Returning from the van der Laan Pilgrimage

I am currently in the O'Hare airport in Chicago, about the begin the last leg of travel to return home. It has been a beautiful trip and very fruitful in ways I had hoped for and in ways unexpected.

Over the next few weeks I will have a number of posts containing descriptions of trip and the buildings visited and reflections on the topics raised at the Liturgy and Sacred Space conference attended.

Here are a few of the planned posts to give you an idea of what to expect. Some of them I have already sketched out, some are just ideas of topics to address in the future.

1. What is the importance of the concept "locus iste" in Christianity? This question asked of google led someone to this site, and I was reflecting on it before the trip. During the conference and especially during the prayers for the Feast of the Dedication of Basilica of St John Lateran (which I was able to celebrate at the Abbey), my thoughts on this question were refined, so I will have a post on this very soon.
2. The Antiphons, Readings, and Hymns for the Feast of the Dedication of a Church. This will be a companion to the above, an appendix really. These are beautiful and informative texts and better than anything I could write on the subject.
3. Reflections in the Ordering of Life and Space in the Abbey at Vaals. I have begun the very difficult task of collecting my thoughts and responding to the experience of the abbey and will share them at length, along with my photos.
4. On the New Baptismal Font at the Sistine Chapel. The artist behind this significant new work presented it in depth during the conference. It generated quite a bit of discussion, and more opposition that I would have expected, and is worth looking at in depth here.
5. Is It Acceptable for a Church to be "Not For Everyone." This question was prompted by the discussion t the conference, especially as it relates to van der Laan specifically and particular cultural / intellectual expressions of architecture in general. This theme will be included in my reflections on the abbey, but deserves dedicated consideration as well.
6. On the Proper Place of Invention in the Liturgy.
7. On Sentimentality and Rationalism.
8. On Obedience and Creative Genius.

And then there are the buildings. I have not yet decided how best to present those, but expect some Flickr sets soon at the very least.

Leaving for a van der Laan Pilgrimage

With just over 12 hours to go before departure to the Netherlands for a diocesan conference on Liturgy and Sacred Space and a pilgrimage around the country, preparations are nearly complete. The trip will begin with a Sunday morning stop in London (with mass/services at All Saints, Margaret Street; St Paul, Bow Common; and the Metropolitan Cathedral, Westminster). St Paul, Bow Common still has the Lutyens Outraged Christ, and my last visit did not permit participating in worship there, so this will be a real treat in and of itself.

As for the Netherlands, and my first trip, I had to narrow down a potential list of 150 buildings. These were churches only, and ignored everything north of Utrecht. In the end, I decided to focus on the early modern through reconstruction churches and the work of Dom Hans van der Laan, his family, teacher, and students. Another highlight will be three days at van der Laan's Abbey, especially praying the Offices with the monks there.

There will also be a side trip from the Abbey to a trio of Rudolph Schwarz churches and the Zumthor Bruder Klaus chapel.

So here is the list of 19 primary churches in the itinerary. There are a number of other nearby churches I may peek into, and I may not make it to all of them. We'll see how the driving goes, and the weather, and the daylight.

Sint Bavokerk Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Haarlem Joseph Cuypers and Jan Stuyt (1895-1930)

Sint Jozef / St Joseph, Leiden Leo and Jan van der Laan (1924-1925)

Sint Jozef / St Joseph, Wassenaar Jos van der Laan (1962)

Parochie De Goede Herder / Good Shepherd, Wassenaar L? van der Laan (1923)

O.L.Vrouw van Goede Raad / Our Lady of Good Counsel, Den Haag Jan van der Laan (1954)

Pastoor-van-Ars-Kerk / Curée of Ars, Den Haag Aldo van Eyck (1970)

Our Lady of Perpetual Help / O.L.Vrouw van Altijddurende Bijstand, Breda Grandpré Molière (1951-1953)

Betlehemkerk / Bethlehem Church, Breda ??? (1980)

St Paulusabdij / St Paul Abbey, Oosterhout Dom Bellot, Hans van der Laan (1907-)

Johannes Geboorte / Nativity of St John the Baptist, Nieuwkuijk Nico van der Laan (1955)

St Martinus / St Martin, Gennep Nico van der Laan (1954)

Zoete Naam Jezus / Sweet Name of Jesus, Oeffelt Nico van der Laan (1954)

Sint Josephkapel / St Joseph Chapel, Helmond Dom Hans van der Laan (1948; rebuilt 1995)

