Cathedral of Christ the Blight part II

Not surprisingly, there are some who take offense at those of us who are not taken in by the emperor's new clothes. ONE SUCH PERSON is, both in religion and in this case metaphor, a man of the cloth; so I will uncharacteristically refrain from my normal tone and acerbic retorts. Fr. Keyes' comments are:

Many bloggers who write from a distance have the audacity to judge a building based on pictures and news reports. Both Whispers and the American Papist are young catholics who seem to make gossip their hobby, and they are host to many comments calling the Cathedral hideous, and a monstrosity. Well, last Thursday I was a participant in one of the most beautiful liturgies I have ever been part of. It was an amazing event.

First of all, the building sings. The acoustics are wonderful andf the sound of singing in the place is worthy of any cathedral.

Secondly, the heart of any worship space is the people. No one who was there had a single word of complaint.

Yes, I am a bit more traditional. This might not have been what I would have built. But I believe this is a place for the ages, and future ages will judge it differently after it has had years of experience. Cathedrals are built over hundreds of years.

But for now, at the dawn of the 21st century, the Cathedral of Christ the light is the jewel of Oakland.

Respondeo:

To the first- It is true that I was unable to be present at the dedication Mass with Fr. Keyes et al., but I have actually been at the Cathedral, having visited it last weekend, so my comments are not misinformed by distant optics and a lack of physical evidence. Moreover, and as I shamlessly plugged in my previous post, I spent upwards of 16 hours a day for 11 months on a counter-proposal to this very Cathedral for my Master's thesis. It is quite possible that I know that Cathedral and that site in Oakland better than anyone with the exception of the project team at Skidmore Owings and Merrill. Architecture is my career, and I am in active practice designing several Catholic churches across the country. I am not a gossip mongerer (in this regard), without authority. Those things said, I will also concede that I'm not always right, but please consider my own arguments for why that building is not as great as you wish to think.

As to your experience with the liturgy, I am happy you report such beauty. The liturgy is the heart of the active Church. But here, we are critiquing the building housing Our Lord, and giving place for that liturgy. Truly, members of Karol Wojtyla's 'środowisko' youth group have claimed their most inspiring liturgies came under the Polish mountain air when on kayak trips with their future pontiff, but that does not mean that the Polish mountainside is per se an acceptable church merely because beautiful liturgies were said there. The Rite of Dedication of a Church and Altar is an absolutely beautiful liturgy, and one which most people--even priests-- don't get to witness because of the infrequency of dedicating new churches. Perhaps some of the beauty you took in was influenced by the breathtaking grandeur of the Rite rather than the breathtaking grandeur of the site?

To the second- It just might sing. Not having had the chance to hear a choir in action, I cannot lay claim to the ineffectualness of the building as an arena for Sacred Music. In fact, I'd bet my bottom dollar it's acoustically charged...it is a relatively simple geometry with thousands of regular acoustic dampeners, and with that pricetag I'm sure at least $2-3 Million was spent on acoustic models and testing-the same as any opera hall. But this only satisfies its requisite acoustical qualities...and represents a personal experience only...i.e. what the music sounds like to the individual listener. This is a good quality to be certain in any church, modern or traditional, but the personal edification of the ears of a parishioner is not the raison d'être of a church.

To the third- I cannot speak to the personal opinion of those present at the dedication Mass. BUT, I'd bet on two things: First, even I, who am a most vocal opponent of modernist architecture, especially modernist ecclesiastical architecture, can recognize when to keep my mouth shut. In deference to the good Bishop Vigneron's trials and tribulations with this church, I would never have badmouthed the building on the day of its dedication, and I suppose those at the Cathedral for it's dedication would not do so either, if for no other reason than out of respect for the Bishop. Second, who gets invited to dedications? Donors and priests. Are the donors going to criticize the design they paid for? Of course not. Are the priests? Reread the previous sentence above.

To the fourth-Here is the view of the Cathedral from across Lake Merritt that I snapped last week. As you look at this and the following image, please keep this quote in mind from the Rite of Dedication of a Church and Altar:

"Because the church is a visible building, it stands as a special sign of the pilgrim Church on earth and reflects the Church dwelling in heaven."

