Antiquated

There's a rather interesting and insightful interview that you really should see. In 1957 Mike Wallace sat down with Margaret Sanger. What an amazing thing to look back more than half a century later and see the train wreck before it happened.

Overpopulation, divorce, 'free-love', birth control, homosexuality, moral relativism, new ageism, abortion...and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. Sanger has thoughts on them all.

It was the Catholic Church yesterday. It is the Catholic Church today. It will always be the Catholic Church which does not get along well with the world.

H/T: John White

Ticketmaster

Will someone puh-LEASE get me tickets??

Gerald spreads the word:

The St. Louis Jesuits, considered by many to be the fathers of contemporary American liturgical music...will hold a reunion concert Oct. 19 at St. Joseph Church, 732 18th Ave. E. [Seattle, WA].

The concert, which starts at 8 p.m., will benefit the Ignatian Spirituality Center in Seattle. Tickets are $40 general admission, $125 for patron tickets, which include a pre-concert reception and prime seating. For more information, call (206) 329-4824 or visit the website.

Composers of popular liturgical songs including “Be Not Afraid,” “Here I Am, Lord,” “One Bread, One Body,” “Sing to the Mountains,” “Lift Up Your Hearts,” and “Let Us Build the City of God,” the five men -- Tim Manion, Dan Schutte and Jesuit Fathers Bob Dufford, John Foley and Roc O’Connor – were seminarians at St. Louis University when they came together and began composing. They are credited with combining songs based on Scripture with American culture following the Second Vatican Council.

They are also credited with lacing ditties with heresy, and trading in the Pange Lingua for If God Is For Us.

Oh, and did I mention Dan Schutte used to be Fr. Schutte, but has since left the priesthood and now lives in San Francisco with his partner Mike Gale?

Now there's a pious thought for next Sunday when you've got your OCP Music Issue open to Glory and Praise to Our God. Sing-a-long now! We want full and active participation.

St. James Cathedral

Somehow, in passing conversation with a non-Catholic friend, the architecture of our local Bremerton parish (Our Lady Star of the Sea, pictured below) came up. My friend had attended a wedding there once upon a time some ten years ago. But he never forgot what he described as, "One of the most beautiful churches in this area."



To be sure, Our Lady Star of the Sea, is a nice parish. But on the whole, there is nothing particularly remarkable about its elegant, yet simple, structure. So I asked my non-Catholic friend if he had ever been to the St. James Cathedral in downtown Seattle. He said no, and I told him he really should, if he was impressed with Star.

But all of this got me to wondering: What did our cathedral look like prior to its "renovation?"

I have no recollection of there ever being a renovation; but I'd be willing to wager my right leg the altar now sitting in the center of the nave is not to be found in the original blueprints.

Curious, I poked around on the Internet.

Here is a photo taken in 1907:



Notice the beautiful baldacchino, altar rail, and statues of Mary and Joseph (presumably on left and right, respectively).

All of which is no more.

Below is another picture; this one from 1929, still long before Vatican II, the "spirit" of which Modernists would soon use as their carte blanche commission to usher in the jackhammers and usher out the high altar.



And no cathedral would be complete without a side altar...


...side-baldacchino and all.

Contrast these pictures of yester-year with the new look:



Where the high altar used to be, the choir now sits.

In the words of architect Stephen Lee,

"The 1994 renovation and renewal began with an awareness that older church interiors were typically ill-suited to the reformed rites of Vatican II, which call for a change in the focus of liturgical action, to the gathered assembly."

I guess it never occurred to Lee that when a religion focuses liturgical action (i.e. worship) on the people, little room is left for God. Then again, maybe that's giving Lee (& friends) too much credit. Perhaps they were not so naive at all.

Contrast the thoughts of the cathedral's re-designer with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy:

"The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is locked into itself...As one of the fathers of Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy, J.A. Jungmann, put it, it was much more a question of priest and people facing in the same direction, knowing that together they were in a procession toward the Lord. They did not lock themselves into a circle, they did not gaze at one another, but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us...."

Yeah...

I'll take the design of 1907 over that of 2007 any day.

Achitecture done right; thankfully not Wright

One of the more influential Western architects, Frank Lloyd Wright has left behind a legacy of insipid, uninspiring, flat structures (picture, below). Indeed, when it comes to the style of Wright, the only thing left to marvel at is the boundless adoration and approval his work enjoyed.



(I suspect there is more to the veneration of modernism than simply an American desire to be in vogue. But that is for another day, and another post.)

I wish here to contrast the banality of Wright with the beauty of authentic design.

Take, for example, Duncan G. Stroik Architecture, LLC, based out of Indiana.

See for yourself the transforming power of human desire, effort and creativity at its finest.