No one here has said anything about Vigano, either locally, or as far as I know, on the archdiocese level. I don't think the Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana carries much weight except as a noisemaker. Probably most people don't even know his name. Unfortunately there are people who do pay attention to him. To me he is visibly-from-space disturbed.
Unfortunately it seems that many Catholics might be subjected to Vigano's rantings via their parish priests or their bishops. So he is not harmless when this election comes up.
You know darn well that Trump will exploit this letter to its full extent, and if the parish priests and the bishops don't roundly condemn it, his invisibility in some parts of the RC world will be more than matched by his prominence in a different part of the RC universe it the US.
The Arlington VA diocese is across the river from us, less than 10 milesas the crow flies. and is one of the most conservative RC dioceses. I thought you were in one of those also, Katherine? My Trump loving relatives in Virginia are in the Arlington Diocese. I might check out their parishes' websites, and FB pages.
No, I am not in the Lincoln diocese (our neighbors to the south). We are Omaha Archdiocese, which is pretty middle-of-the-road. If you had a Venn diagram of Catholic Trump supporters in nebraska, people who are in Vigano's camp would be a small subset, uber traddy types. Most of the rest don't pay a lot of attention to European prelates. Of course if their pastor made a point of supporting the letter, that would have an effect. That would be more likely to happen in the Lincoln diocese.
Happy to say that everyone around here seems to be ignoring the whole kerfuffle.
FWIW, I think it's likely that even in a mostly-wacko-free parish like ours, there are people, perhaps only a few, who gravitate to this Vigano kind of thing. I can believe that in some parishes, those people may include someone on staff, or even the pastor.
I suspect that many parishes don't have stringent controls on their social media. If parish volunteers are permitted to update the parish website and/or Facebook page, there is a danger that someone could post something like the Vigano letter, without staff or pastor approval.
To be sure, most/all of the examples in the NCR article are examples of pastors who have embraced the Vigano letter. The article's author states that such pastors are not outliers. I hope that's incorrect.
I think that both you, Jim, and Katherine are underestimateing the possible impact of Vigano and his rants and letters.
From the article: According to Massimo Faggioli, ...some church leaders operate under the assumption that "Catholics in the pews are protected from the calumnies and conspiracy theories thanks to a kind of ecclesial herd immunity," and hence, many choose to brush off Viganò as irrelevant.
"The fact is that only a small percentage of Catholics have been immunized by reading about Viganò since his already very eventful days in the Vatican, then as a nuncio to the U.S., and finally when he went rogue in August 2018," Faggioli told NCR.
Recent homilies and bulletin notes posted online by Fr. Ronald Antinarelli, pastor of Our Lady of Victory in Rochester, New York, lament what he describes as the lack of courage of bishops willing to stand up to secular authorities. Yet for him there is one praiseworthy exception: Viganò.
A screenshot of Fr. Ronald Antinarelli's June 8 post on the website of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Rochester, New York "The Prelate is not in good standing with the current mob in Vatican City and has for a long time lived in hiding, in fear for his own life," he wrote on the parish website's homepage on June 8, along with a link to the letter. "I urge you to read it and to send copies to all the people you know. Remember this: The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
That priest and others should be pulled from their parish positions. This type of thing on a parish website is blatant political action.
"This type of thing on a parish website is blatant political action."
Anne, I hope you don't mind my asking: where does this sit on the blatant-political-action scale relative to the proposals, apparently presented in homiletic form, by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II?
My guess is that Vigano will have some credibility in backwaters (and you can be in Washington's orbit and still be in a backwater) where generally unknown and definitely unauthenticated Irish ladies who get messages are taken seriously.
Two things could change that, and neither is nutty pastors, nor nutty bishops. One is ESPN. If it takes up Vigano's night frights, even for amusement, there is a big bloc of reinforced Trump voters to feel emboldened. The other is that Trump is already tweeting about the approval of a prelate who wouldn't make a faces if he had to talk to Trump. If he plays it right, that could help him, but if he pushes it too far, the USCCB will be forced to put out a plain vanilla statement that Vigano vituperates only for himself and not the Church.
Cottonwood AZ might be a backwater community. Not sure the residents of Rochester NY would see their city as a backwater. A lot of people in”backwater “ communities added together helped elect Trump. He will exploit Viganos letter, highlighting that he was the Papal Nuncio in DC and should be respected by RCs as a senior eminence.
Guessing you mean EWTN and not ESPN ;)
Winters at NCR notes that Barron is now hawking a Bible for $99.00. I wonder what his footnotes might say to explain some of Jesus’s teachings that go against the GOP agenda.
