Sacred architecture: The church’s one foundation, or two

Talk about retro.

            When you read the religious tracts
about planned renovations at Sacred Heart Cathedral — the Bishop of
Rochester’s home church on Flower City Park — you have to wrap your tongue
around some Latin.

            Like domus Dei and domus ecclesia,
seemingly esoteric phrases that define the debate over Sacred Heart.

            It comes down to one versus the
other. (There’s crossover, too, about which more later.) Will the cathedral be
a house of God, where worshippers
flock to receive transmissions from the deity? Or will it be a house of the people of God, where — in
a serious and sincere manner — the worshippers talk back a little?

Why all the
fuss?

            Well, some parts of the
renovation plan — like basic maintenance work on the 80-year-old building’s
roof and walls, and improved accessibility — are uncontroversial. Likewise
upgrades to the sound system, lighting, and restrooms. But some more novel elements
of the plan — like a new side entrance — have prompted criticism. Then
there’s cost: Repairs and utility upgrades alone will run more than $2.5
million; critics peg the total cost at $6 to $8 million.

            To see the sparks fly, though, you
have to look at an interior focal point.

            According to a backgrounder from the
Diocese, the cathedral’s half-century-old high altar and canopy will be
removed. “A new altar will be designed,” says the backgrounder, “and placed on
a raised platform near the crossing of the transepts, or side seating areas.”
Why go to the trouble? “The altar should not be raised up, turned away and
distant from us… The pulpit, rather than being high over our heads, as if the
Word of God was not meant for us on Earth, should also be like Jesus Christ,
standing in [our] midst…”

            Bishop Matthew Clark’s office did
not return our call. But on the diocesan website (www.dor.org), Clark writes of
a need to “restore Sacred Heart so that it conforms to the norms of our church
as they apply to the structure, décor, and appointments of cathedral churches.”
Another document on the website talks of “helping an old building to fulfill
its original purpose,” that is, foster the best atmosphere for worship. “The
Church in the Middle Ages understood itself in the maxim Ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church is always reforming. One of
the things that the Second Vatican Council reformed was the Mass. ‘In the
restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy,’ the Council taught, ‘the full
and active participation by all the people is the aim to considered before all
else.'”

            Phrases like “full and active
participation” suggest a relocation of the spiritual center of gravity. The
priest no longer celebrates the Mass mostly with his back to a nave of
relatively passive worshippers. The worshippers themselves are something more
than the “flock” they were.

            All this is connected to the Second
Vatican Council of the 1960s, specifically its call for “liturgical renewal.”
You could call it democratic renewal, too.

“The reason
for the new focus on the assembly is derived precisely from the recovered
role of the people of God during acts of worship.” So said Father Richard Vosko
in the National Catholic Reporter three years ago. The Albany-based Vosko has
counseled the Rochester Diocese on its Sacred Heart plan, and his ideas have
inspired dozens of Catholic church renovations in the US and Canada

            Vosko’s ideas have also set off
conservative counterattacks in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and other cities.

            Enter Rochester’s Sacred Heart
Preservation Committee, which sees “massive destruction and desecration” ahead.
“We are opposed to the plans of dismantling our beautiful, historic [cathedral]
and reconfiguring this English Gothic masterpiece,” says a committee statement.
The statement adds that Sacred Heart is associated with the late Bishop Fulton
J. Sheen — “considered by many to be the most influential Catholic leader in
America during the 20th century.”

            But Committee members aren’t
limiting themselves to giving advice. In recent months, they’ve been fighting
the Rochester Planning Commission’s denial of landmark status for the
cathedral. (A lawsuit has been on hold since the original judge in the case recused
himself.) And they’ve hired a canon lawyer, the Rome-based Alan Robert Kershaw,
to take their ecclesiastical case straight to the Vatican.

            Barbara Fredericks, a Dewey Avenue
area resident, is one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the
Planning Commission, along with her husband, Jan. The cathedral “has been part
of our lives, and our children’s lives, for 25 years,” she says, adding she
attends Mass there daily. And the suit, she says, “is a step to preserve the
faith by preserving the integrity of the building.”

            Exactly how does this relate to
matters of faith?

            Essentially, Fredericks disputes the
core of liturgical renewal. She believes the floor plan needs to reflect a
division of power. “God is the center of the church; that church is His,” she says. “The nave is where the people sit, and God is in the sanctuary.
God is front and center, enthroned in the tabernacle… Some things are
immutable. The body and blood of Christ will always be the same… How we act in
church is fundamental to what we believe. We simply don’t want to take God out
of our [church].”

            There are already enough “theaters”
in town, she adds.

Fredericks
insists this isn’t a left-versus-right disagreement. “The Church,” she says, “is
neither liberal nor conservative, but orthodox,
centrally focused on Christ.”

            However, Fredericks herself has
struck a conservative stance when addressing at least one other liturgical
issue: Two years ago, she told Democrat
and Chronicle writer Jim Memmott that non-ordained people lack the
“sacramental privilege” to deliver sermons in church. (Under Bishop Clark, the
diocese has shifted toward allowing non-ordained people — including women —
to preach under certain guidelines. Clark has also drawn hot fire for other
transgressions, like outreach to gays and lesbians.)

            Yet the ideological lines are not
crisply drawn here.

            For example, radical Catholic Dr.
Harry Murray, a Nazareth College sociology professor, says he opposes the
renovations. The Diocese, he says, should do only the work necessary to
preserve the cathedral’s “structural integrity” and direct its resources toward
fighting poverty.

            Another Nazareth prof, medieval
historian Timothy Thibodeau, acknowledges that “terrible things” have been done
to some church interiors. “I’m thinking of things that happened in the 1970s,”
he says. “It’s a no-win issue for both sides.” Nor is it simply about
nostalgia. “The question is, who owns the Church?”

            These disputes go way back, says
Thibodeau. In the beginning, he says, Christians altered the design of the
Roman basilica. Around the year 800, he says, they “took the ‘box’ and made it
cruciform.” The new design — the classic cathedral, whose floor plan
represents the cross — spread across Europe.

            “The theology was always catching up
with the architecture,” says Thibodeau. Through the centuries, he says,
iconoclasts (breakers of images) and traditionalists often battled each other.
“In the Middle Ages, the educated referred to churches as ‘books for the
illiterate.'” That is, all the design elements, ornamentation, statuary, and
other features conveyed something beyond words, something ineffable to make the
spirit soar.

            “We really have not had the fruit of
the liturgical renewal we should have, in terms of architecture,” says Father
Charles Curran, a Rochester priest now teaching at Southern Methodist
University. The point, says Curran, who’s the bane of Church conservatives for
his liberal views, is “to bring everybody actively into it.”

            What would Curran do? He confesses
he hasn’t been following the Sacred Heart story closely. Yet his prescription
would be far-reaching: “If I had my way, I’d take all the pews out, for one
thing.” In the old days, he says, people stood during worship.

This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2003.