LETTERS
1997 LETTERS
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
SEPTEMBER 1997
ST. VIBIANA'S MALL
As a long time docent with the Los Angeles Conservancy and an active Historic Preservationist, I was gladdened by your article, "St. Vibiana's Mall".
When Cardinal Mahony moved to raze St. Vibiana's Cathedral, he stated that the restoration and retro-fitting of St. Vibiana's would be too costly. So, instead, His Eminence hired Spanish architect, Jose Rafael Moneo, to design a new cathedral at an estimated cost of $50 million.
Earlier this year, when the Los Angeles Conservancy filed a preliminary injunction to stop the razing of the cathedral, the cardinal went into overdrive to try to gain political support in his attempt to demolish St. Vibiana's. From the corridors of power at the Los Angeles City Hall to the storied floors of the State Capital, the cardinal tried in vain to get historic preservation laws and historic designations changed. Finally when the trial court stayed the razing of the cathedral, the cardinal's hired guns appealed the decision to the California Court of Appeals where His Eminence was shot down.
For whatever reason, Cardinal Mahony is bent on getting rid of historic St. Vibiana's Cathedral. Recently the Los Angeles Conservancy, in conjunction with the USC School of Architecture held a press conference to unveil several proposed plans for the adaptive re-use of the cathedral. Basically, adaptive re-use is the utilization of a historic building for a use that was not originally part of the design of the building.
Two excellent examples of adaptive re-use are the Hotel Vista del Arroyo in Pasadena and Bullock's Wilshire in Los Angeles. Boasting a Marston and Van Pelt lobby, the Vista del Arroyo was built in 1882 as a resort hotel to house elite visitors to Pasadena at the turn of the century. After a devastating fire in the 1980's the hotel was restored and now houses the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The careful restoration has created a wonderful space in which to house the court .
Bullock's Wilshire is another example of sensitive adaptive re-use. Built in 1929, as a "temple of commerce", for many years the landmark Art Deco building was the place to shop for Hollywood Stars, starlets and well heeled Pasadena matrons. After the 1992 riots, Bullock's Wilshire closed its doors and its fate hung in the balance. Southwestern School of Law, seeing the beauty of the building, decided to re-furbish it as their law school library. Another interesting use of space.
These two examples illustrate how adaptive re-use can be successfully used to restore historic structures. The Los Angeles Conservancy spearheaded the adaptive re-use of Bullock's Wilshire. The USC School of Architecture is one of the best in the country. These two groups have no financial stake in St. Vibiana's, their only concern is to preserve Los Angeles' architectural heritage.
It would behoove the good cardinal to learn what many developers in Los Angeles have already learned : Historic Preservation makes sense and makes money.
Maria Kennedy
Monrovia
WE HAD NO ARROGANT CONSERVANCY THEN
I was born in 1917.
In 1924, give or take a year, I remember attending Midnight Mass at Pro-Cathedral Chapel on South La Brea Boulevard. It must have just been painted; it was the first Mass. Archbishop Cantwell had purchased land on Wilshire Blvd., west of Rimpau Blvd., for the cathedral; that is why it is named the pro-cathedral. We had no arrogant Los Angeles Conservancy at that time. William May Garland and all of those who made Los Angeles the city it is, would have climbed their frame and not used a ladder for any suggestion of limiting thee expansion of Los Angeles. If the Los Angeles Conservancy, or any other conservancy, should secure the consent of the owner, or else, condemn the property and pay the owner.
If there had been a Los Angeles Conservancy before the old St. Peter's was demolished to build the present basilica, we would have no St. Peters today.
Neil D. McCarthy
Los Angeles
CONSIGN IT TO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA
Now that the cathedral stands as a ruined, gutted hulk, there is the matter of the disposal of the remains.
The bricks from the old cathedral are indeed holy stones. I believe that they, and all the other building detritus, along with the furniture, religious art, windows, altars, baptismal font, everything, including a layer of the consecrated top-soil on which the cathedral rested, should be taken out to sea and consigned to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, safe from further manipulation, until the end of the world.