I imagine that $99 is just for Vol. 1, the Gospels. There are other volumes in the works. What Barron has seems to be hawking is lavishly illustrated with copies of old and not quite so old masters and crammed with commentary from Ignatius of Antioch to maybe Pope Francis. I think it comes in a box which is more elaborate than a case.
And we just saw the Paulist Press competition for the venerable and now a bit dated Jerome Biblical Commentary. It came in at another $99 I think.
Yeah, EWTN, ESPN it's all commentary. No one plays the game. The backwaters alone are not enough to re-elect Trump, who seems to be having meltdowns at a rate that would cause envy in the average 4-year-old.
I watched Barron’s Catholicism TV series for a while. Great production technically. But the emphasis on art and music was a bit over the top after a while. What stopped me from viewing after a few episodes was his own hosting style (he always seemed to be looking at someone out of camera range instead of at the viewing audience), and his Q&A once he got into Catholicism specifically. Pre-selected questions with softball answers that could not be challenged. Somehow he seems to think that the production of art and music, bought and paid for by the RCC, and wealthy Christians/Catholics is some kind of proof that the RCC is the “one true church “.
I suspect that he was really just marketing his video business to the choir. If most RC parishes In the US are the choir, and buy his stuff, he is wealthy enough to commission his own artists and musicians and leave “Great Catholic art” to a cathedral somewhere - with his name on it. His version of the Rog Mahal in LA. LA only needs one cathedral but if he has enough money maybe he could build a more attractive one. The cathedral Mahoney built looks like all the other commercial and industrial buildings in downtown LA. If my son hadn’t pointed it out to me (the cross on top) I never would have guessed it was a church,
But at least Cupich is rid of him. Don’t know what Gomez, Opus Dei, thinks of him. Maybe Barron has to turn over some of the $ to the archdiocese? No vow of poverty, so does he keep it all? Like the former EWTN star who kept his money from his sold out appearances around the country? Until he was busted for something and left the priesthood for his Montana estate. Can’t remember his name. Anyway, Barron has a lucrative business going just like the evangelical televangelists.
My, Anne, you seem enamored of the dark side of the Barron. I am not particularly a fan of his, and some of the folks he hangs with fail to enthuse me, but: His interest/attraction to/fascination with art and music is, to all appearances, a genuine part of his faith. His famous quote, after all, is if you want someone to like baseball you don't start with the infield fly rule.
Not every Catholic curls up at night with the Code of Canon Law.
I also went inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and attended Mass there. I was astonished. But after the astonishment wore off, I liked it. A lot. Was that "downtown" LA where I was? Could have fooled me.
Definitely downtown LA. Did you not see the commercial buildings everywhere? To me, the cathedral looked like a huge warehouse, with a mostly blank facade
My son and his wife were living in downtown LA at the time of that visit. Now we wouldn't go through downtown to see them as they live in the San Fernando valley these days. The urban loft gave way to the suburban 3 br house. They have 2 kids now!
. We were stuck in traffic and when my son asked me what I thought of the cathedral I couldn't figure out where it was. He pointed to the warehouse and told me to look at the top which was the only clue to the fact that it is a religious building. The traffic moved and we did not stop to go inside. An LA friend likes it on the inside. I'll have to take her, and your, word for it. Did you buy any of their private label wine in the gift shop?
No. I don't think much of Barron. I don't doubt his appreciation for art. I also don't doubt his appreciation for money, living the good life, and rubbing elbows with the Hollywood set. Nor do I doubt his gift for self-promotion and for marketing his products.
Why didn't downtown LA look like a downtown to you? What did it look like to you? To me, it's pure downtown city looking.
So is that the cathedral with all the pictures of the saints? I have never been to LA, but I have seen those pictures online, and I think St. Anthony's Messenger had several of them. The pictures of the building itself I wasn't impressed with. But I did like the saint pictures.
I didn’t go inside so I don’t know. Maybe Tom can tell you. As someone with LA RC roots going back to the late 19th century practically equivalent to Massachusetts bay Colony families in a city that is so relatively new) I was very unhappy that Mahoney not only refused to restore St Vibiana Cathedral after it was seriously damaged in an earthquake (he said too much $ to bring it to earthquake code), he shut down several ministries that served the poor right after opening his vanity project. Which, unsurprisingly, cost multiple times what he had said it would cost in order to abandon St vibiana’s and multiple times what it would have cost to restore St V and bring it up to current earthquake codes.. He wanted to tear it down. Historic preservationists saved the.building, but it is now owned by the city and used for an events center and houses the Little Tokyo branch of the public library.