And here is my counterproposal from the same vantage point:

Which of these is a 'visible sign'? Can you even locate a visible cross or any other sign at all that tells the viewer that the Cathedral as built is even a Church? How do each stand as a 'special sign of the pilgrim Church', or 'reflect the Church dwelling in heaven'? I shudder to think of downtown Oakland as a reflection of the heavenly Church.

Future ages will not see what is currently there, in part because it will only last around 60 years. Modernist architecture is not built to last longer because ideologically modernist architects think it morally abhorrent to impose their own zeitgeist on the future, in the same way they do not wish to impose past ages on the present, and so they habitually specify details that are untried and untested. So they fail, and the planned obsolescence of the building takes shape. And I'm sorry to say, but glass façades have a funny way with dealing with 'experience': the older they get, the worse they look. This building is only going downhill from here.

But if a church is built for the ages via a tradition that transcends time and place, then a particular building of this or that time and place can be appropriate beyond itself. Traditional buildings take on a patina with age that actually enhances their beauty. They only look better with age.

To the fifth- "The Cathedral of Christ the light is the jewel of Oakland." The jewel of Oakland? I'm so sad to say this, but you are absolutely right. So unfortunate.

"The very nature of a church demands that it be suited to sacred celebrations, dignified, evincing a noble beauty, not mere costly display, and it should stand as a sign and symbol of heavenly realities."

--Dedication of a Church and Altar II.1.iii

The real question here is whether the Cathedral satisfies these qualities, and is an appropriate resting place for the Body of Our Lord. From the outside it is not. And we can do better. We can build right. We can build traditional. We can honor Our Lord with a Domus Dei. We must only have the will to do it, and then we can build functional, durable, and beautiful churches.

Tomorrow we'll take a tour of the interior, and seek redeeming qualities.

UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FOLLOW-UP AND RELATED ARTICLES:

Cathedral of Christ the Blight (written prior to visiting the Cathedral)

There is No Prayer There (commentary on the exterior of the Cathedral)

Raiders of the Lost Art (commentary on the interior of the Cathedral and its art)

Missing the Middle (or Central) Term (commentary on the placement of the Tabernacle in the Cathedral)

There is No Prayer There.

During A RECENT TRIP up to the San Francisco Bay area, we stopped in at the newly DEDICATED Cathedral of Christ the Light, about which I have even stronger feelings than most other ugly churches, as my Master thesis at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture was a counter proposal to this very Cathedral.

Originally, under the design of the previous architect Santiago Calatrava, the two walls of the Cathedral were to open...like hands in prayer. So, if parishioners held their head high in prayer, then it would have rained down their noses.

Thank Goodness Calatrava was fired. But who did they hire next? Craig Hartman of the modernist powerhouse firm S.O.M. What were his principles that made him worthy of taking over the second most expensive Cathedral project in America (and $80 million over budget!)? According to Hartman:

"The tradition of the Catholic Church has historically been to apply the most advanced architectural thinking to create works of architecture that illuminate, inspire and ennoble the human spirit."

Right. Because the eschatological goal of the Mass (you know, that thing that happens in this kind of architecture) is for illuminating, inspiring, and ennobling the human spirit. Straight from the mouth of an agnostic comes another historical, philosophical, metaphysical, and theological blunder which erroneously promotes the anthropocentrism of rationalism. Phew. That's much easier to read to yourself than aloud.

I think one of the most important aspects of this issue, and the one that strikes me most now that the Cathedral is finished, is it's presence in the city of Oakland, and the metaphor this becomes for the state of ecclesiastical architecture everywhere. Let us start with calling to mind Christ's words on the mount (especially because we're talking about the Cathedral of Christ the Light):

You are the light of the world.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;
it is set on a lampstand,
where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father.
–Matthew 5:14-16

Of her hometown Oakland, Gertrude Stein famously noted that "There is no there there." But of modern society we can say 'there is no prayer there'. Men and women bustle about downtown skyscrapers, office workers drone on in the vast oceans of concrete found in office parks across the country. Rarely, if ever, do they hear the ringing of the bells marking the liturgy of the hours. Rare is the visual reminder that they are called to higher things as they drive past a church, and when we build churches like the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, we are accentuating the problem. Our churches are not inviting people into them. Most of the time, people don't even know what that building is, and what it's for. 'Is it a dentist's office?' 'Is it a museum?' 'Is it a hospital?' 'Oh, THAT'S A CHURCH?!?!?! I never would have guessed!'

