As you know, I am clairvoyant but maybe not. For years I have wondered what the Crystal Cathedral would look like if the Rev. Dr. Shuller would allow a traditional Catholic Mass to be celebrated in his Crystal Cathedral. I've always been fascinated by the building but have never seen it in person, only on television's Hour of Power! My clairvoyant charism did not ever lead me to think that the Catholic Diocese of Orange, California would actually buy it from Dr. Shuller and turn it into a Cathedral, but buy it they did! Wow! I can only imagine what it will look like when it is given a Catholic liturgical identity. There are so many ultra-modern Catholic Cathedrals in California that I can't wait to see! No kidding, I like truly artistic modern buildings.
This baptismal font is to die for, I hope it stays!
23 comments:
The prospect is Elysian!
The Crystal Cathedral spans a full 415-feet in length, 207-feet in width and 128-feet in height. The size of the Cathedral is enhanced by the all-glass covering that encloses the entire building. More than 10,000 windows of tempered, silver-colored glass are held in place by a lace-like frame of white steel trusses. These 16,000 trusses were specifically fabricated for this engineering feat. The sanctuary seats 2,736 persons including 1,761 seats on the main floor, 346 seats in the East and West Balconies, and 283 in the South Balcony.
More than 1,000 singers and instrumentalists can perform in the 185-foot wide chancel area. The chancel area is constructed of Rosso Alicante marble, quarried in Spain and cut and polished in Italy. The altar table and pulpit are made of granite, and the 17-foot tall wooden cross is antiqued with 18-karat gold leaf.
The building is not air-conditioned, but is cooled by the convection of cool air rising through the building and escaping through high-level windows.
Kool! How do you know all this?!
Fr., there's been a ton of sizzle out here in CA., all pretty polarized, either extremely FOR or AGIN the Orange bid. Of course, inexorably tied to it all is the baggage of Bsp. Tod Brown, settlement monies, mismanagement, the usual SoCal lunacy. As an Oakland boy, having mixed feelings about its cathedral, and flat out flabbergasted at the LA and SF constructs, I think Brown and his cronies actually have their heads on right with this acquisition. As Philip describes, I think it also a marvelous enterprise, and I believe its consecration to the RCC would stand in stark contrast to the bombast, parading elephants and flying angels Schuller marketed for decades.
To each his own.
I've seen San Francisco's Cathedral in the early 1980's and I liked it then, but I was just out of a very liberal seminary. I'm dying to see LA's Cathedral and the one in Oakland, although Oakland's in pictures doesn't really thrill me, but in person it might be different. But for some reason I've really been hopeful that Orange would buy it. I've always been fascinated by the building and hope to see it one day.
Who is going to clean the inside of the windows after a heavy use of a censer?
rcg
not to mention all the smoke from the candles! I wonder if the Christmas Pageant with all the camels and stuff will be a tradition that is continued? How many millions did that cost?
I designed the building.
My PI told me that already. Thanks for doing it though!
In California, four out of twelve cathedral churches are "modern." They are Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and, with the purchase of the Crystal Palace, er, Cathedral, Orange.
The other eight are pretty traditional, architecturally. Several are "Spanish" style, Fresno's is Gothic-Romanesque. San Jose has a Greek Cross-shaped cathedral, and Sacramento's is Italianate.
"No one ever went broke under-estimating the bad taste of the American public." H.L. Mencken...
...or the bad taste of the post VAT II Catholic Church. LOL!
Ugly as sin. Modernist Heresy type sin.
And can some one get Ignotus a shrink? Bad enough he posts under dozens of different names, now he actually responds in the first person too.
Horribly ugly, although subjective. In the end I just don't see how as a Cathedral this can espouse all the Catholic Church has to offer in its' beautiful centuries old architectural styles. Yes every style has been seen but some resonate to the typical Catholic more than others. This does not top the list for most. And so much money for it. Where are the liberals screaming about this purchase or does it somehow get swept under the rug because it enshrines their ideals?