No, it will not do to turn the husk of St. Vibiana's Cathedral into a banquet hall, or any other profane enterprise, to aid a diminishing treasury. Our patron saint is gone, the ruins of her home should be obliterated, to avoid sacrilege, and in reparation for the debacle that has driven her from the city, and region, that she has protected for the past 120 years. Let her live only in our sad and grateful memory.
Patrick F. Flynn
Yorba Linda
IT DEPENDS ON WHO COMES TO DINNER
Should St. Vibiana's become a banquet hall? This question hinges entirely upon the atmosphere which would surround the dining.
Certainly, this poor structure has seen embarrassments of human behavior before; such as the boisterous chattering of the rude capacity crowd which waited the pope a decade ago. Now, our cardinal proposes we pack in the "rhythms of our homes" into Mass. He encourages us to look into each others' eyes and share the joy of public bathing under guise of baptism.
If we were to specify only polite, formal and dignified dining (even if it's only a soup kitchen for devout poor), who's to say it would not be an improvement over the alternative of New Age Liturgy?
At least the Sacraments would not be blasphemed! In this way, these tired old walls, the new icon of our crumbling traditions, could live out their last days with a degree of protection which could not be afforded to them as a church of the local cardinal.
Brian De La Torre
Granada Hills
IF IT'S SAFE ENOUGH FOR A BANQUET HALL...
Should St. Vibiana's be a banquet hall? If the building is safe enough to be a banquet hall, it is safe enough to put the three million into it to restore it to the House of God it has been consecrated to be!
Then the Knights of Malta who have come to St. Vibiana's will not have to go to San Francisco to find a cathedral for installations, as they used to have at St. Vibiana's! And there will be nor more hard feelings.
Mrs. Philip W. Flannery
Los Angeles
MAY I CONGRATULATE YOU
Members of my family and friends of mine collect leaflets and papers referring to the life of the parishes in the churches they visit.
So, I was able to read with great pleasure all the articles of the July/August 1997 Mission picked up by my grand-daughter.
I was particularly interested in your valuable remarks about the ambiguous "draft" and by the narrative of Ken Hensley's conversion. May I congratulate you for this periodical, certainly very much appreciated by the members of your community.
Also, thank you for all Mission brought to me.
Alfred Guhur
Orsay, France
I DON'T LIKE YOUR TACTICS
Neither my deceased husband nor I appreciated the divisive and antagonistic nature of your publication and I request that you remove his name from your mailing list. He did not do this because he, being quite active in our Faith, felt compelled to know and hear other views than our own. I am not interested in reading your publication with its demeaning of our archbishop, the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, and anything else that disagrees with your convictions. There are ways of discussing differences other than your tactics. Cardinal Bernardin had a much more Christ-like approach to such differences than your negative paper.
Marilyn Boron
Canyon Country
A LETTER TO THE CARDINAL
Just as it would be absurd to dismiss Mozart and Beethoven as "European" and "underinclusive", it is pathetic to have Catholic leaders describe the traditional Mass and altar place settings as due for renewal for similar reasons. [See "Ever Ambiguous", July/August Mission]
Many of the changes that have accompanied the celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the post-Vatican II era have not been well received in the hearts and minds of many, as underscored by the scholarly comments of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who describes these as causing significant damage to both form and substance of worship. At the same time, he makes the compelling case that how we attend to Liturgy determines the fate of the Faith and the Church.
It is not uncommon to find the Mass as celebrated in many parishes reduced to a song and dance sing-along feel-good affair a la Robert Schuler and his production at the Crystal "Cathedral." If you have any doubts, attend, albeit forbearingly, a Sunday evening 5:30 Mass at St. Monica's in Santa Monica! In other parishes, a single cantor and a ragtag group composed of pianist, banjo-player, and guitarist predominate the sanctuary presence and, in the process, the celebrant who acts in persona Christi is reduced to simply another player.