But you may ask 'why is it so important to spend a lot of money on a church to make it look beautiful?' There are lots of reasons, but here are some thoughts that are often overlooked.

One of the arguments that modernist architects often make is that the form, and not ornament, should speak to the viewer. OK. But do YOU really see a VESICA PISCIS in that building? No. You'd have to see a plan drawing of it. And because it's devoid of ornament, there's nothing else to go by. So, a slightly well read modernist would give you the sophistical argument that 'The church buildings of early Christianity were often bare. They were houses. They did not adorn their exterior because they knew it was not what you looked like on the outside, but rather the inside i.e. the state of your soul that counts.

OK, but this is misleading. The very early Church did not adorn its buildings because the people in those domi ecclesiae were being persecuted, and didn't want to call attention to themselves. They did use symbols that were ambiguous, so that they could be argued out of. Later, when Christianity was accepted and promoted, and all of Europe was Catholic, there was no need to call attention to one's self. There was little need to be a 'light' to a world that was already lit.

But with the advent of the protestant reformation, there became an increased need to represent to an increasingly unfaithful population the realities of what exists on the inside of churches-churches that reformers were no longer seeing the inside of. Thus, the genius of Bernini's collonade at St. Peter's, a welcoming gesture to all.

But now, with increased secularism, it is even all the more important for our churches to call attention to themselves to those that pass by. If nothing else, maybe those passers-by will wonder why so much effort was spent in building a beautiful House of God. Maybe they'll stop in, curiously, and find more beauty. And then our city on a hill, our lamp on a lampstand will bring prayer there.

I wish I could have seen it at night--we were there at 10 in the morning--because apparently it lights up like a lightbulb. The reality is no one, absolutely no one, is anywhere near that part of Oakland at night. It won't be able to succeed in inviting people in because there's no one there to see the invitation. And in the daytime, when people are there, it fades away into the same blah urban landscape with all the other glass and aluminum buildings (some also done by the same architectural office). So it's ugly or at best unnoticeable on the exterior. So what? The interior is inspiring, right?

Well, what I can know with absolute certitude is that if my wife the saint forgets to genuflect, it's probably because it doesn't feel like a Church at all, and certainly doesn't exude 'inspiration'. In fact, during the 2 hours or so we were exploring the Cathedral, I didn't see a single person in prayer. Not so surprising. I don't feel compelled to pray at office buildings, either.

Certainly, there is no Prayer there.

More on this to come.
UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FOLLOW-UP AND RELATED ARTICLES:

Cathedral of Christ the Blight (written prior to visiting the Cathedral)

Cathedral of Christ the Blight part II (replies to objections to my commentary)

Raiders of the Lost Art (commentary on the interior of the Cathedral and its art)

Missing the Middle (or Central) Term (commentary on the placement of the Tabernacle in the Cathedral)

Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the f irst f our continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have nearly enough money between all of them to even come close to paying the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.


Hat tip to:
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

No More Reason to Diet?

Ok, well I had to drink a couple glasses of water to get it just right, but right now I weigh:

1.61803398874989484820 x 10¹ STONES.

So this is probably the only time in my life I could say with all honesty that I've got DIVINE PROPORTIONS. (And it's all thanks to taking extra portions)

Next up: Lean and Ex-creme Ration

Ahead of the Cuervo

They say tequila is strong enough to solve all your problems, but I want to see the proof...

Theory vs. Practice

In Mathematicks he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometrick scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents, straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by algebrae.

-From Samuel Butler's Hudibras.

Why Reading Kant Is a Waste of Time

I'm Still On Cloud Nine

UPDATE: Her eyes did well up, and then they rolled. Epic Success.