It is actually one of the few remaining structures of early Los Angeles. According to wiki, when it opened in the 1880s (when my German side moved to LA) it could hold 10% of the entire LA population. Including my grandparents. It was a small town then.
LA doesn’t have enough history to have the luxury of tearing down any of the very few buildings with any architectural or historic significance. St V’s italianate architecture isn’t my favorite, but the cathedral should have been saved as a church.
Mahoney needed to sell it to get the $ he needed to create an ugly ( at least on the outside) new edifice that seemed far more about his ego than about honoring Nuestra Senora La Reyna de los Angeles (Our Lady queen of the Angels)
"Why didn't downtown LA look like a downtown to you?"
Well, first, we had already been to Hollywood & Vine. I thought that was supposed to be downtown, although it reminded me more of the shopping street in Shorewood, WI. Secondly, we were looking for the parking garage. Thirdly, I had no idea we were going to the cathedral. Fourth, when we got out of the parking garage, we went straight up to the plaza that holds the meeting room and gift shop at one end and the doors of the cathedral on the other, and Fifth, it didn't feel like a downtown.
Inside, my first thought was "warehouse in Mussolini Modern." It was huge, and the concrete walls were a few stories high, and we were only in a corridor that had some rooms off of it. We finally came around the corner and were in the nave, facing back toward the way we came in. A Korean tour group with a leader holding a pennant came in through the opposite door, looked around, and passed out the way we came in. Whereupon we could take a good look at the nave.
Again, the first word was "huge." Tom Brady could not have hit the altar with a pass from where we stood. And it was downhill from there. More concrete reaching way up. But on that concrete were the long wall hangings of eclectic groups of life-sized saints that took he hugeness off the place. Playing, "Oh, that one is St Ignatius," and "Who's the kid?" took the vastness out of the space. (There is an EC church in CA that also lined its walls with hanging saints, but its choices are even more eclectic.)
Then we recognized the altar, which is big enough for an emergency landing if a pilot happened to get lost. I wondered what the deal was on the size, but when they brought out about 18 cups for Communion, it all became clear. For reception, they somehow manage four lines down he center aisle and two lines returning on each side aisle. The altar cross is at ground level, and all the good Hispanic Catholics rubbed the feet for good luck on the way out. The homily wasn't half bad, either.
I wouldn't recommend it for quiet talks with the Lord, but some of the other rooms are for that. If you wanted to do several hundred confirmations or (my computer to God's ear) ordinations, it would be the place to be. It feels considerably bigger than St. Patrick's in New York, although I suspect there isn't much difference in pew capacity. Nowhere near as big s St. Peter's in Rome.
My son too some pictures, but they are more of us than the cathedral, and, besides, they don't give any sense of the place. In the end, I liked it.
Hollywood and Vine is in Hollywood. (!!) Which is not what locals refer to as downtown LA. The area where the Cathedral is located is in downtown LA. Hollywood is a part of LA, but is not the part of LA referred to as downtown. Not sure how to explain. I’m not familiar enough with other cities to make a good comparison, especially since LA is so huge. The city has 500 square miles and multiple communities, one of which is Hollywood. Los Angeles county has 4700 square miles and even more communities, one of which is the city of Los Angeles.
Yeah, I know about the size. On my first newspaper job the LA cops nabbed an Indiana man at the airport, and I needed them to get to the police station and book him before our press time. I kept calling the PD and the cops with our boy kept coming all morning. Just made the deadline.
Nobody can actually live in Los Angeles due to freeways.(Remember the end of How the West as Won? Remember the beginning of LLaLand?). Froze to death one year in July in San Diego (TV kept apologizing for the "June weather"). Hate California, it's cold and it's damp. Only habitable parts are Sausalito and Tahoe. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Only part of California I've been in was Fresno. It was in October and was 75° and sunny. I liked it. My husband had to go to Ventura in January for business one time. It was green and sunny; he was walking around in shirt sleeves. When he came home it was zero with snow on the ground. Sounded like CA would be a pretty nice place if you could afford it.
Katherine, It is 75 and sunny in October here, too. And usually in November.And you can get around. I can get from here to Orlando in just over two hours, but why would I? And I can be in Key West in under two hours, which reminds me I don't do that often enough. We've got the Intracoastal, the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades, and we used to have stone crabs. What more could one need? And it doesn't cost $1 million and up for a starter home.
You'll notice I'm still in Nebraska. If you don't like the weather here you just hang around until the next day. When it might be worse. Or it might be perfect. But probably not in January.