If all this is in the name of inclusive inculturation, it has come at the terrible price of a serious loss of focus on the miracle and sacredness of transubstantiation. Regardless of [your] ethnicity, attend a traditional Mass at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula and feel the transcendent spirituality that drenches body and soul with the word of God.
The radical changes contemplated in the draft simply accelerate the decline in liturgical worship that is all too evident in many American churches these days. Placing altars in the center of the church as proposed in the draft as part of the necessary plan for inclusiveness elevates form over the substance of having worshippers individually and collectively looking up at and to the Pascal Lamb of God. The draft believes it is more important in defense of its radical renovations that worshippers "nearly always see others," rather than have all worshippers lose their own self and presence and instead be absorbed in the self and presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
In the post-modern era there is an almost irresistible temptation to jettison tradition, no matter how rich and relevant it is, as some relic of a jurassic past in favor of just about anything "new" to accommodate cultures, lifestyles, and every myriad custom and habit in a single feel-good melting pot. It's no small wonder these days that so many Catholics admit to being confused. But if this is what it's all about then we may as well impress upon Robert Schuler and his clan of positive-thinkers to author and implement the changes the draft advocates. Fortunately, this is yet what millions and millions of lay Catholics wish precisely to avoid.
It is my fervent hope that all Catholics of all ethnic groups and cultures wake up before we reach the end of the slippery slope in the slide we already find ourselves. Every Catholic who cherishes the richness and tradition of our liturgy that has flourished for two millenia across, to and from all corners of the global reach must proactively engage our American Catholic hierarchy to stop the rot and say, Enough!--we simply will not take it any more.
We urge Your Eminence to leave the sanctuary and altars where they are and the politically correct need for inclusiveness does not have to affect and infect our most sacred and cherished form of Catholic worship.
Stanislaus Pulle
Thousand Oaks
"SAFE SEX" BOOKS NEED WARNING LABELS
Thanks for your article "Safe Sex or Self Control" by Judith Martel (July/August Mission). Perhaps, correcting our textbooks might help students to discover the true "fertility window" of eight days, pre-ovulatory, each 28 day cycle, rather than just "one day of fertility", as incorrectly taught in today's textbooks.
A successful abstinence program requires knowledge of the "what and "when" of fertility in order to maintain virginity, as well as to avoid being "at risk" of unintended pregnancy (unintended parenthood).
Textbook supplements avoid the solution. Warning labels in textbooks are needed until textbook correction is accomplished.
Matthew Raab
Camarillo
PRO-LIFE WITNESS
In the July/August Mission is a news item regarding a Family Planning Associates abortion mill in Inglewood [See News, July/August 1997]. Another Family Planning Associates facility is located in Long Beach just north of Willow Street on Long Beach Boulevard. On Saturdays, from about 9:30 to 10:30, a small group of people meet to pray the rosary, hand out informational sheets and Precious Feet pins.
A short while ago, a mother with a small girl stoped by to talk with us. She told us that a few years ago she had been inside the abortion clinic and started to question what she was about to do. She looked outside the window and saw pro-lifers walking back and forth. She went outside and talked with one of us. She ended up having the baby. The child's name is Angelica. She has beautiful, heavenly eyes.
All pro-lifers, please come and join us some Saturday soon.
Joel Fago
Long Beach
YET MORE ON CREASY
Recently I read a letter in your publication written by Richard Thomas and Mel Goins ("Creasy's as Catholic as Luther", April 1997). The title of the letter and the paragraphs that follow suggest that Dr. Creasy is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Having heard him teach Holy Scripture from October 1996 to June 1997, I can assure readers of the Mission that this is a thoroughly inaccurate representation of Dr. Creasy, who is, in the opinion of the two thousand people whom he teaches every week, and extraordinarily gifted teacher of Scripture and a man profoundly devoted tot he spirit and word of the Gospel.
