How can you claim to be a United Methodist and take actions that are contrary to that?”

The regional council rulings say the inconsistencies are instead within the Book of Discipline, which calls Methodists to minster to all people yet bans clergy from officiating at same-sex ceremonies, said Matt Berryman, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, an independent United Methodist group that advocates full inclusion of gay people.

Berryman said the rulings coming before the Judicial Council could be beneficial because they will further the conversation about the church’s response to gay people.

“We have to look at the tension between what’s in the Discipline and the reality of what’s going on,” Berryman said. “We have to decide what it means to love God and love our neighbor. And that’s not always clear, given the deep ambiguities in the Scripture.”

Also among the items to be considered is a review of the decision to remove a lesbian woman from the ordination process. 

Mary Ann Barclay (formerly Mary Ann Kaiser, before her August wedding to another woman) had been recommended for ordination by her district committee. 

She is appealing a decision by Southwest Texas Conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry to remove her from the process without interviewing her.

Irish priest murdered by Communist forces may be made a saint

An Irish priest who was murdered by communist forces in 1950 is in line to be recognised as a saint.

The Korean Catholic Church has applied to the Vatican to have Father Thomas Cusack beatified as a martyr.

The Holy See has accepted the application and has started the process of study and information gathering which could lead to the Co Clare priest being recognised as Ireland’s 167th saint.

Fr Cusack, along with a number of other priests, was martyred in a massacre at Taejon Prison on September 24, 1950.

The clergyman stood by his flock and refused to flee the country at the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.

Fr Cusack was captured in July when invading North Korean forces took him hostage during a raid across the 38th Parallel.

The Columban priest spent two months living in barbaric conditions at the communist prison before he was executed on September 24.

Fr Cusack’s 15 years in Korea were marked by intense bravery and dedication to his flock.

He had also been imprisoned by the Japanese during Would War Two and spent a number of years in a prisoner of war camp.

Fr Malachy Smyth, who has recently completed a film on the Columban Fathers in Korea, said Fr Cusack would have been more concerned with the work on the ground in Korea than any future accolades.

He added: “The Korean Church has started the process and we will have to wait to see what happens from here. I’m not too sure how long this will take but it could be a large number of years.

“We [the Columbans] are not the sort who look for sainthood. We are much more interested in the work amongst the grass roots.”

If the application is successful, Fr Cusack would become only Ireland’s fourth saint of the past thousand years after Cellach of Armagh, Saint Oliver Plunkett and Charles of Mount Argus. 

The vast majority of Ireland’s 166 saints lived during the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries.

Fr Cusack was born in Ballycotton near Liscannor in Co Clare on October 23, 1910. He was educated in Ballycotton National School before going on to St Mary’s College in Galway.

Fr Cusack entered the Columbans in 1928 and was ordained in 1934.

The following year he was sent to Korea and at the time of his death he was serving at a mission in Mokpo.

Atheism to be taught to Irish schoolchildren

In a historic move that will cheer Richard Dawkins, atheists in Ireland have secured the right to teach the republic's primary schoolchildren that God doesn't exist.

The first ever atheist curriculum for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland has been drawn up by Atheist Ireland in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.

The class of September 2014 will be reading texts such as Dawkins' The Magic of Reality, his book aimed at children, as well as other material at four different primary levels, according to Atheist Ireland.

Up to 16,000 primary schoolchildren who attend the fast-growing non-denominational Irish school sector will receive direct tuition on atheism as part of their basic introduction course to ethics and belief systems.

But Michael Nugent, Atheist Ireland's co-founder, stressed that all primary-school pupils, including the 93% of the population who attend schools run by the Catholic church, can access their atheism course on the internet and by downloading an app on smartphones. 

He said these would be advertised and offered to all parents with children at primary schools in the state.

"There will be a module of 10 classes of between 30 to 40 minutes from the ages of four upwards. It is necessary because the Irish education system has for too long been totally biased in favour of religious indoctrination. And if parents whose kids are in schools under church control want to opt their kids out of learning religion (as is their right these days) then they can use our course as an alternative for their children to study," he said.

Nugent added: "Religion isn't even taught properly as an objective subject with various religions and their origins examined and explained. The teaching is to create faith formation first, not objective education. We see our course as a chance for young Irish children to get an alternative view on how the world works."

Jane Donnelly, a member of Atheist Ireland and a parent of two children in an Irish secondary school, welcomed the creation of an atheism alternative for Irish pupils.

"I opted my two girls out of religious education classes and they were told to go to the library and find a philosophy book to read during RE instead. The range of philosophy books was very limited so I sent them into school each day with a copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion for them to read."

Religion, education and the Irish Republic

• God is omnipresent in the 1937 Irish constitution, with article 6.1 stating: "All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people"; and article 44.1 noting: "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion."

• Since the foundation of the republic, the Catholic church controls up to 93% of the state's 3,200 primary schools.

• The Catholic church's near monopoly of influence in education means that the ultimate power in each school is the local Catholic bishop.

• In Dublin the city's archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, is patron of about 470 primary schools. He is responsible for the management of the ethos of those schools, for senior appointments and is the one who can be sued when legal action takes place.

• The Irish taxpayer, and not the church, pays the bills for all the schools the hierarchy controls.

• The Irish education minister, Ruairi Quinn, has promised "the most radical change in primary education in Ireland since the state was founded in the 1920s" by taking the power of the church from running almost all schools in the state and putting it into the hands of elected governors. So far his reforms have not begun in earnest.

CSI gets first woman bishop

The Church of South India has appointed its first woman bishop.

The appointment of Revd. Eggoni Pushpalalitha as the bishop was confirmed yesterday by provincial secretary of the Church of South India Mani M. Philip.
Pushpalalitha was ordained in 1983 and has most recently been a priest in the Nadyal diocese of Andhra Pradesh.

"We have been ordaining women since 1976," Philip said.

He said that the Church’s constitution mandates that at least 25 per cent of all statutory bodies should be women.

Her appointment comes only days after the Church of Ireland elected its first woman bishop.

Bishop-designate Pushpalalitha is expected to be installed on Sept. 30.

One of the 38 members of the Churches of the Anglican Communion, the Church of South India is a 'united' Church, the result of the union of churches of varying traditions Anglican, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Reformed.

It was inaugurated in September 1947.

Francis, the first cartoon

Rosary Prayers For October

 

 

Invocation to the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary 

 

This short invocation to Mary, the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, is an appropriate prayer for the Month of the Holy Rosary, as well as for reciting at the end of the rosary.

To Our Lady of the Rosary

In this prayer to Our Lady of the Rosary, we ask the Virgin Mary to help us to cultivate a habit of interior prayer through the daily recitation of the rosary. 
This is the object of all of our prayers: to arrive at the point where we can "pray without ceasing," as Saint Paul tells us to do.

To the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary

This theologically rich prayer to Mary, the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, calls to mind our Blessed Mother's protection of the Church - as, for example, at the Battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), when the Christian fleet defeated the Ottoman Muslims through the intercession of the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.

For the Crusade of the Family Rosary

This prayer for the Crusade of the Family Rosary was written by Francis Cardinal Spellman, the cardinal archbishop of the archdiocese of New York in the mid-20th century. 
The Family Rosary Crusade was originally an organization, founded by Fr. Patrick Peyton, dedicated to convincing families to recite the rosary together daily.
Today, we can pray this prayer to spread the practice of the daily recitation of the rosary.
In that vein, it is especially appropriate to add this prayer to our daily prayers for the Month of the Holy Rosary.