How the Cathedral Will ‘Become Catholic’

The invitation is for a Mass of Dedication, but that barely hints at the elaborate plans for the opening of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral. On that day, Sept. 2, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, five bishops and a monsignor will bless the new building from its bronze entrance doors to its red marble altar, in a service modeled on the first sacrament for all Christians. Our Lady of the Angels is about to be baptized.

“A church becomes a Catholic the same way a person becomes a Catholic,” says Paul Ford, a professor of liturgy at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, who is among those overseeing plans for the event. A simple baptism takes a few minutes to complete, but this one will be far from simple. “Many things can be done during the ceremony,” Ford says. “We’re doing them all.” The dedication ceremony is expected to last three hours.

Invited guests only will fill the 3,000 spaces in the sanctuary, led by some 500 priests, 65 bishops, archbishops and cardinals and 40 seminarians. Six hundred practicing Roman Catholics have been invited by their parish priests; a number of them will assist during the service by lighting candles, ushering, preparing the altar for Mass and attending to the cardinal and bishops.

Several of the main financial donors, construction workers, artists and craftsmen who worked on the building and its furnishings also have a role to play in the ceremonies. When Cardinal Mahony leads the opening procession across the plaza to the main doors, starting at 10 a.m., construction workers will meet him there and present him with the plans for the building along with a list of all those who worked on the city block-sized compound.

The scale of the cathedral and the rarity of the event have inspired one such dramatic gesture after another. (The last time a cathedral was dedicated in California was 1971, when the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco was blessed.) Relics of several saints will be carried in the procession and later buried in the floor near the altar. Among them is a relic of Blessed Junipero Serra, the 18th century Spanish priest who founded a number of the California missions, starting in San Diego.

Nigerian and Scottish drum music and a 75-member choir will capture most of the attention until the crowds are settled inside the building. Then the Mass begins. “It is the longest rite in the Roman Catholic Church,” Ford said of the ritual-intensive program. “We expect it to last three hours, but at one time it would have lasted six.”

In the 13th century, when the basic steps for the dedication of a new cathedral were first written down, instructions included three processions around the building’s exterior followed by 125 procedures that were mainly intended to exorcise demons. “Many of the earliest churches had been Roman government buildings, or basilicas,” Ford said. “They were considered pagan.”

After the Second Vatican Council of the mid-’60s, when plans for modernizing the ancient Catholic traditions were laid out, the dedication rite was trimmed to its current form. It now more closely resembles the Easter Vigil Mass in which new members of the church are baptized as part of the service.

In one of the first blessings of the morning, Mahony will pray at the new cathedral’s 12-foot-wide baptismal pool near the entrance to the sanctuary. From there, he and his assisting bishops will walk the aisles, sprinkling the congregation and the walls with newly blessed water from the pool as a sign of cleansing.

The dozens of candles, statues and flower vases found in most of the world’s Catholic cathedrals will be noticeably absent here. Bare walls, as austere as a monastery chapel, are a striking feature of the interior of Our Lady of the Angels.

After three Scripture readings and a homily, attention turns back to the building and its furnishings. Mahony will pour oil over the marble altar and rub it into the stone with his hands. If he were dedicating a cathedral in the Middle Ages, the altar would then be covered with charcoal and wax, to represent the wounds of the crucified Christ, and set on fire to symbolize its purification.

“Some very old altars still have melted wax embedded in them,” Ford said. “But you run the risk of cracking the stone. These days it is rarely done.”

From the altar, Mahony and his assistants will go to the walls, place their hands in bowls of oil set there and smear it on the absorbent concrete walls in the form of a cross--the largest one they can manage. “It is much more meaningful to use religious symbols in a large way,” says Sandra Dooley, associate director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Office for Worship.

Washed with water and sealed with oil, the new cathedral will carry the same markings as the baptized Catholics who hope to make Our Lady of the Angels a spiritual home. As a final step in the dedication, Mahony will cense the altar, a symbol for prayers.

Starting that day, a priest saying Mass at the cathedral will kiss the altar before he begins. For the dedication Mass, however, Mahony will wait until after he has consecrated it.

“It’s an important moment when the cardinal kisses the new altar,” said Ford. “An anointed altar becomes a sign of Christ.” In a similar way, the blessed walls represent the Apostles, who were the foundation of the early church.

To extend the censing of the altar through the building, a group of Vietnamese nuns from the Lovers of the Holy Cross religious order will walk the sanctuary carrying incense burners and singing in Vietnamese and English.

“Our hymn is about God’s love for all people,” said Sister Mary, one of the nuns, whose convent is in Gardena. “The rhythm of the hymn is unique and close to our Vietnamese culture.”

When all the steps are complete, the Mass will resume, celebrated by all of the priests, who will wear vestments made for the occasion. These identical garments will be the first additions to the cathedral’s wardrobe closet.

To prepare the altar, it will be covered by a patchwork of fabrics that represent the largest ethnic groups in the archdiocese: Hispanic, African American, Asian as well as Caucasian.

Assistants (about 100 in all will play a part in the ceremonies) will carry baskets of food to the altar to be distributed later as part of the cathedral’s social outreach program. “A liturgy is the work of the people,” Dooley explained. “In this case, lots of people and lots of work.”

After the Communion service, Mahony will place the extra Communion bread in the Blessed Sacrament chapel to the side of the main altar. An extended “Alleluia” chorus and one last procession will end the ceremonies.

Some people will probably stay and listen to the organ music that will continue afterward, or they may walk the aisles for a better look at the alabaster windows, the cardinal’s chair of exotic woods, the bronze angels at the base of the dedication candles.

Ford expects guests to do this based on what happened when he brought his seminary students to tour the building several weeks ago. “We walked from the plaza inside, along the corridor into the main space, singing,” he recalled. “All of a sudden, everyone stopped. They just wanted to look.”