. . . but lose that awful statue that's supposed to be of Our Blessed Mother . . . please . . . .
Posted on 11/22/2011 7:48:09 AM PST by markomalley
Being SO CAL Native I just hope “When the big one” hits I want that church nail
I like old fashion Catholic churches spoken in good old fashion Latin!
I go to church to be a Catholic not a protestant thank you very much.
I don’t care if Mass is in the basement and celebrated in Ibo, as long as I can go. My parish used to hold overflow Christmas Eve and Easter Masses in the hall, and that’s what I would attend: like being in the stable with the rest of the outcasts.
We have so many people now that they rent a large high school auditorium for the overflow. I haven’t been to one: since we have a band, we always have a place to sit in the multi-purpose parochial facility, as long as we’re willing to play.
. . . but lose that awful statue that's supposed to be of Our Blessed Mother . . . please . . . .
" . . . forever and ever, Amen. Hit the dirt."
But we all ought to do the best we can.
God deserves our best art, our best architecture, our best music. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
Good lord, where is THAT monstrosity?
Where on earth IS that? I would think the bishop would have kittens.
Our Lady of Maytag.
There's a church here, it's one of those independent mega-churches that broke off from the Episcopalians, that's known as "Our Lady of the Interstate" because it's RIGHT on I-75, like you could throw a rock close.
I haven't been inside, but our choirmaster has (he was looking at their organ which is a very good one) and says that it's just an auditorium with tiers of stadium seats and the big jumbotron screens, despite looking from the outside like a traditional church.
On the Top Ten of liturgical songs [sic] that should be banned, is the following:
Lyrics, if you can stomach it:I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn't follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John -
They came with me
And the Dance went on.
Chorus
I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a Cross to die.
Chorus
I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black -
It's hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I'd gone,
But I am the Dance,
And I still go on.
Chorus
They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That'll never, never die;
I'll live in you
If you'll live in me -
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.
Oh, I agree. There's no argument that God deserves the very best we can give, and that there are objective "better" and "worse" in terms both of aesthetics and of religious function.
A different issue is whether an individual person experiences distress when all is not, by his lights, as it could be, with the building, art, music, fixtures, etc. I'm one who isn't bothered. Whether it's good fortune or a character weakness to be easily satisfied with the minimum basics of survival, I can't say and don't really care.
However, if the Vatican is going to forbid putting up ugly churches, it’s also going to have to tell parishes where to find money for the staggering cost of glorious artwork, splendid materials, and a much taller and more elaborate structure. Marble and gold don’t come cheap.
Marble and gold are great, but hardly necessary. I have been to many very simple and yet very beautiful and reverent churches. They have statues that are not gaudy or oversized, but are classic and attractive. And they actually have them. They have a crucifix rather than some modern art fiasco. They have aisles that point in one direction so people know when and where to genuflect. This round, auditorium style churches are not cheaper to build. They are just ugly. They are uninspiring and not oriented to proper Catholic liturgical practices. A church doesn't have to be a Gothic basilica in order to be beautiful. It just needs to be oriented to true worship.
‘Bout time - it took us a long time to find a Catholic Church that had kneelers around here - Tidewater VA - even the local parish - which we don’t go to - got a Crucifix AFTER the bloody place was built and occupied! Sheesh!
And "Lord of the Dance" was not intended to stand alone -- it is supposed to be paired with this song:
The Carpenter/Friday Morning
It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell
and I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well
You can blame it on to Pilate
You can blame it on the Jews
You can blame it on the Devil
It's God I accuse
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree
You can blame it on to Adam
You can blame it on to Eve
You can blame it on the apple,
but that I can’t believe
It was God that made the Devil
And the woman and the man
And there wouldn’t be an apple
If it wasn’t in the plan
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree
Now Barabbas was a killer
And they let Barabbas go
But you are being crucified
For nothing that I know
And your God is up in Heaven
and He doesn’t do a thing
With a million angels watching
and they never move a wing
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree
To hell with Jehova
To the carpenter I said
I wish that a carpenter
had made the world instead
Goodbye and good luck to you
our ways will soon divide
Remember me tomorrow
The man you hung beside
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree
If you go upthread a little, you’ll see that I posted the website of just such a church, simple and elegant.