H. Kruisvinding / Holy Cross, Odiliapeel Jan de Jong (1959)

Abdij Sint Benedictusberg / St Benedictusberg Abbey Dominikus Böhm, Dom Hans van der Laan

Fronleichnamskirche / Corpus Christi Church, Aachen Schwarz (1930)

St Bonifatius / St Boniface, Aachen Schwarz (1961)

Annakirche / St Anna, Düren Schwarz (1956)

Bruder Klaus Feldkepelle Zumthor (2005-2007)

Depending on wireless availability, I may post some updates in transit. And stay tuned for a plethora of photos and analysis in the weeks after the trip. Many of these are not well documented (or at least documentation not easily accessible), so I will be making available as much material as possible.

Churchcrawling in New York City

Thinking about traveling to New York, churches are not the first destinations that come to mind even though by default "churchcrawling" is my primary activity when traveling. But of course they are there, especially for someone interested in Gothic Revival Architecture.

I have posted my complete flickr collection, but this post will feature a few favorite images from the trip with some reflections on the buildings visited. This is actually a fairly unusual post for this blog to have this much personal reactions to visiting churches. But perhaps this will be good, since I usually dodge questions for which the following would be an answer.

Trinity Church, Wall Street

Trinity Church, Wall Street Manhattan, New York, US Episcopal (ECUSA) Richard Upjohn, Architect completed 1846

One of the first Gothic Revival churches in America with a direct lineage from the English Victorian Gothic Revival, and one of the best. The flat (liturgical) east end is particularly effective and distinctive. This church went a long way toward establishing the Gothic as a fashion across all denominations.

The All Saints Chapel, just to the north (stage left) of the chancel was one of my favorite spaces of the trip. It reinforced that Gothic wants to be tall and dark. (And handsome?) The richness of the material compared to the painted ribs and plaster of the nave makes all the difference. While the familiar vast splendor of the high Gothic cathedrals is impressive, there is a very different richness in this chapel.

This foundation cornerstone, for an attached building not the main church, will be the first example of some really wonderful inscriptions.

Old St Patrick Cathedral Basilica, New York

Old St Patrick Catedral Basilica, New York Manhattan, New York, US Roman Catholic Joseph-François Mangin, Architect 1809-1815; 1866

From the exterior, this basilica is a very strange building; the wide single gable does not correspond to the overtly Gothic elements. The blank front (the photo above is the rear) painted in the pinkish color of the trim above has no formal connection to the rest of the building or to known modes of Gothic fronts.

Turns out the 1809-1815 building was Neoclassical and it was redone after a fire partially destroyed the church in 1866. Given this was twenty years after Trinty church (above) and coincident with the new St Patrick Cathedral, the Gothic retrofit must have been a matter of keeping up with prevailing building trends and changes in relevant bearers of meaning.

Despite being counter to the essential construction and proportions, the interior is relatively effective. Though a quick comparison of the interior wall surface and the exterior stone makes the artifice woefully apparent.

Transfiguration of Our Lord Cathedral, Brooklyn

Transfiguration of Our Lord Cathedral, Brooklyn Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, US Russian Orthodox Louis Allmendiger, Architect 1916-1921

Unfortunately, the church was locked when I visited.

St John the Baptist, Manhattan

St John the Baptist, Manhattan Manhattan, New York, US Roman Catholic (Capuchin) Napoleon Le Brun, Architect 1871-1872

One of the many Gothic Revival parish churches throughout the city. This is the central tower front version.

St Patrick Cathedral, New York

St Patrick Cathedral, New York Manhattan, New York, US Roman Catholic James Renwick, Architect 1858-1878

A restoration project is well under way, with the recently completed scaffolding on the exterior. The scaffolding blocked most of the light to the nave windows, unfortunately.

Hey look! A beautiful font on a beautiful font!

St Bartholomew, New York

St Bartholomew, New York Manhattan, New York, US Episcopal Bertram Goodhue, Architect Stanford White, Architect (portal & narthex) 1916-1930

This was the surprise of the trip. I was only vaguely familiar with the aerial exterior views of this church before, which did not do justice to the intricacy of the compositions inside and out. This type of combination of stone and brick rarely works well, but here it is exquisite. The stone edges are more unified and the transitions strike an ideal balance of irregularity. The texture of the brick, with some moments of irregular placement as well, better harmonize with the stone. And the lovely patina of weathering adds considerably to the effect.

