A Notre Dame for Los Angeles

One glance at The Times’ reproduction of the design for Los Angeles’ new cathedral was enough to reassure me. Cardinal Mahony had picked the right architect. What I saw was no postmodern display of self-assertive virtuosity. Here was a serious poetic creation. It was clearly rooted in a long architectural history. Yet its graceful asymmetrical forms spoke the language of our uncertain age and of a new millennium. The Thomist certainty of Gothic would ring false here. We’re too aware of randomness, from the heart of the atom to interstellar space.

There’s a subtle suggestion of Mission architecture in the cathedral’s abstract forms. It links Los Angeles with its origins as a Spanish pueblo. But this didn’t happen just because Jose Rafael Moneo is Spanish. All his celebrated buildings around the world thoughtfully reinterpret history and spirit in a language for the future. But, amazingly, his design for our cathedral connects it visually with the entire history of the Catholic Church and beyond. The very positioning of the building to face the rising sun recalls the temple of Ezekiel’s vision and the very first basilicas of Constantine, who prayed to a Persian sun god as well as to the God of Jews and Christians.

The arcaded plaza, or forecourt, of the new cathedral was a common feature of early Christian churches. The atrium of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, in Rome, has been restored. Bernini’s oval arcade replaces the original rectangular atrium of St. Peter’s. Long before Christianity these arcaded forecourts were a regular feature of Roman palaces and villas.

But the medieval cathedrals abandoned the arcaded forecourt for the open plazas we see today. They were the largest open spaces in overcrowded medieval cities, so they became the center of civic life. And the cathedral overlooking the plaza was the center of the city’s spiritual life. From there a bishop exercised his pastoral care over the city and the diocese. Fittingly, therefore, the everyday life of the city spilled over onto the cathedral plaza--fairs, festivals, even judicial hearings. Shops and cafes lined the borders, as they still do. If you visit a European city on the right day of the week, you will find the cathedral square crowded with a busy open market.

Our cathedral, too, will stand in the heart of its city, in the shadow of the Civic Center. On the other side it will look down on the megalopolis’ busiest freeway artery, shuttling an endless blur of traffic to the far reaches of the archdiocese and beyond. So, lest the affairs of the busy world overwhelm the cathedral’s spiritual context, the architect has enclosed its plaza in an early Christian atrium. He still intends for the enclosed plaza to be a common gathering place. But it will now tend to draw people into the cathedral itself.

The cathedral’s detached tower (like the bell towers of Lombardy’s Romanesque churches) will invite people into the arcaded atrium, which in turn will invite them inside the cathedral’s quiet place of the Spirit. And so will it fulfill the pastoral function of every cathedral. Medieval cathedrals drew worshipers near with strikingly realistic biblical scenes sculpted around the portals. But the very arrangement of its pure forms and space will attract worshipers to our new millennium cathedral.

Europe’s great cathedrals often were political statements. The awesome Gothic cathedrals of the Ile de France intended to advance the glory of the Capetian kings of France, along with the glory of God. Germany’s great Romanesque cathedrals were expressly designed to equate the imperial crown with the papal tiara. The Norman conquerors of England erected their massive fortress-cathedrals to overawe the restive Saxon population. But the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is designed purely for the people of Los Angeles, their own House of God. It’s a structure that intends to connect them with their defining past and with the indistinct future.