Mother Church of a Secular City?

Two dramatic processions, one joyous and one solemn, will advance toward the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels within nine days of each other next month.During the first, 3,000 people, including Nigerian and Scottish drummers, a family carrying the relics of saints, and 700 deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals in vestments of various hues of white and adobe, will approach the cathedral’s three-story bronze doors to be greeted by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. “Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a day of rejoicing,” he will begin. Then, to the exultant strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the entourage of believers will proceed into the 21st century cathedral for the first time, joining in an ancient Roman Catholic rite of consecration. That will be followed by a nearly three-hour liturgy steeped in poignancy and power, faith and tradition, to commission the $200-million cathedral and conference center as the Mother Church of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese.

Nine days later, on Sept. 11, a second procession of uniformed firefighters and police officers will leave City Hall in emergency vehicles following a moment of silence on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. They will drive the two blocks to the cathedral for an interfaith prayer service infused with patriotism and national resolve.

The processions, one rich in Roman Catholic theology and tradition, the other an expression of solidarity in the public square, represent two distinctly different missions the cathedral hopes to claim for itself as the city’s new spiritual showcase. It should become, in the vision of Cardinal Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, the fulcrum where the secular and sacred are joined for the glory of God and the good of the city. “The cathedral is not only the center of the life and prayer of the local church,” Mahony declares, “but also a symbol evocative of the deepest aspirations and hopes of the whole polis, the whole people of Los Angeles, t! he earthly city yearning for consummation, the completion yet to come in the new Jerusalem.”

It is a noble vision, and a tall order, but the cardinal is not alone in his hopes. The cathedral is seen as the place where the soul of the church is enshrined in sacred architecture, a spiritual center for seekers of all kinds, a booster for downtown development, a servant of the poor and disenfranchised, a patron of music and the arts, and a place where prophetic preaching and political activism call individuals to a higher moral consciousness, and shape public policy.

But in a horizontal city that even now is straining to remain unified in the face of centrifugal forces that threaten to spin off the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, will Mahony and the archdiocese have not only the faith but the marketing moxie to make it work? Can the cathedral become common ground in an urban geography that is economically and culturally disjointed, a fact that shows up on U.S. Census maps as multicolored islands of disparity and difference? And, in an entertainment capital where diversions are many, will the cathedral be as important to the vast majority of Southern Californians as say, the Getty Center, or Staples Center, where nearly 18,000 fans come out to cheer during each Lakers game?

In short, can the cardinal pull it off?

Infinite futures await this cathedral. “What are we going to do with it?” asks Pam Haldeman, chair of the sociology department at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles. “The people involved are going to be so crucial. It doesn’t matter what it looks like in its form. The players, the actors, will provide all of the meaning it has as a symbol in Los Angeles.”

It will take more than heart-rending preaching, beautiful music, liturgical excellence and ministries for the poor. In many ways, the degree to which the new cathedral is embraced by Los Angeles will involve its user-friendliness-everything from knowledgeable tour guides and the cost of cathedral parking to the accessibility of the cathedral conference center for groups interested in meeting there.

Daunting public relations challenges also lie ahead, among them the national scandal over the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and bishops, and a controversy over the costly price of cathedral burial crypts that may limit that last resting place to the rich and famous. Just getting people downtown-teeming with commuters during the week but forsaken on weekends-can be a challenge.

There will be precious little time to get all this right.

“The first six months are going to be really critical in setting the tone of welcome and inclusion and engagement with the broader community,” says Stephen D. Rountree, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust, who played a key role in overseeing the building and the opening of the Getty Center.

Mahony has a game plan right out of the Bible, a passage from Isaiah. Our Lady of the Angels is to be “a house of prayer for all peoples,” as is inscribed on the cathedral’s cornerstone.

Call it marketing or call it holy hospitality, it is an irreducible commitment that Mahony says he will stress in his inaugural sermon, one he has been writing since late last year. “It is really critical that it be a place for all people, that everyone feel at home,” he says. “I’m hopeful that a lot of people who are not Catholic, in a way, will walk away and say, ‘I belong here. This is for me also.’ ”

That’s exactly what a Los Angeles cathedral must become if it is to appeal to Southern California’s rainbow population. Public relations missteps could leave the impression that the cathedral is aloof or unconcerned with the lives of most people. But the cathedral has a lot going for it. People of all walks of life and beliefs want it to bind the city together, not as a symbol of a great faith’s triumphalism-which it may be in part-but as an icon of civic unity.”