The intentionality and ubiquity of the carvings allow relatively small figural elements to harmonize with the whole of the building. This is an excellent lesson for when tastes and/or budgets limit sculptural programs.

The front portico comes from an older iteration of the church, designed by Stanford White (of McKim Mead and White).

I found another example of an exquisite inscription on the massive (and oddly conversational) cornerstone. Inscriptions abound all over the church. See the entablature (frieze?) above and the capitals below.

With increasing frequency, I find the churches which evoke the greatest response tend to have been described in some way as "Byzantine." This is not only a matter of ornament or revivalist style differences as this description has been given for the self-consciously abstract churches.

Part of the Byzantine character (using the term in a very empirical/phenomenological sense, not a strictly art history sense) is the roughness or rawness of the materials, even in fine mosaics, which pairs perfectly with the figural abstraction. Mosaics are only part of a larger emphasis on texture, whether that be patterns of simply material texture. Byzantine art has a degree of abstraction ideal for Christian sacred art, one which we have returned to throughout history. (For example, consider Eric Gill's stations at Westminster Cathedral, which I love. Or the illustrations in the Liturgical Press' editions of the Roman Catholic Missal, which are indicative of sacred illustration for the past 50+ years.) Darkness accompanies the roughness and abstraction. Light only has meaning in the context and contrast of darkness.

But ultimately I think it is something more primal, and I'm going to side with Dom Han van der Laan and say that it comes from the thickness of the wall and its relationship to the space. Gothic architecture, like St Patrick, is surface architecture; Byzantine, like St Bartholomew, is wall architecture. Contemporary design tends to prefer phenomenal transparency and modern technology allows for cheap thin assemblies. Perhaps that is why I find so many contemporary churches bland, thin and sterile.

Give me heavy, rough, dark, unfinished, textured, and weathered.

St Francis Xavier Cabrini Shrine, New York

St Francis Xavier Cabrini Shrine, Mother Cabrini High School Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York, US Roman Catholic (Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) De Sina & Pellegrino, Architect 1959

Right outside the subway stop for the cloisters sits Mother Cabrini High School, whose chapel is a shine housing the saint's remains.

The parti of the chapel is what Rudolph Schwarz (the first to draw such a plan) called a "dark chalice," a parabolic plan with the sanctuary in the apex. Schwarz initially said this was not a plan he intended to be built, though he himself built one later. It was a response to the problem of material focal objects in Christian churches. The continuous surface which extends, theoretically, ad infinitum, is an abstraction of the ancient symbol of the apse taken to its formal extreme.

The relatively narrow angle of the arms of the parabola diminish the effect of the dark chalice somewhat. And while the gold(-ish) field of the mosaic furthers the continuity with early Christian apse symbolism, the composition and design of the mosaic figures is disappointing and the inscriptions weak. Furthermore, the color palate (including the stone) is poorly coordinated. In all, it is very much of a kind with the kitsch sold in the gift shop which unfortunately constitues the main street entrance.

The Cloisters

View complete flickr set... (not exactly a church)

Turns out the day we chose to visit the Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Medieval collection, was renfair day at Fort Tyron. So while it was insanely crowded and not the slow contemplative experience described to me, the (sort of) period clothing was an unexpected bonus.

I did not realize going in the degree to which the building is the exhibition. Major pieces of a handful of European monasteries were imported and reassembled into the fabric of the building. Many more smaller elements, especially jambs, give an even more examples of period architecture. Some of these are clear insertions, and some are more subtle. In one chapel the reconstruction matches the original just enough to allow to experience the completed form without obscuring the artifacts or overly faking the reconstruction. A better result could not have been desired (except maybe for the original chapel to still be intact and in use).

Quotes of the Week

Earlier this week, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed St Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church. Among her multitude of roles and accomplishments, she helped articulate the medieval Christian understanding of creation and the role of arts within it. Here are a few quotes included in the order of worship for the proclamation and mass.

