Renovation or Abomination?

In Suzanne Muchnic’s story about the artwork that will appear in Cardinal Mahony’s new cathedral (“Sacred Creations,” Aug. 4), she mentioned that Mahony’s hand-picked “art consultant,” Father Richard Vosko had “worked on dozens of churches,” but didn’t say much about how. Last January, I attended a slide-show presentation by Vosko at my home parish, St. Charles Borromeo, in North Hollywood.

Long before he was hired by Mahony, Vosko had already presided over the destruction of dozens of church buildings with traditional Catholic (and Protestant and Jewish) architecture. Much of what he has done (I refuse to say “accomplished”) is well-documented in a book by a Catholic author who, unlike Vosko, is a certified architect: “The Renovation Manipulation,” by Michael Rose, which is heartily recommended to any interested readers. Many of your readers--regardless of faith--have probably visited and marveled at the grandeur and beauty of the great cathedrals of Europe.

Vosko’s low regard for those masterpieces of art and architecture should be the tipoff that he is not a reliable judge of which religious art is great and which is, in his terms, “god-awful stuff.”

Many of the parishioners at St. Charles groaned loudly when they viewed his slides of the modernized, soulless, stripped-down, neo-Puritan meeting halls that were beautiful Catholic churches before he got his hands on them.

I, for one, am inclined to strongly agree with his statement: “Churches have not been courting good artists.”

LARRY A. CARSTENS

Castaic