Towering like the Emerald City, the cathedral
formerly known as Crystal sits at what might be Orange County’s nucleus,
a trinity of confluencing freeways, the Angels and Ducks stadium and a
glimpse of a sacred place of a different kind — Disneyland.
From
that gleaming sanctuary, evangelist Robert Schuller delivered sermons
that were beamed to televisions around the world. His ministry became
synonymous with the megachurch, designed so the light and the breeze
could stream through, a grand replica of his humble beginnings preaching
on the roof of an Orange drive-in’s snack shop.
The
Crystal Cathedral was to Schuller what Graceland was to Elvis. Now it
has been bought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, which has long
coveted having a cathedral that sat at the center of its vast footprint
of nearly 1.3 million Catholics.
The name
has already been changed to the Christ Cathedral.
But the work of
liturgical consultants, priests and architects to transform a temple so
closely identified as a symbol of Schuller’s sunny, uniquely Southern
Californian theology into one that conforms to the traditions of the
Roman Catholic Church has just begun.
“The
exterior will always be the Crystal Cathedral, at least for a while,”
said Duncan Stroik, a professor of architecture at Notre Dame and editor
of the publication Sacred Architecture Journal. “Catholic on the
inside, but kind of Protestant on the outside.”
Those
who have taken on the project recognize that their assignment is an
intimidating one, but they also have faith: They can turn the Crystal
Cathedral into the Christ Cathedral.
Rob
Neal can imagine a Sunday morning a few years from now. The Catholic
worshipers arrive at a shimmering cathedral — a fabrication of glass,
metal and air — that reaches toward a cobalt sky.
They
will dip a finger into blessed waters and make the sign of the cross.
They will sing along as the rumbling organ, among the largest in the
world, plays traditional hymns. And they will kneel as the priest leads
them in prayer during the transubstantiation of unleavened bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ.
It
will be an “intrinsically Catholic” sanctuary,” said Neal, the Orange
County property developer who has volunteered to help lead the
conversion.
The diocese bought the Crystal
Cathedral campus in 2011 for $57.5 million, beating out Chapman
University in bidding for the Garden Grove property after Schuller’s
ministry filed for bankruptcy.
When the
diocese was formed in 1976, a large suburban church, Holy Family in
Orange, became its headquarters. For some, the absence of a centrally
located cathedral became increasingly noticeable as the diocese grew.
The church needed a place that, as Bishop Kevin Vann described,
demonstrated the scope of Orange County’s Catholic community.
“It helps them see their faith is larger,” he said.
“It’s
a God-given opportunity to build a community of faith here,” Vann said.
“It’s easy to get to, it’s visible, it’s on bus lines.”
The
diocese launched a $53-million undertaking to refurbish the complex,
moving the congregation of nearby St. Callistus to the Christ Cathedral
campus and handing over the old Catholic church to the Crystal
Cathedral’s refugees.
(The transition hasn’t gone without tension: The
removal of engraved markers, called Walk of Faith stones, during the
construction process has upset some of the Schuller followers who bought
them.)
Walking the cathedral grounds, Neal
marveled at what the Catholic Church has acquired: The Richard
Neutra-designed Arboretum, where experts were at work restoring the
architect’s original vision. The cultural center, so futuristic in its
design that it stood in as Starfleet headquarters in a “Star Trek”
movie.
And his favorite place, the Chapel in the Sky, the penthouse
peninsula of windows from which he could see the far reaches of the
diocese’s domain.
But as he stood in the
church’s courtyard on a bright afternoon, the noontime sun splashing off
its reflective facade, Neal knew the cathedral that serves as the heart
of this campus would likely make for the most daunting project of his
career.
“I want people to come in and be overwhelmed,” he said, “by the sense of God and the sense of beauty.”
For
most of the buildings, Neal said, the church has turned to secular
experts, such as scholars so schooled in Neutra’s work they can handle
the meticulous job of picking colors and even deciding where to set
landscaping stones in a way that fits in his vision.
The same applied to the exterior of the Crystal Cathedral.
“That’s
yours,” Neal said he told the preservationists, referring to the places
the diocese intends to keep as ecumenical, or non-denominational,
spaces.
Then he gestured at the cathedral. “But that’s ours.”
His
day job is director of worship for the Archdiocese of Omaha, but for
more than 30 years he has worked on the side as a liturgical designer.
He has been involved in the design and renovation of Catholic churches
built in Romanesque style, Victorian style and even contemporary, such
as Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light, where a translucent image of
Jesus stands 58 feet tall.
But he acknowledged that nothing else in his career rivals the project in Orange County.
“It’s
unique because of the history, it’s unique because of the legacy of Dr.
Schuller,” Woeger said. “It’s a unique design challenge for me.”
Scholars
said transforming sanctuaries of other faiths — or even secular spaces —
into cathedrals wasn’t unprecedented in the history of the church. In
Rome, even pagan temples had become cathedrals.
In more recent times, the project stands alone.
Influential
architect Philip Johnson designed the star-shaped structure that stood
128 feet tall, 415 feet long and 207 feet wide, with more than 10,000
glass panels attached to a latticework of white steel trusses using a
silicone glue. The chancel, a 185-foot-wide span of marble quarried in
Spain, could hold more than 1,000 singers and musicians.
“It’s
probably the first megachurch turned into a Catholic place,” Stroik
said. “It’s an interesting shape, it’s glass, it’s not cruciform. All
those things would not be traditional, or typical, of a Catholic
Cathedral.”
A cathedral, at least in the
Catholic standard, tends to evoke a mental image of a gilded Roman
basilica. Woeger is quick to correct that: A cathedral — named for the
cathedra, the bishop’s chair — can be gothic, it can be Byzantine, it
can be as modern as the Crystal Cathedral.
The
overarching requirement, Stroik said, is that Catholics believe the
cathedral is God’s house; as such, the structure should reflect that:
“It should be beautiful, it should be worthy.”
The
obstacles are in the details. They’ll have to install a traditional
altar, a gospel lectern called an ambo and baptismal font into a
structure that was built as a television studio as much as a sanctuary.
They’ll also have to add prominent images of such figures as the Virgin
Mary, the apostles and, especially, the church’s namesake.
One point of concern, Stroik said, are the church’s three balconies, which hold thousands of people.
He
said they allow for a much larger congregation but fall outside the
tradition of the Catholic Church, detracting from the notion that it is
“one body in Christ” who have gathered. Other scholars agreed, but
Woeger countered that the balconies could also be seen as bringing more
people closer to the fore.
Stroik noted
that within the fraternity of architects there would be a more earthly
worry: “You don’t want to be the guy that gets credited with destroying
Philip Johnson’s building.”
But that last
hurdle remains, one of perception: How can they change how people think
of a place that, for so long, has been identified with a well-known
evangelical figure and the theology he preached?
It’s something that weighs on Woeger’s mind.
The
first Mass won’t be held there until at least 2015, meaning it will be
some time until infants will be baptized there and sinners come to
confess. It’ll take even longer before the new congregants feel that the
church is their own — that it is, indeed, Catholic.
“It’ll
develop its own presence and its own story as the community starts to
gather there,” Woeger said. “The worship itself is what will give it a
Catholic identity.”
He pondered that for a moment.
“‘It was the Crystal Cathedral, and now it’s the Catholic cathedral.’ I think that’s what people will say.”