I'll stick to PA. Weather has been mild summer and winter. Not sure what climate change has in store for the the future. I don't think CA is faring as well, what with droughts and forest fires. FL is too hot for me and the bugs never get killed off by winter, just keep growing like alligators. But your states are all nice to visit. I was once to Key West and enjoyed my margarita and key lime pie at the Hog's Breath Saloon. "Hog's Breath is better than no breath at all", say the billboards all the way down. With the pandemic isolation, I've become acquainted with the lovely little local parks. Since vacations are out of the question, they've become a source of comfort. I gather at a two meter distance with other ex-dancers to enjoy walks along watershed creeks and through lush green forests.
Ah, Tom, you sound like every east coaster I have met who has spent a small amount of time in LA and hates everything about it - because you don't understand how LA works. East coast folk only see the urban ugliness, are overwhelmed by the freeway system, and never discover why 40 million people choose to make Calif their home. Of course, it’s not a good place to be poor, but neither is Miami or Palm Beach. Housing is super expensive in Cali’s big cities, but also in other big cities - including NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland Ore. Etc.
Few people from east of Nevada understand California at all. They go to Hollywood and Vine and think that is LA. It’s not. The story doesn't end there, nor at Disneyland or Universal Studios. LA is a collection of towns and even villages. Knowing how to navigate to discover them takes time.
There is something for everyone – sophisticated cities like San Francisco, charming villages like Sausalito, mountains with beautiful lakes and skiing like Tahoe (and many others, including the town where I grew up, 2 hours from LA, 2 hours from San Diego, 1.5 hours from Palm Springs). Florida is all the same - we have driven both coasts of Florida many times, north to south, east to west - across Alligator Alley, across a few other roads too. Naples’ historic district is charming. It would be nicer without all the high rises. Miami has a lot of high rises too, which are not our personal idea of hominess. But New Yorkers also love them.
LA and San Diego have mountains, deserts, ocean, lakes - all within a 2 hour drive. Beaches are closer. San Francisco has mountains, oceans and lakes - and the wine country! Rte 1 along the coast from SoCal to Mendocino and beyond, is one of the world's most spectacular drives. Nothing like it on the east coast. Redwood forests with giant ancient trees take your breath away. The weather is mostly great – summers are not as hot as FL - and no stifling humidity. No daily monsoons either. Winters are gorgeous.
We like Florida- the winter weather is perfect. But so is California's. We have vacationed in Florida for years, mostly in winter/spring. Once in summer. Never again! We tried the Atlantic coast, but prefer the Gulf coast. We have stayed on most of the barrier islands from Tampa to Estero. Our favorite is Sanibel, where we took our kids every spring break when they were growing up. Two thirds of the island is a wildlife refuge. World class shelling beaches. No building taller than 3 stories allowed. We like nature and no crowds. Hate high rises. Sanibel is perfect for us.
Our eldest son met his wife while living in Fort Lauderdale. He lived there for about 7 years after college. They moved to LA 8 years ago, and would not return to Florida to live. They love that they can be in the mountains, sledding and building snowmen with their kids in about 1.5 hours. They can do day trips and make it home easily. The desert towns are also about 1.5 hour drive. We went with them in Dec two years ago. We had the sun, the magnificent mountains ringing the desert, and took a tram up to the top of Mt. San Jacinto to see the view - and let our grandson play in the snow. An hour earlier we had gotten him out of the pool. Of course, there are the beaches - wide and beautiful up and down the coast, much like the east coast of Fl. But no horrible heat and sticky humidity – or monsoon rains -in the summer. No alligators!
Florida has a flat landscape. One of the things I miss living in the DC area is not seeing mountains. I can, if I drive a while, but not near the city. PA has a nice landscape. Rolling fields and mountains – small mountains, but mountains. You can drive the entire length of FL and not see mountains. Same in the Midwest. So flat! A lot of swampy areas in FL too. We all find our own places. You like FL. Jean likes cold, Michigan winters. Margaret likes NYC.
One of the great things about the US is the variety of landscapes and cities. A place for everyone
Saw the redwoods in Yosemite the time we were visiting relatives in Fresno. Yosemite was awesome. My grandmother attended college for awhile in Redlands, in the 1920s. She loved it there. But when she visited again in the 70s she said it wasn't the same. Of course how would it be after 50 years.
No one here has said anything about Vigano, either locally, or as far as I know, on the archdiocese level. I don't think the Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana carries much weight except as a noisemaker. Probably most people don't even know his name. Unfortunately there are people who do pay attention to him.
ReplyDeleteTo me he is visibly-from-space disturbed.
