I know this will shock many of you, but I do like some modern Church architecture (not all, but the ones where mega bucks go into them). I love the Cathedral in San Francisco and the new one in Oakland, California. I found the new Cathedral in Los Angeles okay, but when I looked at it there were many things in it that distracted me because of its ugliness in my eyes and other things that they could have done to make it nicer that they didn't.
I can't wait to see the plans for the interior's conversion to a Catholic Cathedral. I hope they don't blow it!
The soon to be baptized Crystal Cathedral with its new Christian name, Christ Cathedral!
At yes, I loved this in person, the new Cathedral in Oakland, Cathedral of Christ the Light
5 comments:
Dang! I was hoping for (and recommended) "The Cathedral of Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia."
No, St. John Lateran's official name in Latin is Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris et Sanctorum Iohannes Baptista et Evangelista in Laterano, which translates in English as Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Ss. John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran.
I truly believe that it is objectively and irreconcilably wrong for a Catholic church to be in the modernist style.
I have long found the Crystal thing to be ugly. But of the Philip Johnson buildings I have seen, the best have left me unimpressed, and this is not what I wold call one of his best.
I shudder to think of the cost of keeping all that glass reasonably clean. And I would love to read a case study by whatever acoustics specialist tries to tame that chamber.
While the Church has a history of converting those things which were profane into those things Catholic, this one should have just been let go.
While the new Cathedral might make a great stage for the arts, of that I have no doubt, I cannot fathom how it will be an acceptable Catholic Church. It embodies nothing Catholic in either it's architecture or in in it's scope. By it's very architecture it is a combination of secular humanism and naturalism. In short, it is a product of the Enlightenment.
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