Angelenos deeply want to experience community,” Haldeman says. “We don’t go about our lives acting that way, but I think we’re less individualistic than we pretend to be. When there are solidifying events such as the Lakers winning the championship, there’s a tremendous rally and a strong sense of group. I think the potential is there. It just depends whether leaders bring it out in us. Cathedrals and Staples type places can bring us together in a heartbeat, or divide us.”

To succeed, the cathedral must make real the welcome implicit in its art and plaza-a quilt of symbolism honoring diversity, from its statues to its iconography to the stone in its fountains. It should, in short, practice what its symbolism preaches. The cathedral and plaza must become a crossroads where rich and poor, housed and homeless, share common ground. It should be a place where lovers meet, school children gawk and learn, friends meet over coffee, and where seekers of transcendence or those who simply want a break from daily routine may sit in the silence of one of 11 chapels, or bask in natural light streaming into the cathedral proper through towering clerestory windows of Spanish alabaster.

Mahony, who may think as often about marketing as miters, says he is aware of the challenges. Few details have escaped his attention. Recently, he was “amazed” to learn that the 10 parking spaces planned for tour buses next to the cathedral may not be enough. He also thinks they learned a few things from the Getty Center about toilets. After hearing of how the center had to quickly add portable toilets to accommodate the crush of visitors in the opening weeks, Mahony says the cathedral decided to build more restrooms. There will be 2 hours of free parking for worshipers during Mass, otherwise it’s $2.50 for each 20 minutes with a $12 a day maximum.

The archdiocese is working closely with the Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau, and Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik, Mahony’s longtime secretary who has been named pastor of the cathedral, sits on the Central City Assn. Mahony has even talked to the MTA about improved directional signs at the Red Line Civic Center subway station pointing the way to the cathedral. For the longer term, he has personally lobbied the state transportation department to build a new offramp from the Harbor Freeway for better access to the cathedral and the nearby Music Center and Walt Disney Concert Hall. The offramp is at least four years away. The state says it will cost $25 million and that construction will begin in six years.

Just getting people to come downtown may be a formidable challenge. European cathedrals were located in the heart of the city. They were a focal point of civic life. Indeed, one reason they were so large was so they could accommodate everyone in town when events called for it. The 3,000-seat Los Angeles cathedral is not in the hub of the city but in one of many urban hubs. While the number of central city residents in apartments and artists lofts is growing, downtown remains for now a daytime city filled by commuters.

On weekends, the government buildings that surround the cathedral are empty. It’s as if a neutron bomb had exploded, wiping out all the people while the high-rise towers and government buildings remained intact. “The county government buildings on weekends don’t have life. They draw life away because no one likes to be near a building that is empty,” says Los Angeles architect and urban designer Doug Suisman. What is needed, he says, is for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to commit “a great act of civic generosity” and give up its private parking lot near the corner of Grand Avenue and Temple Street so that a restaurant can be built. “

In medieval cities there were always a number of cafes, restaurants, even bars, right near the cathedral. That adds to the feeling of a place to go and to stay with the family,” Suisman says. At the moment, there is a risk that the cathedral with its enclosed plaza will come off as a sacred precinct.

Los Angeles architect Barton Myers is even more critical. He says the cathedral, the new Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown and the Getty Center in Brentwood are each located in “isolated” areas that don’t generate activity around them. “That’s hundreds of millions of dollars spent that doesn’t leverage hundreds of millions of dollars,” Myers says. “That’s the disappointment of Los Angeles; we haven’t been able to build the connections the way we should have.”

It will be important for private property owners, the city and the county to follow through with plans they have talked about for five years to transform Grand Avenue-which connects the financial district, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Music Center and cathedral-into a landscaped, pedestrian-friendly promenade. Another phase calls for development of shops, entertainment and restaurants.

Until then, the cathedral is not without attractions. The Cathedral Conference Center, located across the plaza from the church, will have a coffee shop and restaurant. Its conference rooms are similar to those available at major downtown hotels. The conference center’s second floor seats 700 and the kitchen has the capacity to serve 1,000 meals. A number of groups are meeting there even before the cathedral’s dedication, among them the Downtown Rotary Club. There are 600 underground parking spaces. Plans are afoot for a food festival on the plaza.

At the same time, the cathedral hopes to leverage its location near the Music Center and the Walt Disney Concert Hall to attract worshipers and visitors. Indeed, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Solonen, will perform at the cathedral on Sept. 27, followed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale on Nov. 10. Also planned are recitals featuring the cathedral’s 6,019-pipe organ, including one in January 2003 by Samuel Soria, who was organist at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago before coming to Our Lady of the Angels as cathedral organist and assistant director of music.

