SACRED CREATIONS - LA'S NEW CATHEDRAL

LA Times ^ | August 4, 2002 | SUZANNE MUCHNIC

[NYer]

Robert Graham's images stand above the doors of the new cathedral.

"Remember 'The Agony and the Ecstasy'? Think of that--times 10." Sculptor Simon Toparovsky is recounting the perils and thrills of creating a life-size bronze crucifix for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Like author Irving Stone's interpretation of Michelangelo's ordeal in the Sistine Chapel, the saga of adorning the enormous new cathedral, which opens Sept. 3 in downtown Los Angeles, is fraught with angst and drama.

[Gerish]

I hear it is one of the ugliest structures ever built. Not uncommon for Mahoney!

[NYer]

"Bob had a lot of ideas for the Virgin," Vosko says of Graham. But the initial ones were rejected, including a figure with the infant Jesus at her breast. The version that won approval--a sturdy, simply dressed figure with outstretched hands and a thick braid of hair--is "a new vision of what this woman can be," Vosko says.

I had planned to bold some of the more outrageous design elements but soon discovered that nearly everything was in bold.

Fr. Dr. Dick Vosko, wreckovator of cathedrals, is the same one who consulted on Weakland's atrocity.

[Notwithstanding]

Christian/Catholic pro-lifers - please help spread the word:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/728181/posts?page=48#48

[NYer]

Simon Toparovsky has been commissioned to create the main life-size bronze altar crucifix for Our Lady Queen of the Angels Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

How does it happen that American Catholics manage almost always to be held hostage by such con artists peddling trash? You look at this travesty, at Weakland holding Milwaukee hostage for years, at Steinfels and Appleby lecturing at the USCCB meeting in Dallas, at The Vagina Monologues being performed on Catholic campuses, at various parishes throughout the country being wreckovated or taken over by "Gay & Lesbian ministries" while diocesan funds are gutted by the perverted antics of their buddies, it's as if the worst element in the Catholic community calls all the shots and makes the decisions. This has to stop. This has to addressed by the bishops. For any of them to remain silent about this outrageous misuse of church funds is absurd. Hey, there needs to be a document just on wreckovation architecture. When will this long, absurd, ridiculous ordeal with neo-modernist minimalist architecture end? Tom Wolfe was making fun of this over 20 years ago! It's like the bishops never even read. [?]

[Jeff Chandler]

Ugly Is as Ugly does.

[narses]

Johnny Bear Contreras, a member of the Kumeyaay tribe who lives on the San Pasqual reservation east of Escondido and has created a bronze memorial to Native Americans for the plaza, has a Catholic background but now practices his tribal traditions. He doesn't think the distinction is important: "We are all under one umbrella."

The modern church in a nutshell.

[NYer]

Hey, there needs to be a document just on wreckovation architecture.

There is. I'll have to research it.

It's like the bishops never even read. [?]

I believe this falls into the category of "ego". Mahony intentionally disposed of St. Vibiana's Cathedral in order to erect an edifice with his name "attached". Wasn't the original budget set at $50 million? According to this and several other articles, the price tag is now up to $200 million! And, it's not yet completed.

What stuns me are some of these "new age" projects. How about:

Sculptor Max De Moss, who made candleholders and a towering receptacle for consecrated bread and wine, is a member of a Greek Orthodox family.

What is this supposed to be? With Vosko's name attached, I suppose the Tabernacle has either been tossed or relegated to some sub basement room.

[Aunt Polgara]

As much as I agree with the comments here about the new cathedral being a monument to Mahoney's ego, and a truly ugly building (at least from the outside), we need to remind ourselves that the LATimes has sued FR to keep whole articles from being posted.

Is there any way to keep this thread, but take out part of the article?

[Desdemona]

"How does it happen that American Catholics manage almost always to be held hostage by such con artists peddling trash?"

Because underneath it all, most are just as dumbed down as the rest of America.

[Siobhan]

A little something my Da wrote to me in an e-mail earlier this year:

---------------
DATELINE - 14 July 2005

The Governor-General of the Mexican Protectorate of Santa Vibiana (formerly known as southern California, Nevada, and Arizona) revealed the final report of the Sociedad Hispanoamericana e Internacional de Terremotos.

In the report by top scientists from the European Union and Mexico, the epicenter of the Los Angeles 8.2 mag. earthquake of 2003 has been mapped precisely to the location of the American Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in the city of Los Angeles.

Since all of Los Angeles submerged during the earthquake and was lost in the creation of the new Boxer Volcanic Rift, the efforts to pinpoint the epicenter of the quake have been very difficult.

Miraculously the reliquary of St. Vibiana which was in Los Angeles washed ashore air tight and intact on the west coast of the former state of Arizona. In 2004 the region was renamed Santa Vibiana by Mexican President Vicente Fox when the U.N. - against the obejections of the Republic of Texas - made the region a protectorate of Mexico.

[NYer]

Miraculously the reliquary of St. Vibiana which was in Los Angeles washed ashore air tight

LOL!!! I read somewhere that St. Vibiana has lost several homes. Perhaps she should be named patron saint of the homeless!

[ELS]

LOL!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

It really ought not to be too extraordinary a request to ask, in the spirit of common sense, that a "Catholic" cathedral look different than a kitschy casino theme hotel in Vegas. Makes one wonder if the architect is not some high-level cleric's...ahem... lover.

[narses]

Now, now. Next you are going to want things like priests who actually hang around to HEAR CONFESSIONS. That gets in the way of their tee times.

[narses]

Or maybe make sick calls. What else, communion rails?

[NYer]

What else, communion rails?

Sorry, no can do!! Not in the "new age" churches! The communion rails in the Milwaukee Cathedral were ground up to make the bishop's chair.

[Jeff Chandler]

...most [American Catholics] are just as dumbed down as the rest of America.

I are not!

[Jeff Chandler]

Makes one wonder if the architect is not some high-level cleric's...ahem... lover.

What? A GAY designer?! No way!