Unfortunately it seems that many Catholics might be subjected to Vigano's rantings via their parish priests or their bishops. So he is not harmless when this election comes up.
ReplyDeleteYou know darn well that Trump will exploit this letter to its full extent, and if the parish priests and the bishops don't roundly condemn it, his invisibility in some parts of the RC world will be more than matched by his prominence in a different part of the RC universe it the US.
The Arlington VA diocese is across the river from us, less than 10 milesas the crow flies. and is one of the most conservative RC dioceses. I thought you were in one of those also, Katherine? My Trump loving relatives in Virginia are in the Arlington Diocese. I might check out their parishes' websites, and FB pages.
No, I am not in the Lincoln diocese (our neighbors to the south). We are Omaha Archdiocese, which is pretty middle-of-the-road.
DeleteIf you had a Venn diagram of Catholic Trump supporters in nebraska, people who are in Vigano's camp would be a small subset, uber traddy types. Most of the rest don't pay a lot of attention to European prelates. Of course if their pastor made a point of supporting the letter, that would have an effect. That would be more likely to happen in the Lincoln diocese.
Happy to say that everyone around here seems to be ignoring the whole kerfuffle.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I think it's likely that even in a mostly-wacko-free parish like ours, there are people, perhaps only a few, who gravitate to this Vigano kind of thing. I can believe that in some parishes, those people may include someone on staff, or even the pastor.
I suspect that many parishes don't have stringent controls on their social media. If parish volunteers are permitted to update the parish website and/or Facebook page, there is a danger that someone could post something like the Vigano letter, without staff or pastor approval.
To be sure, most/all of the examples in the NCR article are examples of pastors who have embraced the Vigano letter. The article's author states that such pastors are not outliers. I hope that's incorrect.
I think that both you, Jim, and Katherine are underestimateing the possible impact of Vigano and his rants and letters.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article: According to Massimo Faggioli, ...some church leaders operate under the assumption that "Catholics in the pews are protected from the calumnies and conspiracy theories thanks to a kind of ecclesial herd immunity," and hence, many choose to brush off Viganò as irrelevant.
"The fact is that only a small percentage of Catholics have been immunized by reading about Viganò since his already very eventful days in the Vatican, then as a nuncio to the U.S., and finally when he went rogue in August 2018," Faggioli told NCR.
Recent homilies and bulletin notes posted online by Fr. Ronald Antinarelli, pastor of Our Lady of Victory in Rochester, New York, lament what he describes as the lack of courage of bishops willing to stand up to secular authorities. Yet for him there is one praiseworthy exception: Viganò.
A screenshot of Fr. Ronald Antinarelli's June 8 post on the website of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Rochester, New York
"The Prelate is not in good standing with the current mob in Vatican City and has for a long time lived in hiding, in fear for his own life," he wrote on the parish website's homepage on June 8, along with a link to the letter. "I urge you to read it and to send copies to all the people you know. Remember this: The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
That priest and others should be pulled from their parish positions. This type of thing on a parish website is blatant political action.
"This type of thing on a parish website is blatant political action."
DeleteAnne, I hope you don't mind my asking: where does this sit on the blatant-political-action scale relative to the proposals, apparently presented in homiletic form, by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II?
My guess is that Vigano will have some credibility in backwaters (and you can be in Washington's orbit and still be in a backwater) where generally unknown and definitely unauthenticated Irish ladies who get messages are taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteTwo things could change that, and neither is nutty pastors, nor nutty bishops. One is ESPN. If it takes up Vigano's night frights, even for amusement, there is a big bloc of reinforced Trump voters to feel emboldened. The other is that Trump is already tweeting about the approval of a prelate who wouldn't make a faces if he had to talk to Trump. If he plays it right, that could help him, but if he pushes it too far, the USCCB will be forced to put out a plain vanilla statement that Vigano vituperates only for himself and not the Church.
Cottonwood AZ might be a backwater community. Not sure the residents of Rochester NY would see their city as a backwater. A lot of people in”backwater “ communities added together helped elect Trump. He will exploit Viganos letter, highlighting that he was the Papal Nuncio in DC and should be respected by RCs as a senior eminence.
ReplyDeleteGuessing you mean EWTN and not ESPN ;)
Winters at NCR notes that Barron is now hawking a Bible for $99.00. I wonder what his footnotes might say to explain some of Jesus’s teachings that go against the GOP agenda.
I imagine that $99 is just for Vol. 1, the Gospels. There are other volumes in the works. What Barron has seems to be hawking is lavishly illustrated with copies of old and not quite so old masters and crammed with commentary from Ignatius of Antioch to maybe Pope Francis. I think it comes in a box which is more elaborate than a case.
