Two months ago I made the mistake of visiting a local parish wherein the popular Pauline Novelty Mass is celebrated. This parish, advertised as St. Rita Catholic Community, and boasting a rather sizable campus, went somewhat beyond the banal and into the offensive in its celebration of newness and undeserved familiarity. I will not bore our readers with the details, since they are as common as they were repulsive, but I thought of SRCC when I noticed the publication of an opinion piece concerning our new bishop by its so-called pastoral administrator, Rev. Joshua Jair Whitfield.
This is the sort of city I believe in, a city of genuine diverse voices both secular and spiritual. It's a city in which I may grow under the wisdom of the Torah as well as the insights of the Hadith, sanctified in the teachings of Jesus as well as enlightened by the precise beauties of science. A city in which these voices come together as one chorus, not in any sort of tired blurred syncretism, but truly symphonic. A city in which each person keeps his or her authentic faith and authentic voice, speaking and bearing witness to it peacefully; each sharing the wisdom and insights of his or her traditions for the good of all. A truly diverse city: this is my vision, my hope and my prayer.
And I believe this new bishop will add to this chorus beautifully. Dallas is a city of remarkable men and women, remarkable leaders of faith. It's a city of civic and political leaders of good will and good argument. A city that doesn't hide its differences, it celebrates them as it struggles to live an ethics of dignity and fairness for all. It's a great city, great because of this diversity. It's a city we love.
Quite an insult to Bp. Burns, to suggest that the man considers himself the spokesman for just one spiritual voice among many "genuine diverse voices," rather than the local shepherd of the One Church outside of which one cannot be saved. At least, I have no particular reason to suspect His Excellency of indifferentism. No doubt his response to Padre J.J.'s doctrinally confusing article will be swift and clear, but merciful—after all, the good reverend is a former Anglican minister, and has a wife and children to support.
A disturbing stained glass window Padre J.J. contemplates daily at St. Rita's, courtesy of Mr. Lyle Novinski.
Dallas cathedral altar, before and after the aggiornamento.
"And I took my rod that was called Beauty, and I cut it asunder to make void my covenant, which I had made with all people. And it was made void in that day: and so the poor of the flock that keep for me, understood that it is the word of the Lord. And I said to them: 'If it be good in your eyes, bring hither my wages: and if not, be quiet.' And they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver." —Zacharias xi
Two days ago I made a quasi-pilgrimage to visit the major relics of Maria Goretti in Dallas. (I can't honestly call a 20-minute drive a real pilgrimage.) Strangely enough, the relics were not displayed at St. Maria Goretti parish, but at the even more architecturally modernist St. Monica.
I have visited relics before, but never any that drew such a large crowd. The line when I arrived lasted about an hour. At other times of the day pilgrims were reporting 3-4 hour waits. A shuttle was bringing people over from a local Protestant church that had offered its parking lot for use. One lady helpfully told those standing in line that they could easily skip ahead and sneak in through another door.
On the approach to the church, I was accosted by some well-meaning devotees selling books and laminated prayer cards. The narthex (lobby?) featured an audio loop of a priest telling the story of St. Maria's extraordinary forgiveness. Inside the church, Knights of Columbus divided us into two efficient lines. Accosted again by devotees insisting that I take a last-minute prayer card, I offended them greatly by turning them down, all while also trying to ignore the very loud video presentation playing on the projection screens. Two Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre—their Knight husbands apparently taking a smoke break—stood elevated in the sanctuary overlooking the steady stream of pilgrims.
Maria herself was a small girl when she died. She was murdered during an attempted rape at the age of eleven by a twenty year-old man. Her hair is slightly lighter than it appears in most paintings and statues of her. Everything except her hair is covered while resting in the reliquary.
While praying in the pews after venerating the relics, I reflected on the content of the presentations which still bombarded everyone inside the church. Specifically, there was much ado about Maria's pious forgiveness of her rapist while she was dying, and no talk whatsoever about her refusal to submit to his impurity. What a change from the little girl's canonization ceremony, which concluded with P. Pius XII asking the crowds of youths, "Young people, pleasure of the eyes of Jesus, are you determined to resist any attack on your chastity with the help of grace of God?"
Resistance to evil is no longer in vogue; forgiveness—whatever that now means—certainly is. And if the recipient of that forgiveness is a pedophile rapist? What better way to herald in the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy?
The list of architecturally deficient Catholic parishes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex seems inexhaustible. Just the other day, I thought, dear reader, that we must have seen at least every style of bad ecclesiastical architecture available somewhere in this area until I re-visited a church I last saw on Good Friday—St. Maria Goretti, which was hosting relics of the True Cross that morning.