The light that I see is not spatial, but much more luminous than a cloud that sustains the sun, and I can not tell its height, nor its width, nor its depth. And as the sun, the moon and the stars are reflected in water, so shine the writings, the words, the virtues and many works of men - in them reflected - in me. (from: In the fire of the dove)

Man is in fact the absolute divine work, because through him one recognizes God, and for him God created all creatures. (from the Liber Divinorum)

For creation itself received a kiss from the Creator, when God gave it all of which it has need. (from the Liber Divinorum)

The senses lead man to the knowledge of God and transform him in the image of God. (from: Exegesis of the Creed)

And as work for the TSA/AIA presentation wraps up, here is a great summary remark from AWN Pugin on what it means to build a church:

"The greatest privilege possessed by man is to be allowed, while on earth, to contribute to the glory of God: a man who builds a church draws down a blessing on himself both for this life and that of the world to come, and likewise imparts under God the means of every blessing to his fellow creatures; hence we cannot feel surprised at the vast number of religious buildings erected by our Catholic forefathers in the days of faith, or at their endeavours to render those structures, by their arrangement and decoration, as suitable as their means could accomplish for their holy and important destination."

Cardinal in a Hard Hat for Labor Day

Following up on a previous post about the renovation work for St Patrick Cathedral, New York, here is a photo posted to facebook today by  Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York. Cardinal Dolan blessed the team working on the renovations and construction to mark Labor Day this weekend.

This image goes well with the nuns in hardhats posted with the story on the convent at Ronchamp. Love seeing photos of clergy in hardhats and vestments. It is in part a juxtaposition, but mostly an affirmation of the sanctity of the work of church-building. But the Cardinal's hard hat should really be red!

View the entire album here.

Building Database Update

It is finally time to migrate the building database to the new system and start populating it again. So it will be down for a little while. Stay tuned for the relaunch.

Alphabet in Stone

While researching a potential trip to finally visit van der Laan and Schwarz churches, I discovered that the Dutch design firm Autobahn digitized Dom Hans van der Laan's typeface he created for the stone carvers at his abbey. Their site includes this video summarizing the work that also includes a nicely simple description of why van der Laan developed the plastic number.

This is all kinds of exciting.

Autobahn is a fascinating studio doing very good work. I first discovered them through their series of "fresh fonts" created by tracing Helvetica with ketchup (Tomatica), hair gel (Gelvetica), and toothpaste (Heldentica). Their work utilizes the digital and the real each to its fullness and in excellent harmony.

Which helps calm an an initial reaction wondering if is it wrong or out of character to digitize at all. The font is done as an instance of the face, which still exists primarily in the various instances in stone. We need to come to terms with the digital not as its own separate and self-serving entity, and this type of work is a perfect example of achieving this.

Descriptive Liturgies, the Humorous Side

Every church has its liturgy. Individual churches who define themselves as spontaneous, spirit-led, or non-hierarchical take exception to this statement. At least that has been my experience when working with them. But their worship services follow a weekly pattern despite nonetheless. What differences arise are variations on or deviations from a theme.

The real difference is the degree to which a church's liturgy is prescriptive or descriptive. What we tend to think of liturgy is actually a predominantly prescriptive liturgy. These are the so-called "high" churches. Building for descriptive and prescriptive liturgies require different methods for determining their requirements, but the principles of translating those requirements into material expressions are parallel.

Nor should we rely to heavily on a binary distinction, as imposed when the unfortunate "liturgical / non-liturgical" distinction is used. Projects for churches with descriptive liturgies provide a perfect occasion for a community to re-assess their worship and make changes in conjunction with relevant spatial transformations. Such changes are mutually reinforcing even when only indirectly linked. And even in the high churches, local variations introduce a degree of descriptive elements which should not be overlooked.

I grew up in a church with an almost entirely descriptive liturgy. And I distinctly remember being chastised as a child for sitting when I should have been standing (I was a terribly introspective youth) or for the relative enthusiasm expressed during worship. So I have never doubted the power of the unwritten descriptive ritual rubric.

These reflections come courtesy of a humorous attempt at writing the descriptive rubric for non-denominational praise & worship. This image has been circulating the social networks recently and seems to have originated late last year (2011). Definitely a case of "it's funny because it's true."

This is the work of Tim Hawkins, and there is a (slightly less funny) video of his stand-up performance of the same idea. You can support the effort / wear the image if you are so inclined.

McGill Chapel

It has been some time since I have been able to go churchcrawling. But after a Memorial Day trip to the nearby splashpad with the girls, I had the opportunity to look in on the new chapel at the St Andrew's Episcopal School Lower and Middle School Campus. View the entire photo set on Flickr.

The school dedicated the chapel on Dedicated 01 May 2012. The architects were STG Design (the same firm who designed St John Neumann, Austin) and the landscape was the work of TexaScapes and TBG.