DeleteAnd we just saw the Paulist Press competition for the venerable and now a bit dated Jerome Biblical Commentary. It came in at another $99 I think.
Yeah, EWTN, ESPN it's all commentary. No one plays the game. The backwaters alone are not enough to re-elect Trump, who seems to be having meltdowns at a rate that would cause envy in the average 4-year-old.
I watched Barron’s Catholicism TV series for a while. Great production technically. But the emphasis on art and music was a bit over the top after a while. What stopped me from viewing after a few episodes was his own hosting style (he always seemed to be looking at someone out of camera range instead of at the viewing audience), and his Q&A once he got into Catholicism specifically. Pre-selected questions with softball answers that could not be challenged. Somehow he seems to think that the production of art and music, bought and paid for by the RCC, and wealthy Christians/Catholics is some kind of proof that the RCC is the “one true church “.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that he was really just marketing his video business to the choir. If most RC parishes In the US are the choir, and buy his stuff, he is wealthy enough to commission his own artists and musicians and leave “Great Catholic art” to a cathedral somewhere - with his name on it. His version of the Rog Mahal in LA. LA only needs one cathedral but if he has enough money maybe he could build a more attractive one. The cathedral Mahoney built looks like all the other commercial and industrial buildings in downtown LA. If my son hadn’t pointed it out to me (the cross on top) I never would have guessed it was a church,
But at least Cupich is rid of him. Don’t know what Gomez, Opus Dei, thinks of him. Maybe Barron has to turn over some of the $ to the archdiocese? No vow of poverty, so does he keep it all? Like the former EWTN star who kept his money from his sold out appearances around the country? Until he was busted for something and left the priesthood for his Montana estate. Can’t remember his name. Anyway, Barron has a lucrative business going just like the evangelical televangelists.
My, Anne, you seem enamored of the dark side of the Barron. I am not particularly a fan of his, and some of the folks he hangs with fail to enthuse me, but: His interest/attraction to/fascination with art and music is, to all appearances, a genuine part of his faith. His famous quote, after all, is if you want someone to like baseball you don't start with the infield fly rule.
DeleteNot every Catholic curls up at night with the Code of Canon Law.
I also went inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and attended Mass there. I was astonished. But after the astonishment wore off, I liked it. A lot. Was that "downtown" LA where I was? Could have fooled me.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely downtown LA. Did you not see the commercial buildings everywhere? To me, the cathedral looked like a huge warehouse, with a mostly blank facade
My son and his wife were living in downtown LA at the time of that visit. Now we wouldn't go through downtown to see them as they live in the San Fernando valley these days. The urban loft gave way to the suburban 3 br house. They have 2 kids now!
. We were stuck in traffic and when my son asked me what I thought of the cathedral I couldn't figure out where it was. He pointed to the warehouse and told me to look at the top which was the only clue to the fact that it is a religious building. The traffic moved and we did not stop to go inside. An LA friend likes it on the inside. I'll have to take her, and your, word for it. Did you buy any of their private label wine in the gift shop?
No. I don't think much of Barron. I don't doubt his appreciation for art. I also don't doubt his appreciation for money, living the good life, and rubbing elbows with the Hollywood set. Nor do I doubt his gift for self-promotion and for marketing his products.
Why didn't downtown LA look like a downtown to you? What did it look like to you? To me, it's pure downtown city looking.
So is that the cathedral with all the pictures of the saints? I have never been to LA, but I have seen those pictures online, and I think St. Anthony's Messenger had several of them. The pictures of the building itself I wasn't impressed with. But I did like the saint pictures.
DeleteI didn’t go inside so I don’t know. Maybe Tom can tell you. As someone with LA RC roots going back to the late 19th century practically equivalent to Massachusetts bay Colony families in a city that is so relatively new) I was very unhappy that Mahoney not only refused to restore St Vibiana Cathedral after it was seriously damaged in an earthquake (he said too much $ to bring it to earthquake code), he shut down several ministries that served the poor right after opening his vanity project. Which, unsurprisingly, cost multiple times what he had said it would cost in order to abandon St vibiana’s and multiple times what it would have cost to restore St V and bring it up to current earthquake codes.. He wanted to tear it down. Historic preservationists saved the.building, but it is now owned by the city and used for an events center and houses the Little Tokyo branch of the public library.
DeleteIt is actually one of the few remaining structures of early Los Angeles. According to wiki, when it opened in the 1880s (when my German side moved to LA) it could hold 10% of the entire LA population. Including my grandparents. It was a small town then.