The liturgy is changing from “from east to west” to “the rising to the setting of the sun”
Don’t know if I have that exactly right, but listen for it on Sunday.
A couple months ago I reviewed a book (Kilde, When Church Became Theatre) that explained how a new relationship between preacher and congregation in the nineteenth century demanded a new architecture—an auditorium rather than a temple. The traditional rectangular seating arrangement with a focus on the altar was displaced in a number of mainstream Protestant denominations (not Episcopal and not Catholic, of course) by an amphitheatre design, with pews in a semi-circle facing an elevated stage, pulpit and often a centrally-arranged choir. This month I want to expand on that development a bit by highlighting a church that ties together several of the themes I've explored over the last five years here, and also to call attention (again) to an exceptionally creative New Jersey architect who is still little known or appreciated— Oscar Teale, of Plainfield.
Our story begins in Hackettstown (Warren County) about 1832 when a Methodist congregation (Trinity) organized and erected a standard meetinghouse-style church. We can find similar examples all over the western and southern part of the state. These two-story reinforced frame buildings included a gallery around three sides (usually) and separate entrances for men and women. The buildings didn't differ much in the exterior and the basic construction from a barn, and could be scaled up or down a bit to fit the congregation's size, pocketbook and aspirations. No architect was needed because the men of the congregation were fairly familiar with this sort of building and could handle most of the construction tasks themselves. When the congregation outgrew the building, it was often auctioned off, torn down, moved to a nearby location and reassembled as a barn, blacksmith shop, multi-family residence, or even a church for another congregation. Our history is replete with such tales. The Hackettstown congregation did not sell the building; intending to use it as a Sunday School, they moved it a few hundred feet back so they could erect a new church in a fashionable style on the prominent location they had built on earlier (what is now Route 46) . Both the original Methodist and Presbyterian buildings in town still exist, although the condition of the Methodist church seems hardly fitting for one of the oldest churches in the county. A wooden building that has survived one hundred and seventy-five years old deserves a decent respect (but that is a different issue, and one I won't expand upon now).
I have seen photographs of the second Trinity church—a Wren-Gibbs style building erected in 1858; it served the congregation until 1888, when it, too, was inadequate to seat the growing congregation. That building did not survive, however. Oscar Teale, an architect who specialized in churches, was engaged by the congregation. To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second church in the state designed by Teale; two years earlier he had completed the First German Reformed church in North Plainfield (which has fairly recently been designated as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places). I have not seen the interior of that building, but from the outside it is a well-crafted if traditional plan. The significance of Trinity is that it appears to be Teale's initial Akron Plan church. He designed at least four more in the region in that manner by 1898, but this was the first.
There is often a confusion between the amphitheatre plan, which dates to the 1840s and was very widely adopted, and the Akron Plan, which was first employed in 1866-1870 by a church in Ohio. The essence of the Akron Plan is a large open space encircled by two tiers of small classrooms arranged around a stage or speaker's platform. The altar was essentially eliminated. Sliding or folding doors or partitions shuttered the classrooms from the main auditorium, but they could be opened at appropriate times. Teale used that plan in several of his subsequent designs: the Seventh Day Baptist church in Plainfield (1890), an addition to the Second Presbyterian church in Elizabeth (1890s), and for a Sunday School on Staten Island (1898). Anyone walking into the “rotunda” of Trinity will be stuck immediately by the similarity to those other buildings, right down to the half-timbering, the clerestory windows, and panelling of the folding doors.
Although the rise of evangelical denominations in the mid-nineteenth century was probably a factor in the widespread adoption of the amphitheatre plan—and Trinity's main auditorium is certainly a fine example of that plan—I believe we should never underestimate the power of fashion—a building that could affirm the taste and financial resources of a congregation was as potent an argument in its favor, in my reading and interpretation of the mid-to-late nineteenth century architecture, as liturgical considerations. We are not likely to know what motivated the congregation in 1888 to seek out a relatively unknown architect to design their new church, but we should be grateful for whatever it was for we have an exceptional building in exceptional condition. And that was apparently recognized at the time, for less than a dozen years later, Teale was asked to design the showpiece building for Centenary College, a Methodist institution a few blocks west of the church.
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