During the nine months that Dr. Creasy taught in my parish (Mt. Carmel, Tempe, Arizona), attendance doubled from approximately ninety to two-hundred people. Nearly everyone who attended is Roman Catholic; many have university degrees and are familiar with Church doctrine and tradition. Their appreciation for Dr. Creasy's love of Scripture and the One who inspired it could easily be seen in the attentiveness of the audience and their enthusiastic applause at the end of each session. Our realization that Dr. Creasy traveled eight hundred miles every Friday to offer us his course was, in itself, compelling evidence of his love for God's word.
On no occasion did Dr. Creasy attempt to undermine Catholic doctrine. In areas where Catholic and Protestant teaching differ, he analyzed the differences as any good teacher should. Neither in his commentary nor in his handouts (probably the same or very similar to the one Thomas and Goins refer to) was there anything that justified their uncharitable and tendentious caricature of his commentary: "here's the Protestant position, and here's what those stupid Catholics believe."
It is true that Dr. Creasy was influenced by the Protestant biblical teacher Vernon Magee. What of that? As Saint Augustine said long ago, "Where there is truth, it is the Lord's." Some years ago when giving a retreat for priests, Archbishop Fulton Sheen encouraged them to read William Barclay's commentaries on Scripture, although Barclay, at points, writes contrary to Catholic views on important matters, such as miracles and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (something that Dr. Creasy never does). Jesus himself said that it is not what goes into people that harms or ennobles them, but what comes out (Matt. 15:11). My observations indicate that the outcome of Dr. Creasy's teachings has been intense gratitude on the part of his audience for the word of God, increased understanding of God's love for mankind, and a greater desire to live as God wills.
It is pertinent to recall that the Pontifical Biblical Commission stated in "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church" (1993) that "Catholic exegesis does not claim any scientific method as its own." Dr. Creasy methodically studies Scripture as narrative. He makes this very clear from the outset, as he makes clear that he is not a theologian. He does, however, publicly encourage his classes to study the works of Catholic theologians and Biblical scholars to supplement his lectures.
Thomas and Goins are big on accusation but small on current Catholic teaching. For example, they object to Dr. Creasy's answer to the question, "What constitutes the Church of Christ?" In saying that all Christian churches constitute the Body of Christ, Dr. Creasy faithfully expresses the Catholic Church's doctrine that faith and baptism determine one's relationship to God, not denominational affiliation.
One's confidence in Thomas' and Goin's intellectual authority to judge Dr. Creasy is further shaken by the way they contradict themselves. In the same paragraph, they complain that Dr. Creasy limits those who teach in his absence to two Protestant ministers and a rabbi. They proceed to say that the Catholic pastor of St. Paul's Church substituted for Dr. Creasy and declared that the Book of Judges is fictional (once again something that Dr. Creasy has never said to his classes). From personal experience, I know that Dr. Creasy calls on at least one substitute who is Catholic and thoroughly orthodox.
Thomas and Goins take exception to Dr. Creasy's characterization of Purgatory as a place where "we are cleaned up for Heaven." How we are cleansed, no one this side of the experience knows. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church states that those in Purgatory suffer, but it does not offer any particulars. Dr. Creasy's comment implicitly conforms to Dante's representation of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy, where souls suffer because they are separated from God, but, nevertheless, live in hope and joy because their union with God is assured. It is difficult for me to believe that God would torment the souls in Purgatory with real fire or some metaphysical equivalent. I doubt that I am not out of step here with contemporary Catholic teaching.
What is most remarkable about Thomas' and Goins' letter is their narrow-minded and mean-spirited attack on a man who, in their words, is "an exciting, devoted and deeply religious teacher who would probably die for his faith"--a man who is partly responsible for one of them embracing the Catholic faith!
Teachers with Dr. Creasy's gifts are few and far between. When we find one, we should treasure him and make the most of what he can offer.
Anonymous
Tempe, Arizona