LA doesn’t have enough history to have the luxury of tearing down any of the very few buildings with any architectural or historic significance. St V’s italianate architecture isn’t my favorite, but the cathedral should have been saved as a church.
DeleteMahoney needed to sell it to get the $ he needed to create an ugly ( at least on the outside) new edifice that seemed far more about his ego than about honoring Nuestra Senora La Reyna de los Angeles (Our Lady queen of the Angels)
"Why didn't downtown LA look like a downtown to you?"
DeleteWell, first, we had already been to Hollywood & Vine. I thought that was supposed to be downtown, although it reminded me more of the shopping street in Shorewood, WI. Secondly, we were looking for the parking garage. Thirdly, I had no idea we were going to the cathedral. Fourth, when we got out of the parking garage, we went straight up to the plaza that holds the meeting room and gift shop at one end and the doors of the cathedral on the other, and Fifth, it didn't feel like a downtown.
Inside, my first thought was "warehouse in Mussolini Modern." It was huge, and the concrete walls were a few stories high, and we were only in a corridor that had some rooms off of it. We finally came around the corner and were in the nave, facing back toward the way we came in. A Korean tour group with a leader holding a pennant came in through the opposite door, looked around, and passed out the way we came in. Whereupon we could take a good look at the nave.
Again, the first word was "huge." Tom Brady could not have hit the altar with a pass from where we stood. And it was downhill from there. More concrete reaching way up. But on that concrete were the long wall hangings of eclectic groups of life-sized saints that took he hugeness off the place. Playing, "Oh, that one is St Ignatius," and "Who's the kid?" took the vastness out of the space. (There is an EC church in CA that also lined its walls with hanging saints, but its choices are even more eclectic.)
Then we recognized the altar, which is big enough for an emergency landing if a pilot happened to get lost. I wondered what the deal was on the size, but when they brought out about 18 cups for Communion, it all became clear. For reception, they somehow manage four lines down he center aisle and two lines returning on each side aisle. The altar cross is at ground level, and all the good Hispanic Catholics rubbed the feet for good luck on the way out. The homily wasn't half bad, either.
I wouldn't recommend it for quiet talks with the Lord, but some of the other rooms are for that. If you wanted to do several hundred confirmations or (my computer to God's ear) ordinations, it would be the place to be. It feels considerably bigger than St. Patrick's in New York, although I suspect there isn't much difference in pew capacity. Nowhere near as big s St. Peter's in Rome.
My son too some pictures, but they are more of us than the cathedral, and, besides, they don't give any sense of the place. In the end, I liked it.
Hollywood and Vine is in Hollywood. (!!) Which is not what locals refer to as
Deletedowntown LA. The area where the Cathedral is located is in downtown LA. Hollywood is a part of LA, but is not the part of LA referred to as downtown. Not sure how to explain. I’m not familiar enough with other cities to make a good comparison, especially since LA is so huge. The city has 500 square miles and multiple communities, one of which is Hollywood. Los Angeles county has 4700 square miles and even more communities, one of which is the city of Los Angeles.
Yeah, I know about the size. On my first newspaper job the LA cops nabbed an Indiana man at the airport, and I needed them to get to the police station and book him before our press time. I kept calling the PD and the cops with our boy kept coming all morning. Just made the deadline.
DeleteNobody can actually live in Los Angeles due to freeways.(Remember the end of How the West as Won? Remember the beginning of LLaLand?). Froze to death one year in July in San Diego (TV kept apologizing for the "June weather"). Hate California, it's cold and it's damp. Only habitable parts are Sausalito and Tahoe. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Only part of California I've been in was Fresno. It was in October and was 75° and sunny. I liked it.
DeleteMy husband had to go to Ventura in January for business one time. It was green and sunny; he was walking around in shirt sleeves. When he came home it was zero with snow on the ground. Sounded like CA would be a pretty nice place if you could afford it.
Katherine, It is 75 and sunny in October here, too. And usually in November.And you can get around. I can get from here to Orlando in just over two hours, but why would I? And I can be in Key West in under two hours, which reminds me I don't do that often enough. We've got the Intracoastal, the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades, and we used to have stone crabs. What more could one need? And it doesn't cost $1 million and up for a starter home.
DeleteYou'll notice I'm still in Nebraska. If you don't like the weather here you just hang around until the next day. When it might be worse. Or it might be perfect. But probably not in January.