The design of the exterior is highly refined, especially in its relationship to the campus. It is clear that site considerations dominated the design process from the curve on the west and south wall following the road to the open north wall facing the campus interior.

A dramatic concrete tower marks the chapel on its public face. The school already has a functioning bell tower, so this one is purely emblematic. And it is effective. Driving from the northwest and looking for the chapel, I suspected that this was it from the quality of the architecture in the absence of obvious iconography; turning the corner, the tower confirmed my assumption.

Separating the new chapel from an adjacent existing classroom building, a trellis connects the public face and driveway to the interior face. Highly finished architectural concrete, absent from the rest of the project, defines this space and connects it to the tower.

An ordered landscape accompanies the geometric formalism of this space. Benches line the passage.

Passing through this corridor, the character changes completely. You are now standing in a less-formal grove of oak trees faced by the fully-glazed north wall. The new sports fields, which occupy the open core of the campus, open up before you. The entrance is located at the far end of the grove.

The chapel's somewhat remote location on campus is offset by the effectiveness of the openness of the north wall. Combined they impart a prominence and integration more typically achieved through central location and formally structured

St. Andrew’s 31st street Chaplain Ashley Brandon described the effect:

“One of my favorite things about the new chapel is the way it feels like a sacred space, set apart from the rest of the world, and at the same time feels so connected to the rest of campus, as though there are no walls separating it from the life of the school. The clear windows along the back walls of the chapel are like stained glass, colored with the activity of our community and the beauty of creation. It truly is an expression of what lies at the heart of St. Andrew's. Our transition into the new space has felt so natural, and already we have experienced the added ease and beauty in chapel.”

In contrast to the fruitful complexity of the exterior and landscape, the interior leaves much to be desired. [The doors were locked during my visit, though the extensive windows allowed a good view of the interior.] The north glazing must give a great quality of light further, dappled by the dense oak canopy. But in all other aspects, most notably the liturgical functions, the interior is no more than a decent school assembly hall.

The sanctity of the function demands greater care. I am not saying this with any pre-conceived expectations of what the interior should be (i.e. more traditional or more sculpturally expressive). It is more that there is a noticeable discrepancy in the quality of design between the interior and exterior. Perhaps this is a symptom of so heavily a site-driven design. Function need not be the primary form generator, but it cannot be so explicitly an afterthought when the function is sacred in nature.

Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta Rendered

Exquisite rendered reconstruction of the Alvar Aalto designed church in Riola di Vergato, Italy. The video highlights the interplay of the space, light, and material by removing everything else.

Read a very nice description of the building here, or check input on the Locus Iste Building Database.

ArchDaily's Easter Feast

To celebrate Easter, the website ArchDaily ("the world's most visited architecture website") published three regional round-ups of churches. Ten of the fifteen featured buildings are chapels, a fact that reflects a prevalent bias in architecture for chapels over churches. As I have previously discussed, the reasons for this are many, starting with the fact that chapels tend to be much more expressive, moving, photogenic, and ripe for architectural inspiration. This in turn results from the oft-underestimated difference in programs. The church has far more constraints placed upon by its liturgical, ecclesial, and communal requirements, whereas a chapel is closer to the condition of "pure architecture" or architecture approaching art, driven exclusively by formal experiments in inspiring spiritual/emotional/sentimental reactions. Private chapels also have fewer constituents; they are generally funded by individuals or smaller groups As such they are much more a direct reflection of individualism from the patron(s) and the designer(s). (The exception to this is the campus chapel, which may have far more challenges than a typical parish church.)

Are parish churches disappointing failures if they do not, by formal/artistic architectural standards alone, measure up to the purity and expressivity of these chapels? There are, of course, parish churches apparently more driven by form; one such appears in one of these AD round-ups: Meier's Dio Padre Misericordioso, Tor Tre Teste. And these are far more interesting problem. Does a church like Meier's design achieve its artistic and spiritual aspects in addition to or in spite of the practical and religious? Does a church need to have merit within a design culture that so greatly values individual achievement and innovation for its own sake?

A chapel is much more about its psychological or phenomenological impact, whereas I propose that a parish church should be fundamentally ontological. (Though what exactly that means, what it looks like, and how it is achieved need to be established.) Consider the analogous distinction between private devotion and public service; both are necessary, each in their place. There is a place in a church for devotional images or shrines, but that place is not in the primary focus, just as the various flavors of spirituality supplement and inform the centrality of the liturgy.

