Holy Wreck
Catholics battle over architecture.

By Robert Spencer, a writer for the Conservative Book Club. His articles on a wide variety of political and Catholic issues have appeared in Chronicles, Crisis, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and many other publications
August 25-26, 2001

embert Weakland, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, has relished his role as gadfly for the Catholic Left throughout the pontificate of John Paul II. But even gadflies grow old. The indomitable prelate, who once memorably dubbed the Pope a "ham actor," is within months of permanently leaving the stage as he nears the Vatican-mandated retirement age of 75. He has no intention of going out with a whimper.

With his trademark flamboyance and keen eye for the headlines, he's made sure that his final months as archbishop are as filled with controversy as his entire tenure. His last act: The gutting of St. John the Evangelist Cathedral, his episcopal seat in Milwaukee, to turn it into a monument to the latest fashions of liberal Catholicism.

This renovation (derided by critics as a "wreckovation") drew worldwide headlines in July when the Vatican called a halt to the project, pointing out that Weakland's dream cathedral was in violation of church law (not to mention centuries of tradition) and "inviting" the archbishop to reconsider his plans. Weakland, however, continued full speed ahead.

For years, Weakland has been a foremost Catholic Leftist. One of the few bishops still serving who was appointed by Pope Paul VI, he's farther left theologically and politically than most American bishops today. In 1986, he played a key role in drafting in drafting the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' statist economic pastoral letter, "Economic Justice for All." In 1990, he made national headlines by holding "listening sessions" to allow pro-abortion women to air their concerns with the Church's pro-life stance. Many critics saw these as attempts to undermine that very stance. Later, he wrung his hands over the Pope's 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which declared that the Church was not authorized to ordain women: "What can I do," sniffled the Archbishop, "to instill hope in so many women who are now living on the margins of the church?"

What he thinks he can do, if the new cathedral is any indication, is remake his archdiocese. The showdown over the Milwaukee cathedral reflects the state of the Catholic Church in America. The struggle between those loyal to the Pope and to the traditional faith and those who want to recreate Catholicism in the image of the Democratic party once played out in wrangles over catechisms and textbooks. The new battlefield is architecture.

This is the last gasp of the movement to reconstruct Catholicism as a variety of secular Leftism. In churches all over America, the trendiness and triviality of Catholic American dissidents is being literally set in stone. In the name of "renovation," basilicas, statues, and baldachinos give way to "churches in the round," burlap banners, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The new churches resemble suburban living rooms. Big-screen TV's aren't on the blueprint for the Milwaukee cathedral, but there's always the next renovation.

The hullabaloo in Milwaukee began with a June 30 fax to Weakland from Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. Medina underscored the fact that the renovations involved important theological issues. He pointed out that Weakland's plans violated several architectural norms, making it clear that these were no mere disagreements of taste. He even noted that Weakland's intention to place "a new and visually imposing organ in what is the clear natural focal point of the Cathedral" was more than just a designer's faux pas: it "fails adequately to respect the hierarchical structure of the Church of God that the Cathedral by its scheme is to reflect."

Medina likewise pleaded for the doomed baldachino (a marble canopy over the altar) and objected to the marginalizing of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Hardly anyone will be able to fit into Weakland's Blessed Sacrament Chapel, which (although Milwaukee authorities dispute its dimensions as given by Medina) would amount to little more than a corridor. And the altar piece? No great loss. Weakland explained: "The office in Rome which is in charge of preserving the cultural goods of the Church looked at it and said, 'Ah, this is not great art. This is what they call 'fascist art' that was done in the Mussolini period. The quality is not good. You don't have to worry about preserving it.'"

The removal of the altar piece and moving of the tabernacle are seen by many Catholics as reflecting a de-emphasis of their traditional belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and wine consecrated by the priest during Mass. But replacing the baldachino with a pipe organ is the last straw. According to Al Szews, leader of a lay group trying to stop the Cathedral renovation, "The focus will be on some pipes and pipers. What are we worshiping? A pipe organ or God?"

Weakland also plans to reduce the number of confessionals and make other small but unmistakable inroads into traditional Catholic belief. He also ordered the outside of the Cathedral decorated with images of non-Catholic Martin Luther King Jr., martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, and other icons of the Left. Medina reminded him that it is not "the established tradition" to place in or near the Cathedral images of people who aren't canonized saints. He didn't mention that non-Catholics might be a bit out of place there as well.

When the Vatican questioned the Milwaukee renovation, conservative Catholics were overjoyed. The Washington Post quoted Ralph McInerny, a Notre Dame professor and author of the Father Dowling Mysteries, crowing: "The chickens are really coming home to roost. [Weakland] has been infuriating people for years." On the other side, Richard McBrien, author of the Catholic Left's charter book, Catholicism, was indignant. The Post reported that he "defended Weakland, saying American bishops were 'caving in' by not vigorously opposing the 'unwarranted intrusion.'"