St. Maria Goretti in Arlington is a strange artifact from that transitional pontificate of Eugenio Pacelli, an age in which everything looked stable and constant on the surface, but a violent storm brewed beneath Pius' Italian crust. I last saw a church approaching this style—merging traditional concepts with modernist and minimalist art and materials—at St. Bridget in Cheshire, CT, my original parish. It, too, was built during the Pacellian era and it too represents that transitional period.
Minimal lighting, indiscernible stained glass, and varnished wood are the choices in this eclectic contribution. The shape of the church is something between thatched hut and collapsing log cabin.
Other than Stations of the Cross, the church has one place for private prayer. Even the kitsch plaster statues have been hidden atop the confessional boxes. When the faithful added chapels to the ancient Roman basilicas, they intentionally put them throughout the temples so that nothing would detract from the integrity of the sanctuary. In St. Maria Goretti, the sanctuary has an altar and all other manner of thingamajigs with only one concession to private prayer.
Perhaps there is additional lighting in the ceiling that was not illuminated, but through the natural glow of the sun, St. Maria's is gloomy.
St. Benedict? Infant of Prague? Franciscan crucifix? St. Maria Goretti? Whichever you please....
The church was built c.1952 for the old Mass. The sanctuary is alarmingly original and un-"Bugninized" from the 1960s because it was already quite bad. Other than the movement of the altar, I cannot definitively say anything in the sanctuary is new. The altar was clearly atop the footpace at first and has descended to become a "forward" altar for versus turbam Masses, but the back wall, Crucifix, carpeting, altar rail design, and the rest are all quite of the age.
There are three ambos. Why, pray tell? Are three different people really speaking during the Mass? I know!—they are for the deacons to sing the Passion during Holy Week!
A Ukrainian Catholic deacon I know one complained that the Roman Church seems to have no sense of joy. One enters the church and sees only a crucifix. This is actually a relatively new phenomenon, and an unhealthy one at that. The gigantic crucifixes that now dominate the eastern walls of Roman parishes result from brutalistic styling that minimalizes decoration and resorts to the crucifix as the one external sign of the Catholicity of the building. Previously, churches would present images of Christ ruling, the Virgin, the patron saint or mystery of the parish, or just a stylized wall.
Also interesting is the pseudo-canopy. The 1950s saw a very brief and half-hearted revival of the baldachin, a cover over the sanctuary that all the Roman and Eastern churches possessed in the first millennium. The open gothic style of the Latin middle ages and the creation of the iconostasis in the Greek church during the decadant Palaiologan dynasty meant that only the far Eastern churches retained the tradition when constructing new edifices, St. Peter's in Rome being a famous exception. The 1950s resurgence rarely resulted in a full baldachin, only strange sounding boards hanging from the ceiling, as at St. Bridget's.
A side altar for daily Masses. St. Joseph and Our Lady watch over the two additional altars, each flanking the sanctuary.
Over the past year this blog has posted a number of entries about the unique and distinctive architectural stylings which have besot the diocese of Dallas with some remarkably unattractive churches ranging from unfulfilled potential to outright horrid with most falling somewhere in the middle. We now know why. The answer is to be found at the University of Dallas.
At the heart of the University of Dallas—hidden mostly out of sight by the twenty trees in the city of Irving—rests the Church of the Incarnation. Designed to look like a womb, the students have taken to calling the church St. Fallopius.
The first view inside the edifice disorients the visitor, as he stares across the narthex atrium at the other entrance. Off to the right is a Eucharistic chapel which meshes Our Lady of Guadalupe with Soviet brutalism.
As when one enters the church proper, there is no center of view in the chapel.
On the left side of St. Fallopius' atrium is the statue of Mother and Blob, accented tastelessly by a faux-oriental, faux-copper lamp.
In front of the Mother and Blob stands, or, rather, rests a few steps down, the chlorinated font.
45 degrees left is the main worship area (cannot call it a nave and sanctuary), again disoriented.
The entrance invites one to drift to the right, where the aisle twists around this uteral space.
On the floor are some crosses and words meant to pass as Stations.
Artificial light directly above in the ceiling illuminates the "station."
The center view fools one into assuming the church proper is symmetrical when,
in truth, the concert grand piano and choir stage adjoin the altar space.
Again, the faux-copper lamps stolen from a sheikh's palace.
Not only do they use the Gather hymnal, but they spent money on
embossed copies made with high quality paper. Bad taste is expensive.
I gave myself a quick C-section and escaped the womb of St. Fallopius. Immediately outside I happened upon this ordinary, but quite well made marble statue of Our Lady in prayer. "J" told me that this statue of the Virgin was carved by a university art student for use in the chapel, but it was placed out in the elements because the style was discordant with that of St. Fallopius.