Thus the celebrated qualities of the chapels profiled on the following pages should be considered desirable but insufficient to make a fully worthy church. And our greatest task is to have both.

AD Round Up Easter Special: Churches in Latin America

AD Round Up Easter Special: Churches in Europe

AD Round Up Easter Special: Churches in USA

St Patrick Cathedral Restoration Launched

On the feast day of St Patrick, Archbishop of New York Timothy Cardinal Dolan announced the official launch of a project to restore the historic St Patrick Cathedral in New York City. You can hear audio of the announcement and an unveiling of a sample of the cleaning (see below) via the archdiocese website.

The Cathedral's website demonstrates some of the work to be done:

And of course you can donate to the effort here.

Dedication/Consecration of St John Neumann, Austin

Yesterday, 17 March 2012, the Diocese of Austin celebrated the dedication of its newest parish church. I have published a flickr set of photos from the event including documentation of the interior (exterior photos were posted previously in this construction update).

A critique of the interior and liturgical arrangement & fixtures will follow soon.

Return of Cyprian Frescoes from the Menil

The Cyprian frescoes displayed for the past 15 years on the grounds of the Menil Collection are on their way back to Cyprus. When offered the stolen frescoes in a sale, Dominique de Menil instead paid for their recovery on behalf of the Church of Cyprus in exchange for permission to display them for a period of time. That time has now expired and the frescoes have left the purpose-built chapel/museum/reliquary. Read the full story that will air later today on NPR.

We will watch for plans for the building.

"Tree of Life" Chapel, Braga

More evidence that the small chapel has more in common with liturgical vestments, furnishings, and artifacts than it does with full-scale churches. This tiny community chapel in Portugal really is a piece of furniture, and it does exemplify one of the tasks of the church building: the unification of all other physical elements required for and desired by the sacraments.

Note the many details where the system of construction breaks away to accomodate everything from a small (wooden) organ, to a stoup, to a book. I do wish the lighting were slightly more integrated with the construction.

Video with commentary (in Portugese):

[youtube_sc url="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4OuBW_MUnlQ" modestbranding="1" autohide="1"]

There is also a time-lapse video of the construction:

[youtube_sc url="http://youtu.be/3GMqCaa9iJQ" modestbranding="1" autohide="1"]

SARCC Intersections

For anyone who is in New York (or can easily make it there in November), I highly recommend checking out this conversation sponsored by The Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture. The now 50 year old Society combines an emphasis on religion and the arts without selling either short, a rare feat indeed. And their list of fellows reads like an impressive who's who in these overlapping realms in the 20th century. A description of the event follows.

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To observe its 50th year, The Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture is sponsoring a significant conversation on INTERSECTIONS of religion and the arts on November 11-12, 2011. The location is St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Lexington at 54th St. in NYC, a place noted for its architecture and its artistic elements and early location of the Society’s activities.

Some highlights of the event include:

• a concert by the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra from Boston on Friday evening And on Saturday
• performances by Emily Wells and Akim Funk Buddha
• a provocative keynote by the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, a dynamic pastor of a congregation in the East Village centered in the arts
• perspectives of the past, present and future of the intersections of the arts and religion by a distinguished panel
• a look at St. Peter’s unique contribution to the arts
• a conversation by directors, Dr. Ena Heller and Fr. Terrence Dempsey, S.J., of museums devoted to the exhibition of works of aesthetic quality and religious significance
• a painter-sculptor, Tobi Kahn, and a writer, Nessa Rapoport, evoking the numinous in the creation of sacred space
• a celebratory dinner honoring the Fellows of the Society and featuring a popular choir from Middle Collegiate Church in NYC The Society is initiating annual awards to young artists and theologians to mark this significant milestone.

Register now at www.sarcc.org for discounted fee. For inquiries, nlvos@enter.net.

Google Doodles

Google celebrated the 450th anniversary of the consecration of St Basil Cathedral, Moscow (or more properly, the Cathedral of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat) on 12 July with this "doodle" replacing their logo in selected countries.

And the following day the UK had this to celebrate the 200th birthday of Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Which is a train station and not a church, but still. Someone at Google appears to appreciate ecclesial architecture.

Archbishop's Cope for the Royal Wedding

Via the New Liturgical Movement blog, the only royal wedding new of interest to these pages is not who the bride wore (etc., etc.), but rather who the Archbishop wore. And as it turns out it was Watts & Co, whose homepage features this image and description.

The fabric is a reproduction based on a design of A. W. Pugin.