Comments & Views Recieved
The following are some of the comments we have recieved from visitors to our site
October 11, 2005
Dear Members of the Friends of St. Colman's Cathedral,
Please keep up your work to encourage the maintenance of the sanctuary of your beautiful cathedral. As you know, radical
renovations of Catholic interiors are now considered passé in many quarters.
I encourage and admire your efforts to preserve and enhance E. W. Pugin's and G. Ashlin's design.
Sincerely,
Thomas Gordon Smith, AIA
Professor of Architecture,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana
U.S.A.
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Mr Thomas Gordon Smith has recently written an article that is very relevant to the situation regarding St. Colman's Cathedral.
To view this article please click here
Wednesday 19th Oct.
Dear friends in Christ,
I have just read an article about your campaign on the website telegraph.co.uk (having followed a link to it from cwnews.com), and I visited your website.
You have a beautiful Cathedral, one that must truly inspire not only devotion but profound gratitude to the generations who have built and decorated the church to the glory of God. The proposed changes seem to me little short of vandalism. They are quite unnecessary, and they seem to be dictated by an inadequate and unbalanced understanding of the liturgy.
I am a published art historian, and I am currently completing a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford on liturgy in the nineteenth century. As an academic, I deplore the destruction of such an important monument of nineteenth century sacred art. It is as an ordinary Catholic layman, however, that I would voice my strongest protest against these ill-conceived alterations to a beautiful Cathedral that was built by 'the pennies of the poor' and that is rightly loved by its people today.
Please feel free to share this email with any one who may be interested; and be sure of my prayers for the success of your campaign.
Yours faithfully,
Ben Whitworth, MA
York England
P.S. We face a similar situation in my own parish, where the parish priest wishes to remove the altar rails, which are a fine example of the work of a well-known local craftsman. In England, the Church is exempt from the usual planning regulations, and instead each diocese has its own Historic Churches Commission which adjudicates on internal changes. In our case, the Bishop dismissed at least one member of the Commission who dared to oppose the changes and the Commission disregarded its own rules and procedures in order to approve the changes. This despite a petition signed by several hundred of the lay faithful. All that is preventing the destruction now is want of funds.
Wednesday Oct.19th
Marshall Ann Davis
"Is this crazy or what? I find it disconcerting that many cathedrals are being destroyed. Imagine not being able to kneel for Communion... It is that way here in Baton Rouge at our Cathedral. I remember what St. Joseph looked like before they began the destruction... I will forever be sorry that it changed... much of the beauty and majesty was taken from that church. Don't they think that the God, the creator of the universe and us, deserves a beautiful home instead of something so modern that you wonder if He is even there? The light is on, but no one is home...."
Wednesday 19th Oct
Colleen E. Dawson
I just read about the planned destruction of the interior of St.
Colman's in the online edition of the UK Daily Telegraph. It would be a heartbreaking act of barbarism to reconfigure any part of the sanctuary or indeed any part of the interior at all. The current configuration is a harmonious architectural representation of religious faith.
We here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin endured a similar situation about ten years ago, when the then-bishop decided to update our cathedral from its historic condition in the interests of "modernisation". It now resembles a railway depot and has no longer has a sense of sanctity.
Please deny the Cathedral's present hierarchy permission to "modernise"(devastate) this jewel of Ireland's cultural heritage.
Yours faithfully,
Colleen E. Dawson
West Allis, WI
USA
Wednesday 19th October 2005
Please keep up the good fight to save the magnificent St. Colman's Cathedral. My family was privileged to visit St. Colman's on a trip to Ireland in July 2000.We were in awe of it's beauty and thought about the thousands of Irish who attended their last mass there before leaving for America.
The renovation of the church all over America has contributed to the huge decline in the number of people attending mass on Sunday. My local church in New York built in 1852 was renovated in 1980. They removed our altar rail, removed the center pews, took away all the statutes, moved the tabernacle to the side altar, the choir now stands behind the altar around a huge baptismal fountain surrounded by palm trees.
Our magnificent crucifix was taken away to be replaced with "resurrected" Christ with cross behind him reaching out to the people, which was hung from the ceiling over the altar. The chair for the priest is now on the sanctuary, center stage.
It is no wonder the church is in crisis. Polls show that the majority of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. When people stop kneeling for communion and the tabernacle is put off to the side, the respect and reverence that should be given to God disappears and gradually so do the parishioners.
In addition to the changes I've already mentioned, six confessionals were removed from our church.
We now have only 2 confessionals that are equivalent to sitting in a closet, face to face with the priest. Needless to say, there are no lines for confession.
Unfortunately, our church is lucky if 10 people come to confession on Saturday. This was a robust parish only 15 miles from Manhattan with a large Irish and Italian community.
Pray for us too, as our new pastor wants to remove our chapel in the church basement to make room for offices and meeting spaces. This is where we have adoration on first Fridays of the month, and 3 daily masses.
I will keep your intentions in my prayers and tell others to pray for your most worthy cause.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Shields Cropper
Wednesday 19th Oct.
Charmaine
"God is trying to remodel the hearts of the Irish people and the priests, not the churches. Somebody has gotten confused as to the message from God."