Schuller's Crystal "Cathedral" (yes, designed by architect Philip Johnson) is just not suitable for Catholic worship. This kinds of architecture, while suitable for other enterprises, has no Catholic pedigree. Where will the stations of the cross go? How are they going to suspend a crucifix in this huge glass thing? The focal point does not appear to be the altar area, but the massive boxes that hold its organ pipes. If the worshipper's eye is not drawn to the organ pipes, it is further distracted to look outside at the weather changes, the clouds, the freeway. This building is a temptation to marvel at the world around us instead of creating a sense of sacredness which marvels that God would send his son to die for our sins. Philip Johnson's work is fantastic on one level, but completely unsuitable for a Catholic church. But, if you knew more about Bishop Tod Brown's record as a Catholic, you would not be surprised. I, for one, prayed hard that he would retire before pulling off such a horrible maneuver.
I think there are all kinds of creative options for all of the liturgical requirements. Could you imagine an altar the size of St. Peter's with the Benedictine Altar Arragnement and really, really all candles and crucifix on the altar similar to St. Peters or incorporated in an reredos behind this large and rectangular altar? Yes the pipe organ appears to be overpowering but it could be moved, but you would need some kind of reredos for the altar to help it stand out. The stations could be on poles or tapestries to bring warmth to the icy sterility of the building could be hung as a form of the stations, not to mention the addition of some stain glass in the panels.
If one is marveling at the world around us, is not one marveling at the God who created the world?
I am grateful that I can be made aware of God's presence in a the intricacies of ice crystals that form on a car windshield, in the delicate whirr of a hummingbird's wings, or in the sublime complexity of human embryogenesis.
Praise God for all these dappled things!
If one is marveling at the world around us, is not one marveling at the God who created the world?
****Yes indeed I believe you would be. However at Mass we are focused not on the God who created the world, but on his Son's Sacrifice and we she be focused on the Crucifix.
@Anon, 10:02
I'll never forget the first time I walked into Sts.Johns Cathedral in Fresno. We were there for an interview for DoMusic position, and went to early morning Mass prior. Coming from 17 years of cathedral and parish work in Oakland, I was wholly unprepared for the Fresno interior-every inch of wall and ceiling adorned with neo-Renaissance fresco, acres of stained glass scenes, a gothic, wooden high altar in obvious disrepair, but still quite overwhelming by comparison to the "bare (ruined?)altar" style more pervasive in Oakland.
I was literally stunned. Got the gig, and over the next four years I gradually came to appreciate and love the environment, which at first seemed an impediment to my personal ability to pray, and now was an integral element of it.
Perhaps after some presumably well-consideration renovation, worshippers at the CC will be provided the same progression of time to allow them some perspective on the environment that was not obvious to them at first blush.
I don't think it is possible to focus exclusively on the sacrifice of the Son if one is not also focused on the Father, the terminus ad quem, to whom the sacrifice is offered.
"If one is marveling at the world around us, is not one marveling at the God who created the world?"
No, not necessarily. The definite article before "God" makes one wonder, "which god?" Pantheism, unitarianism, Zen, atheism, witchcraft, and Al Gore all marvel at nature and the world around us, and I don't like their theology. I call it the "(*deep sigh*) I found God in the mountains" school of thought, generally expressed by high school students or college freshmen after a weekend retreat in the Great Smokies. It is an emotional statement and careless theology.
"The God who created the world" is the God who created the world.
Now, maybe in your theological thinking there is some "other" creating god or or even goddess out there.
I worship the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's nothing sloppy about the article "the."
It was a theological point, Anonymous. I'm sure you and I agree that we worship the Creator of Heaven and earth,the Triune God. However, we cannot marvel at Him in nature until we know Him through the Son,the revealed Word. Until we know Christ, our marvelling at nature is, at best, a vague awareness of the Creator. It doesn't tell us very much about Him. So, belief is primary.
So how many millions more will be spent to hand the Stations, move the organ, put in some stained glass and build reredoes suitable to a Catholic Cathedral? Wish as you may they will never try to turn this structure of glass into anything that resembles St. Peters. What would be the point? Obviously it is the stark nothingness that appealed to the buyer, not how it can be made to be more Baroque, or Italianate. As a Cathedral, I wouldn't want to go there. It reminds me of nothing in about the history of the Church or our past. And I don't think it will survive hundreds of years, as do many of the European Cathedrals that invoke amazement for millions who see them.
Not to mention that it is a garish, modernist, piece of carnival garbage built to reflect the majesty amd glory of Robert Schuller. May he roast in peace...
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