LETTERS
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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
MAY 1998
IT'S CURIOUS
It is a curiosity to me that Father Tim Nichols of St. James Parish in Redondo Beach would allow sexually explicit material to be taught to school children at St. James School [see "They are Petrified of this Woman," March 1998 Mission] when I remember that he personally objected to a display of fetal models I had brought for a pro-life appeal outside all the Sunday Masses at St. James' church a couple or more years ago. He did give permission for tables to be set up, but objected to the life-size models of fetuses in utero as being inappropriate for a church event.
Lila Cuajuna
Torrance
IT IMPRESSES THOSE WHO DON'T GIVE A DAMN
Many thanks for the interview with the University of Notre Dame professor of architecture, Duncan Gregory Stroik on the subject of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral. [See "It's Just Big," February Mission]. I can add very little to his thorough critique of the plan except to remark favorably upon the Notre Dame students' designs, which all seemed more spiritually resonant to my eye. (What Professor Stroik can't know, residing in South Bend, is how much better the decision to build near a downtown freeway is on paper than in reality.)
Cardinal Mahony's sensible reflections on the new cathedral (which can be read on the archdiocesan web site) seems sadly disconnected from the reality of the building that has been commissioned. Only in the exterior's faint resemblance to a penitentiary--ironic for the city of non-penitents--does it evoke "peacefulness and security." This feeling is reinforced by the short barricade around the plaza which, as Stroik points out, lacks a "clear processional route from the street into the plaza," and which will probably discourage exploration of the plaza without a feeling of entrapment--perhaps its intent.
The interior is difficult to critique without any ornament, but even fully dressed it is obviously intended as stark, modern and unromantic--not much of an improvement on the simply dated-looking (as opposed to traditional) St. Basil's. I doubt that one could find a single practicing Catholic who wouldn't prefer to walk into Notre Dame's (19th Century Gothic Revival) Sacred Heart Basilica, for instance, than this modern monstrosity. There are church designs in the modern vocabulary which exite the spirit. Sadly, the cardinal's cathedral design appears to be a particularly cold example of modernism (it strikes me as a giant version of those inoffensively non-denominational religious spaces one finds at state universities and airports).
This symbolic genuflection to the forces of utilitarian abstraction and existential modernity (it is depressing, not uplifting) reinforces my own personal, millennial dread, another warning that gradually the Catholic Church in America will split, like Judaism, into more or less reformed and orthodox branches. This design is a bad sign: the new cathedral dishonors tradition in order to impress people who no longer give a damn, for those who would only be caught dead in a Catholic church.
Gregory Solman
Los Angeles
LIKE THE PHARISEES
Please remove me from your mailing list. I do not agree with the critical intolerance in many of your articles. They remind me of those who criticized Christ for eating with sinners--maybe a little holier than thou attitude.
There must be a better way to do it.
Sister Yvonne Rushton
Los Angeles
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
The story of abortionist Gordon Goei carried on local TV news is very troubling [see "An Abortion that Was almost a Murder", this issue]. Where is the outrage? What have we become? We have looked away, perhaps thinking this is not our business. But look around you at what is happening--if we cannot protect life in the womb, we cannot protect it anywhere.
We do not judge the mother of this child. We as a society have let her down; we've pulled out all the stops and seem to be saying, "Do as you wish."
We need now to get on our knees and humbly beg God's forgiveness for allowing this evil to continue legally for over 30 years in California. Then rise up and do something: speak for God's precious babies, volunteer at counseling centers or housing shelters, pray and fast, start a prayer group and offer our sufferings to stop this holocaust. He has given us more time; let us use it wisely.
Olive Meehan
Costa Mesa
CORRECTION
A picture caption on page 10 of the April Mission incorrectly identified a group of protestors as the "Roman Catholic Faithful." They were the Concerned Roman Catholics of America. We apologize for the mistake.