Monday October 24, 2005
I am most impressed with your website, although I have not yet had time to explore it fully. The photography is superb.
The cathedral looks outstanding in the pictures and I will make a point of visiting it some time. E W Pugin is, to my mind, so much better than his more famous father A W N Pugin. I think that the cathedral ranks with the best of the medieval cathedrals of England or the continent - York, Durham, Chartres etc.
This is a building that needs preserving, and any reordering, however sensitive, would detract from its unity of design. I fully support your campaign to prevent the proposed works.
I will also do what I can to encourage others to look at your website.
Paul Waddington,
Yorkshire,
England.
Monday 24th Oct.
Dear Sirs,
I am writing to support those who would keep St. Colman's Cathedral fully in tact. To make the changes which are proposed would be a tragic mistake. The plans I viewed on the internet are clearly the work of one who does not understand the first thing about Catholic worship, but has wholeheartedly embraced the new, false humanistic worship which is more entertainment than sacred action. Just to see the proposed "stage" (for that is what it is) makes me sick.
The sanctuary is separate because it is supposed to be -- it is where the sacred and sacrificial action takes place (or is supposed to take place). Just as the church is a sacred space set apart from the world, so is the sanctuary a sacred area set apart from the rest of the church. The church should be totally preserved, the true Mass should be returned (as codified by St. Pius V).
St. Colman, pray for us.
Eamon Patrick Shea
29th October 2005
Dear Friends of Saint Colman's,
I submitted an article on your objections to the reordering which appeared online at
the following German Catholic site:http://www.kreuz.net/article.2121.html
Readers comments are posted below the article - my own comments appear under the nom de guerre "chancel_screen".
Unfortunately, the English translation tool provided on site results in a very poor English version. I shall keep the German-language kreuz.net community aware of all further developments.
Best regards,
Philip Savage
2nd November 2005
Many congratulations on your opposition to the destruction of the sanctuary in your beautiful cathedral. I hope it never goes the way of the local St Mels Cathedral here in Longford - and there are so many others - Killarney, Monaghan, Enniscorthy, Gorey, Carrick-on-Shannon to name but a few.
I think that St Mels and Killarney are the worst I have seen - works by the well known chancer, Ray Carroll. I could go on and on. When will the Catholic bishops ever learn? Keep up the good work - I'd like to donate 100 euros towards your cause - how can I do this?
Sincerely,
Luke Baxter,
Longford town.
3rd November 2005
Dear Sir/Madam,
I totally support your action in defending Cobh Cathedral from the
Neo-Cromwellian proposal to `reorder' it. I trust that Bishop Magee will be dissuaded by the planning authority. Failing that, and in the last resort, can I suggest that FOSCC present the 24,000-signature petition to the papal nuncio at his palace in Dublin for forwarding to Rome. This should be done as publicly as possible, so that the issue can't be fudged by the nuncio, and Bishop Magee can thus be embarrassed by the very laity in whose name he is claiming to act.
I note that Bishop Magee (in common with other liturgical innovators)cites the `spirit' of Vatican II, but crucially not the `letter', since, as you will know, Vatican II did not stipulate any architectural innovation of any kind. As you know, the `spirit of Vatican II' is such a vague concept and has been used for all manner of liturgical and architectural destruction, even where, as in the case of Cobh, the laity (which innovators make so much of) largely oppose such destruction. Why cannot Bishop Magee realise that he is the custodian and steward, not the owner, of the Cathedral. It is, moreover, a needless and scandalous waste of money, at a time when we are being asked to contribute to other causes at home and abroad, not to mention the large sums of money being paid in compensation for abuse. It amazes me that at the very time of the Ferns Report, the bishop should be busying himself in this way. Wrecking a beautiful cathedral is not the way to foster a more holy and faithful priesthood, which is what he should be concentrating on. This proposed destruction is a betrayal of those many people who contributed to the cathedral's construction in harsh economic times, as well as those who have prayed there, not least those enroute to America.
There is now, providentially, in Pope Benedict XVI, a pontiff who is all too aware of the liturgical abuses of the past 40 years. If the local planning authority fails to defend the Cathedral, then a very public presentation of your petition, in the way I suggest above, might be the only way to bring Bishop Magee to realise that the real Church of the Laity (which he pretends to champion) will not endure this willful and scandalous destruction.
With very good wish and prayer for your success.
Yours faithfully,
Donal Lowry
Dr Donal Lowry FRHistS
College Lecturer and Fellow in Modern History
Greyfriars Hall
University of Oxford
4th November 2005
Dear Sirs!
I am editor of a Swedish web magazine, KATOLSK OBSERVATÖR. We have translated the Telegraph article into Swedish and have a link to your site.
You can see the result at www.silverlink.nu/katobs/nyh_katedr.htm (Front page: se link below!)
This is always a threat. You really have to be a watchdog concerning modernist projects to adapt, and destruct, our cultural heritage to suit contemporary - and temporal - liturgical practice. We have seen similar things happening during the 70´s with iconoclasms and deconstructions of our churches from the neo-Roman 1890- period.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Ulf Silfverling
Stockholm
KATOLSK OBSERVATÖR