Books in Stone – The Catholic Thing

Catholics who sometimes worry that the Church is no longer sufficiently bold in its preaching of the Gospel might at least derive some comfort from its buildings.  Sacred buildings stand a long time and carry on the convictions of those bolder folks who came before us – unless they are burned down or, in an interesting case, blocked.

Two examples come to mind.  The first is St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which the parish’s website, in its history of itself, describes as deliberately placed in an “aggressive setting beside an expanding secular university.”

The booklet about the construction and design of the church, “St. Paul Church, Cambridge, Mass. – Description, Exterior and Interior,” written by its first pastor, Fr. John J. Ryan, begins with a remark by the then-Cardinal of Boston, William Henry O’Connell: “The edifice you describe, Father Ryan, is a book in stone, and must be put into print.”

The cornerstone of this exquisitely beautiful church, designed by Edward T.P. Graham, a Harvard graduate and parishioner, was laid in 1916. Its construction, slowed by the Great War, was completed in 1923.

Fr. Ryan’s booklet describes the Church as placed “at the head of the ‘Gold Coast,’ a term given to the street on which front the splendid dormitories of the reputed wealthy students of Harvard.” He means Wigglesworth Hall on Massachusetts Avenue.

As for this “book in stone,” he comments:

St. Paul’s Church is the formal expression of an unqualified belief in revealed religion and the Divinity of Christ. Looking at the frieze, this faith is disclosed by the Angel of Revelation supporting a cross; towards the cross are ancients looking for the salvation that shall be the gift of the cross; and, counterbalancing, are to be seen the Christians who also regard the cross as the source of salvation and every spiritual good.  The tympanum exhibits a beautiful bas-relief bust of St. Paul, the interpreter of the old law and the new law, his finger on the text and the page held open by  the sword grasped in his left hand.  The text is engraven on the rim of the tympanum and reads; “The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth.” (1. Timothy. Chapter III.)  The quotation from St. Paul, the Patron of the church, is the key to the complete understanding of everything within and without this temple of God.

The verse about truth directly confronts Harvard University with its then-new motto of Veritas.  I say “new” because apparently soon after Harvard’s founding until around 1880, its motto was understood to be a religious expression: either In Christi Gloriam (“for the glory of Christ”) or Christo et Ecclesiae (“for Christ and his Church”). But in the 19^th century, “Veritas” was discovered in some old records and came to supplant the older formulations (although combined forms were used also).

When Fr. Ryan placed ”the pillar and ground of truth” over St. Paul’s door, Harvard had been proclaiming “truth” without Christ and without the Church for a generation. The inscription answers: truth needs a pillar, even for a university.

Readers who have visited St. Paul’s may be surprised to learn that, when the church was planned, it was understood to be directly facing the university and testifying to Catholic truth rather boldly. Isn’t the building, rather, tucked away behind a tall apartment building (Longfellow Court)?

Actually, that building went up soon after construction of the church started and was completed in 1930.  I have heard old-timer locals refer to the apartments as “spite block.”  If spite was an intent, the architecture itself is like a medieval siege and counter-siege.  A slab was imposed to cover up that “book in stone.”

The other great example is the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, built at roughly the same time as St. Paul’s (1900-1909) and dedicated by James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. It stands on a hill along South Temple, half a mile from the Mormon Temple Square. On its transept wall, it carries a teaching of St. Paul, directed at those who hold that the angel Moroni delivered a new book of Mormon: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Galatians 1:8)

But if this cathedral is a book in stone, it is an illustrated book, which teaches the truth through its beauty. Its exterior is Romanesque, built of warm pink Utah sandstone. Its interior is Gothic – vaulted, colored, and bathed in light from Munich stained-glass windows.

Its original plain white interior has been transformed by successive improvements into something close to a medieval illuminated manuscript in three dimensions: painted murals covering the walls and ceilings; accents of color throughout; a carved Spanish Gothic reredos; and an altar and baptismal font of Carrara onyx set with glass mosaic. Painted Stations of the Cross by Utah artist Roger Wilson line the nave.

Anyone can walk into the building, wonder at its beauty, draw a comparison with the Temple, and make a judgment.

These generations before us did not “build better than they knew” (Emerson’s claim in “The Problem”: they built what they knew, while we build worse than we know.

Is it too much to say that these solid Catholics were very Roman, too, in how they built churches?   Bernini’s famous colonnade for St. Peter’s was controversial in its day: might Protestants be able to slander Catholics for wasting money for pomp rather than spending it on the poor?  He was insistent:

Since the Church of St. Peter is, as it were, the mother of all others, it must have a portico that indeed expresses the fact that she, with maternally open arms, receives Catholics to confirm them in their faith, heretics to reunite them with the Church, and infidels to illuminate them into the true faith.

These Catholics built boldly and beautifully because they built with Peter, standing on the Rock and confident in the truth.