I'm the kind of guy who gets really excited over the odometer rolling to a new number. Not only do I get excited when it clicks to a nice round multiple of 10000, but also fun numbers like 75757.5, or 111111 (I made a point of driving 11 mph when I hit that one. No. Seriously. I pulled to the shoulder of the PCH, which is...Hwy 1). Palindromes are always exciting: 98338.9, or 48384. But it's seeing my favorite numbers like π or e that gives me a unique pleasure, the all-time greatest being when the odometer in my Mustang read out the golden number Φ:


Notice that the digits span beyond the odometer to include the trip meter. A little bit of planning, and voila! An increased level of precision, which paints a more exacting picture of your nerdiness to your wife, so that she can use it to more accurately make fun of you.

But now I have one that I'm hoping won't generate mockery from my beauty, although she will certainly roll her eyes after she dries them.

Today is a special day. Tonight, at around, oh, about 9:09:09 PM, my wife and I will have been married for 9 years, 9 months, 9 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes and 9 seconds. So, as you're reading this we're on our way up to San Francisco for a surprise overnight nonce. Why go so far for this? Because there's a restaurant up there called The Nines. And we're gonna go there for dinner after we play some 9-Ball (9 games of it, for sure, not to mention we'll squeeze in 9 innings of listening to the Dodgers lose on the radio.). And waiting at our table will be nine roses. And because of the wonderful people there at the restaurant, Beethoven's 9th Symphony will be playing in the background (and "1999" and "99 luftballons"...)

So you see, I am compelled to go the whole nine yards, or my psyche will be...will be...DECIMATED. And who knows? Maybe nine months from now...

At any rate, your Ninecompoop loves ya, Maria!

Ethic Fail

There is only one thing to note about the first presidential debate: Obama had to read the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek off of the bracelet he's been wearing for some time...as a reminder of a mother's loss-Ryan David Jopek's mother gave it to him. (Watch the look on McCain's face when Obama begins his tit for tat.



So I'm supposed to believe that his motives are to take care of the little guy? When he can't even remember the name of the little guy he 'wears on his wrist' every day?

Wow. Why isn't this bigger news? If a republican would have made this gaffe, it would be the only thing talked about. George H.W. Bush lost the 1992 election in part because he was labelled as 'out of touch', and a major factor in that national sentiment was the impatience he displayed by looking at his watch during an audience member question during the 1992 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE.

In case you just want to watch it over and over again, HERE'S the 'I've got a bracelet, too' video. And THIS bit of recent pop culture history should explain how I came up with the first image of this post. (Spend some time at icanhascheezburger.com if you're bored and want to know why I hate the internet for ruining our language, yet want to laugh heartily.)

Epic Fail.
Or would that be Ethic Fail?

Cathedral of Christ the Blight

It has come to pass. The Cathedral of Christ the Light for the Oakland Diocese is NOW OPEN.

Dear God I hope this is the last of the Cathedrals to be built that are as ugly as sin. (Actually, there are a couple in process, but I have hope the era is over). At any rate, this design is just horrible. Horrible.

"It was really driven by the Bishop wanting a certain traditional image — an image of Christ borrowed from a sculpture at Chartres Cathedral in France — and by Craig Hartman, working out how we could take this historic image and make it appropriate for this modern cathedral,"

(I know I'm taking the quote out of context, but this is a typical description of the Cathedral as a whole)

Oh. I'm so depressed. This is 'traditional'? Why? Because it's got a repeating motif of the Vesica Piscis? Ugh. It could just as easily be read to be an 180 foot vulva as a mandorla.

"Further the places and requisites for worship should be truly worthy and beautiful, signs and symbols of heavenly realities." —Catechism of the Catholic Church, #253

or:

"Sacred images in our churches and homes are intended to awaken and nourish our faith in the mystery of Christ." —Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1192

I wonder if Christ finds His Cathedral 'truly worthy and beautiful'. I wonder if the people in it will see the 'signs and symbols of heavenly realities' placed there, and will understand what they mean (without a brochure). I wonder if there are any sacred images, and if there are, if they will nourish our faith. I wonder if there could have been a better way...

UPDATE: HERE ARE THE FOLLOW-UP AND RELATED ARTICLES:

There is No Prayer There (commentary on the exterior of the Cathedral)

Cathedral of Christ the Blight part II (replies to objections to my commentary)

Raiders of the Lost Art (commentary on the interior of the Cathedral and its art)

Missing the Middle (or Central) Term (commentary on the placement of the Tabernacle in the Cathedral)