DeleteI'll stick to PA. Weather has been mild summer and winter. Not sure what climate change has in store for the the future. I don't think CA is faring as well, what with droughts and forest fires. FL is too hot for me and the bugs never get killed off by winter, just keep growing like alligators.
DeleteBut your states are all nice to visit. I was once to Key West and enjoyed my margarita and key lime pie at the Hog's Breath Saloon. "Hog's Breath is better than no breath at all", say the billboards all the way down.
With the pandemic isolation, I've become acquainted with the lovely little local parks. Since vacations are out of the question, they've become a source of comfort. I gather at a two meter distance with other ex-dancers to enjoy walks along watershed creeks and through lush green forests.
Stanley, yes, a silver lining of the pandemic isolation is discovering or re-discovering local nature attractions.
DeleteAh, Tom, you sound like every east coaster I have met who has spent a small amount of time in LA and hates everything about it - because you don't understand how LA works. East coast folk only see the urban ugliness, are overwhelmed by the freeway system, and never discover why 40 million people choose to make Calif their home. Of course, it’s not a good place to be poor, but neither is Miami or Palm Beach. Housing is super expensive in Cali’s big cities, but also in other big cities - including NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland Ore. Etc.
DeleteFew people from east of Nevada understand California at all. They go to Hollywood and Vine and think that is LA. It’s not. The story doesn't end there, nor at Disneyland or Universal Studios. LA is a collection of towns and even villages. Knowing how to navigate to discover them takes time.
There is something for everyone – sophisticated cities like San Francisco, charming villages like Sausalito, mountains with beautiful lakes and skiing like Tahoe (and many others, including the town where I grew up, 2 hours from LA, 2 hours from San Diego, 1.5 hours from Palm Springs). Florida is all the same - we have driven both coasts of Florida many times, north to south, east to west - across Alligator Alley, across a few other roads too. Naples’ historic district is charming. It would be nicer without all the high rises. Miami has a lot of high rises too, which are not our personal idea of hominess. But New Yorkers also love them.
LA and San Diego have mountains, deserts, ocean, lakes - all within a 2 hour drive. Beaches are closer. San Francisco has mountains, oceans and lakes - and the wine country! Rte 1 along the coast from SoCal to Mendocino and beyond, is one of the world's most spectacular drives. Nothing like it on the east coast. Redwood forests with giant ancient trees take your breath away. The weather is mostly great – summers are not as hot as FL - and no stifling humidity. No daily monsoons either. Winters are gorgeous.
We like Florida- the winter weather is perfect. But so is California's. We have vacationed in Florida for years, mostly in winter/spring. Once in summer. Never again! We tried the Atlantic coast, but prefer the Gulf coast. We have stayed on most of the barrier islands from Tampa to Estero. Our favorite is Sanibel, where we took our kids every spring break when they were growing up. Two thirds of the island is a wildlife refuge. World class shelling beaches. No building taller than 3 stories allowed. We like nature and no crowds. Hate high rises. Sanibel is perfect for us.
Our eldest son met his wife while living in Fort Lauderdale. He lived there for about 7 years after college. They moved to LA 8 years ago, and would not return to Florida to live. They love that they can be in the mountains, sledding and building snowmen with their kids in about 1.5 hours. They can do day trips and make it home easily. The desert towns are also about 1.5 hour drive. We went with them in Dec two years ago. We had the sun, the magnificent mountains ringing the desert, and took a tram up to the top of Mt. San Jacinto to see the view - and let our grandson play in the snow. An hour earlier we had gotten him out of the pool. Of course, there are the beaches - wide and beautiful up and down the coast, much like the east coast of Fl. But no horrible heat and sticky humidity – or monsoon rains -in the summer. No alligators!
Florida has a flat landscape. One of the things I miss living in the DC area is not seeing mountains. I can, if I drive a while, but not near the city. PA has a nice landscape. Rolling fields and mountains – small mountains, but mountains. You can drive the entire length of FL and not see mountains. Same in the Midwest. So flat! A lot of swampy areas in FL too. We all find our own places. You like FL. Jean likes cold, Michigan winters. Margaret likes NYC.
One of the great things about the US is the variety of landscapes and cities. A place for everyone
Saw the redwoods in Yosemite the time we were visiting relatives in Fresno. Yosemite was awesome.
DeleteMy grandmother attended college for awhile in Redlands, in the 1920s. She loved it there. But when she visited again in the 70s she said it wasn't the same. Of course how would it be after 50 years.
As a counterpoint to this kind of priest:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/oakland-priest-calls-bishop-liar-and-racist
Oakland priest calls bishop a 'liar' and a 'racist'
Jun 19, 2020
by Peter Feuerherd