“The mission of the place is to bring people together and to bring them closer to God,” says Frank Brownstead, the cathedral’s director of music. “Music is the thing that can most easily do that.”

Cathedral officials also plan to coordinate evening prayer services with events at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Music Center. Msgr. Kostelnik thinks patrons may wish to stroll Cathedral Plaza or attend evening prayer services before proceeding to concerts and plays a block or two away.

The city around the cathedral surely will change over the centuries, as did the Pantheon in Rome that once stood remote and supreme but is now surrounded by apartments and cafes. In time, Our Lady of the Angels could be the center of life in this secular city. The more immediate and formidable challenge will be shaping perceptions of the cathedral. What feelings will stir visitors as they stand in the nave and look to the ceiling 10 stories above them, or when they lift up their eyes to the 15-story bell tower from which will eventually ring 18 bells heard for six miles. Will those feelings bring us together?

Cardinal Mahony says the pealing of the bells in times of public joy, the tolling of bells in times of public mourning, the daily ringing out to invite the faithful to Mass will help connect the community that surrounds the cathedral. “People are very used to seeing the cathedral now,” Mahony says, “but they’re not used to hearing the cathedral. When the bells are in, there will be many people who will not see the cathedral but will be touched by it-people in the too many downtown prisons who can’t see them but will hear the bells, patients at the neighborhood hospitals, rest homes, people who are lonely and can’t leave their homes. The bells have their own way of saying, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t be concerned. God is nearby.’ ”

That’s how the cardinal sees it. But cathedral art and architecture, even the sound of bells, are merely suggestive. “It’s sort of up now to L.A. to create the meaning,” says Sandra L. Harte, a sociology professor at Mount St. Mary College.

The church’s location in Los Angeles’ principal business and government power center may send mixed messages. On one hand, it s! peaks of a commitment to the city. But in the eyes of some, among them the Catholic Worker, a grass-roots activist group which serves the poor, the location and the monumental size of the cathedral peg the cardinal as part of the power structure.

At the cathedral’s southwest corner at Grand and Temple stands the Music Center. The Walt Disney Concert Hall is one block farther south, followed by the Colburn School of Performing Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the financial district, with its towering high-rises. Two blocks to the southeast is Los Angeles City Hall. The county supervisors’ chambers are directly across Temple from the cathedral. For the dispossessed and marginalized-and perhaps many in the middle class-these cultural, governmental and business venues may come off as centers of wealth, power and privilege.

But downtown also is a melting pot where many cultures and income groups work in close proximity. Within walking distance of the cathedral lie Little Tokyo and Chinatown. Then there’s Olvera Street-the historic core of Latino Los Angeles-and the teeming Broadway commercial district, which largely caters to Spanish-speaking shoppers. And if some people live in luxury apartments and condos on Bunker Hill, others sleep beneath freeway overpasses.

Within the downtown boundaries the cathedral will serve as a parish church, the median household income is $14,193, according to an estimate this year by Claritas Inc., which tracks demographic information. Nearly 53% of the area’s 26,811 residents earn less than $15,000 a year. Another 15% earn less than $25,000 annually. The population reflects Southern California’s ethnic diversity, with Hispanics accounting for 32% of the downtown population, and white non-Hispanics 18%. Another 22% are Asian, and 24% are black non-Hispanics, according to an analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census.”

Its [location] is making the statement that it’s an urban cathedral,” Harte says. “The challenge will be, is it going to be a cathedral of power or a cathedral of the people?”

Clearly, powerful people and corporations contributed the bulk of the millions raised to build the church. Among the biggest contributors have been Sir Daniel Donohue, head of the Dan Murphy Foundation,which contributed the first $25 million, while the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation and Rupert Murdoch’s family foundation each gave $10 million. Other contributors include Betsy Bloomingdale, Roy and Patty Disney, former Mayor Richard Riordan, former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley, Bob and Dolores Hope, the late Lew Wasserman, chairman of Universal Studios, and the Times-Mirror Foundation, which gave $500,000. By contrast, $1.5 million has been raised so far from more than 5,200 individual donors who paid anywhere from $50 to $5,000 to purchase 15,000 paving stones for the cathedral’s floor. Many of the contributors are everyday Catholics who want to be a part of history.

For a cathedral that is determined to be a house of prayer for all people, money can be a sensitive issue. “One of the key questions will be their relationship to the corporate community,” says the Getty’s Rountree, who was one of the jurors on a panel that recommended Jose Rafael Moneo as the cathedral’s architect. “There is a lot of desire among the business community to use and be seen at exciting new places like the Getty Center and Disney Hall. Given some of the criticism about the cathedral and the money that’s been spent, I would think [the church] would want to think very carefully about that.”

