[livius]

It may interest you all to know that when St. Patrick's Cathedral (in NYC) was built, there was little but farmland in the area. It was considered the extreme northern limit of civilized Manhattan, and the Archbishop was widely ridiculed for building it, and building it so big, to boot.

Personally, I'm not ecstatic about the design of this one, but it could certainly be a lot worse. We have a small rather similar chapel in my part of Florida, built so it looks out over a lake (it may be the same architect - he's popular in Florida). It's light and very graceful and appropriate.

Florida is a very beautiful place with very beautiful skies and vistas, and I would imagine that part of the architect's intention was to capture this. I'm sure the materials being used will compensate for the problems with sun, etc. Furthermore, a modern building is much more appropriate for that part of Florida.

The "quasi-Mission style" is in use in much of Florida, with the rather hideous modern variation of being built to house a "church in the round" so that everybody surrounds Father's throne as he sits grinning vacuously out at the herd. I mean, flock. And of course, it has no statues, a barely recognizable altar, the Cross has no corpus, etc.

This church appears to be quite traditional in its arrangement of space, and the cross on the front will have a corpus. What I want, of course, is a good Tridentine mass inside, but I guess I'll have to settle for respectful and non-innovative NO.

[Pyro7480]

Florida is a very beautiful place with very beautiful skies and vistas, and I would imagine that part of the architect's intention was to capture this. I'm sure the materials being used will compensate for the problems with sun, etc.

Reading these sentences reminded me of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Marge are caught in the open naked, and end up escaping in a hot-air balloon. At one point in their escapade, Homer falls out of the balloon's basket, and grabs onto a rope attached to the balloon, and his naked body gets dragged across the glass roof of a church full of people. It's a very funny scene.

[Unam Sanctam]

I am thankful it is not a church in-the-round. I really do dislike the amphitheatre feel of those modern church churches. I prefer the cruciform, which seems to lead one up toward the Divine.