Weakland took aim at his critics in an acerbic July 12 letter to the priests of his diocese. Again striking chords eerily reminiscent of Clinton at his best, he portrayed himself as a victim of shadowy but powerful figures: "How should we analyze those who oppose the renovation?" mused the Archbishop. "That is a significant question since it is not one homogeneous group. There is a small group — in Rome, in Milwaukee, and in the United States — who see this as one last opportunity to humiliate 'Weakland' before his retirement. They are not without power."

Other opponents he saw as less sinister, if no less benighted: "Then there is a larger group who simply like the Cathedral as it is. They come there for private prayer and use it as a 'chapel' for devotion. . . . I readily understand this sentiment. When things to which we are accustomed change, there is need for a time for grieving about the old, just as we need time to adjust to something new that has not yet been experienced. There are also those who have never accepted in their hearts the reformed liturgy of Vatican Council II and who still hope in their hearts that the Church will go back to the way it was in the '50s."

Worst of all, Weakland argued, were those who oppose his renovation on the basis of mere personal taste: "The role of oversight and intervention of the Congregation cannot arise as a matter of mere taste but can only come about as a result of a true violation of a norm, and, I would judge, a norm of some gravity." Evidently the norms cited by Cardinal Medina didn't amount to "true violations." Weakland insisted that "the right of the local bishop to make judgments in this diocese cannot be compromised over something as trivial as a matter of taste or opinion."

Yet Michael Rose, a noted Catholic architect and writer, isn't so sure that the only people lining up against Weakland are fogies and fascists. He's convinced that the objections to Weakland's plans in Milwaukee are not simply matters of taste. "The successful church architect," he explains, "relies on tradition in order to inform his own designs, and his designs are not conceived just for himself or just for his decade or century; they refer to the past, serve the present, and inform the future."

Rose elaborates in his new book, piquantly entitled Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces — and How We Can Change Them Back Again, coming in October from <a href=" http://www.sophiainstitute.com/"> Sophia Institute Press</a>. In it, he shows that church architects who oppose the new designs are not simply bound to tradition. Rose sheds light on the natural laws of church architecture — elements that a church building must have in order to foster worship in its fullness — and the theological underpinnings of both traditional and modern church buildings.

Rose builds his case on three essential qualities of a successful church: permanence, verticality, and iconography. "Without Notre Dame's characteristics of verticality, permanence, and iconography," says Rose, "Hugo never would have written a novel about the hunchback bell-ringer." Will pilgrims flock to Weakland's cathedral in five hundred years? Will it even be there anymore?

Rose notes that both old style and new style churches teach faith — but insists that they don't necessarily teach the same faith. "Throughout the Christian centuries," he says, "the church building has been understood as domus Dei (house of God) and porta caeli (gate of Heaven) — a dwelling place where we go to find God, a sacred place in which we seek the treasures of the heavenly kingdom."

In some illuminating sections of Ugly as Sin, Rose takes a tour through a traditional church, explaining how its major architectural elements affect the believer spiritually and reflect the truths of the faith. He shows how through them, Catholic theology is taught and experienced. Then he contrasts this with the experience engendered by the elements of a bad church, showing how the churches of modern America that depart from traditional architecture actually misrepresent the truths of the faith, affirming another set of beliefs altogether.

Rose maintains that these architectural changes were not mandated by any church authority, but were imported from fashions current in secular buildings of the 1960s and thereafter. The period following the seminal Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which hurled the Church headlong into the modern age, was marked by an iconoclasm as fierce as any in the Reformation era. Rose ticks off the damage: "High altars, statues, shrines, communion rails, confessionals, and kneelers were removed from many churches." The destruction was perpetrated by often self-appointed architectural and liturgical experts, "supposedly," says Rose, "to fulfill mandates issued by Vatican II, but in reality merely to appease their own appetites for the fashion of the day."

How did they get away with it? "At a time when the actual Council documents were rarely consulted and not readily available, the laity were easily hoodwinked by this elite crowd of 'experts.' There existed an inherent trust of church authorities, and if a pastor or a bishop or a priest-liturgist explained to parishioners that their church building had to change or that a new stark and uninspiring church was required, the laity mostly grinned and bore it because such plans were supposedly being carried out on the authority of the Second Vatican Council. Proponents of this new architecture were taking great liberties with the Council documents, and little was called into question."

But grassroots reaction to the Milwaukee renovation suggests that that time of passivity is past. The Vatican intervened in Milwaukee after hearing the protests of a lay group that gathered 2,500 signatures protesting Weakland's plans. The Baltimore Sun, meanwhile, reported recently that Milwaukee is not alone: there is, in fact, "a nationwide movement, principally among Catholic churches, to correct the sins of the 1960s and 1970s when a renewal movement sought to update worship and simplify architecture." Around the country churches are restoring their high altars, tearing out carpeting, and doing more to return to a more traditional look.

Alas, not in Milwaukee. As the wrecking ball swings, watch the Catholic Left's last stand.