Why tell you all this information and show you these lurid images, dear readers? I have not neglected care for your senses. On the contrary, I wish to fulfill your minds. This building, directly, and the other ugly churches in the diocese of Dallas, indirectly, are the work and responsibility of one man: Lyle Novinski.
Lyle Novinski designed St. Fallopius and, quite inexplicably, established himself as an expert on liturgical art and architecture in the Catholic tradition, so much so that the previous bishop of Dallas gave him veto and reviewing rights over every new church erected within the diocese. Novinski must take efficiency and brutality as his inspirations, having eviscerated all concept of maximalism and tradition. In one lecture he regales the listeners with tales of the English bicycle wheel: take anything away and it fails, add anything and it becomes redundant.
Unfortunately, God is not a bicycle wheel and the worship of God does not take inspiration from recreational vehicles. God is a maximalist Who demands fitting praise and worship. Arranging a metal and brick silo with a few Marian images and a stone block altar does not make St. Fallopius a church in any traditional sense, only in an efficient sense. Brutalism kills beauty, which is a great sin in itself. People are more readily captivated and oriented to God by beauty than by rhetoric or logic. Beauty is often the start of conversion, it has kept a great many weak souls within the bounds of the saving ark for centuries, and it tells the reverent among pagans that the Church offers something that they might understand. Removing beauty, as Mr. Novinski and the previous bishop of Dallas have done in many places, is a crime in itself, a great spiritual crime for which there is no immediate expiation.
Below is a feature on the man behind St. Fallopius from a local news agency.
First order of business is podcasts. I know very little about them but two readers have independently suggested I attempt to produce some. Should any of you think this a worthwhile endeavor (those of you who know what my voice sounds like know it is not!) suggest a topic or two and I will mull it over.
Now on to the day's material. Every church I visit in this area is progressively stranger and stranger. The first church I saw was St. Francis of Assisi in Frisco, a modest attempt at Romanesque which, as Rubricarius pointed out, did not entirely work owing to the ceiling, but which was an interesting none the less. Then I went to a pair of Byzantine churches and St. Thomas Aquinas in Dallas, each good representations of what a parish ought to be. Then I came upon this bereft barn and St. Jude's, both very.... modern and.... pastoral....
With every new parish I find that evidence for the complaints Catholics have made for the last seven decades about the decline of Church architecture. When I lived in the northeastern United States churches tended to look more or less the same as they did prior to the mid-20th century. Yes, a great many were "wreckovated" and some were re-modeled with a forward altar, yet the integrity of the buildings usually survived. With the death of American cultural Catholicism in the 1960s and 1970s and the influx of Mexican immigrants to Texas very few "traditional" looking parishes from the "old days" survived in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Almost everything is new and monstrously repulsive, an aesthetic assault on those of good taste and piety! Worse than being ugly, these edifices, aside from altars and crucifixes, have no discernibly Christian features! Today's feature could well have been a rented venue or a local cinema.
The approach
The ticket desks. No kiosks apparently.
The holy water font?
It is no holy water font. It is a baptismal barque!
I took a sniff just to be sure and confirmed my
suspicion of chlorination.
It looks strange enough as is. The stain glass windows
depict nothing in particular other than the vague outline
of a crucifix and some Roman numerals one assumes correspond
to the Stations of the Cross.
Then I realized that the sanctuary is "sunken" to create a
theatrical effect. The lighting arrangement seems to agree
with this intention.
Not quite the traditional Roman choir style either!
It begs the question: why imitate the Evangelical megachurches and promote
an entertainment-focused style of religion? The protestants have always
Again I bring readers a report on the very curious situation with regards to ecclesiastical architecture here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
The first building shown is St. Thomas Aquinas in Dallas, which, if the website is correct, is only fifty years old. Built in a plane, but well done neo-gothic style, it has survived the liturgical revolution more or less intact. The altar was brought out from against the wall, yet it is still suitable for more traditional rites.
Neo-gothic with plenty of color and not too many statues.
Correctly the Baptistry is an octagonal room at the back
of the church, behind the nave.
The other church is called St. Jude's and is located in Allen. Its style is an unusual
blend between modern brutalism and the traditional layout, although not
the traditional decorative style.
The center of attention is unclear here. Yes, that iron plank on the wall is
the tabernacle door.
The transepts and altar are arranged such that
everyone gets a view of the "action"
The place lights well, but has no distinctly Christian
architectural features. I have seen banks with similar
ceiling patterns.
The Stations of the Cross seem to be charcoal drawings of
