[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. [?]

[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.