Rountree adds that Mahony is well aware of the challenge. Anticipating that the Getty Center could be seen as elitist, Rountree says the center launched a marketing campaign focused on welcoming families, schools and community groups. More than two years ago Mahony confidants asked Rountree’s advice on how the archdiocese could best manage a very public and very civic place.

Jeff Dietrich of the Catholic Worker, which runs a downtown soup kitchen and works with the homeless, has criticized the cathedral project from the beginning. He remains skeptical, despite the inauguration of Cathedral Charities, a nascent program to help the homeless, work with youth and visit jail inmates.”

I just don’t think this is going to be the centerpiece of the cathedral,” Dietrich says. “I think the grand meeting place and the parking lot that costs $15 is going to be the centerpiece, as well as the crypts in the bottom of the cathedral. These clearly have much more focus than the social justice aspects of the cathedral.”

Sister Patricia Geoghegan, who has been named director of Cathedral Charities, rejects that charge. “I appreciate the good the Catholic Worker does, but I don’t think they have that part of it right,” says Geoghegan, whose most recent assignment was working on nutrition programs for poor children in Haiti. She has already lined up volunteers who are providing a modest 75 lunches twice weekly for poor immigrants and the homeless who live beneath bridges and overpasses. The meals are distributed by a nonprofit organization known as Jovenes Inc., run by Father Richard Estrada, a founding director. She also is lining up volunteers to visit prisons and jails.

The effort pales in comparison to the extensive programs undertaken by more established churches and groups, but it’s a start. Geoghegan admits she has virtually no budget and the bulk of the effort depends on volunteer help. But no ministry, including the cathedral’s music ministry, has its budget yet. Earlier this year, the archdiocese was forced to trim its budget by $4 million and cut back staff because of the falling stock market, in which Mahony says the archdiocese has long invested. Mahony “has a long history of social work and caring for the poor,” Geoghegan says. “The motivation is purely the long-term motivation of the Catholic Church-to reach out to the forgotten people.”

The archdiocese’s public relations acumen is already being tested by controversy over the expected price of 1,300 crypts and 5,000 niches for cremated remains in the cathedral undercroft. There is no price list yet, but one knowledgeable church official said a $50,000 starting price for crypts would not be unreasonable.

Recently, an archdiocesan spokesman bristled at a Times story that quoted an unnamed theologian as calling the expensive crypts “the ecclesiastical equivalent of a sky box.” The fees will be placed in an endowment fund to help meet the cathedral’s operating costs. At this point, the archdiocese won’t even venture an estimate for the cathedral’s annual operations budget, and pleads that it will take a year of operations before anything is known. It costs $3.5 million annually to maintain St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Nationally, the average cathedral budget is $550,000.

The archdiocese continues to struggle with the protracted scandal over the sexual abuse of minors by priests and bishops, and that is likely to cast a shadow over the dedication of the cathedral, the most visible symbol of Mahony’s reign as archbishop of Los Angeles. The crisis so far has seen investigations of 70 present or former Los Angeles priests, and while that may be only a footnote in the history of a cathedral built to stand 300 to 500 years, how Mahony continues to respond will shape Southern California’s perception of him and the cathedral. “The man and the place are inextricably connected,” Haldeman says.

During an interview for this story, Mahony held up the cathedral as “a new beginning.” Later he elaborated on his remarks with an extended, single-spaced e-mail-a sign of how seriously Mahony takes the scandal’s potential impact on his cathedral.”

The claim that a church or cathedral has valid meaning only when it is built and used by saints leaves most of us standing on the outside looking in,” he wrote. He turned the issue again to the issue of welcoming, the watchword of the cathedral’s marketing. “While saints and blessed are always welcome, those who have failed and those who have sinned are particularly welcome. The cathedral will achieve its greatest role precisely when, like Jesus, its arms/doors swing open wide for those most in need of God’s mercy and healing. What other public, civic or cultural facility in our community offers forgiveness, healing and renewal?”

On Sept. 14, Mahony plans a solemn day of atonement at the cathedral for the sexual abuse of minors. The nation’s Catholic bishops, chastened by the scandal, have committed themselves to such observances in their dioceses. But the fact remains that by holding the Los Angeles ceremony in the new cathedral, Mahony will be trying to position it not as a symbol of abuse but as a champion for renewal. That, he insists, is what the new cathedral is all about.

If architecture is idea made tactile, Our Lady of the Angels virtually shouts the message that it is an ecclesiastical United Nations and a place of welcome to all. Its bronze doors, designed by artist Robert Graham, are emblazoned with icons of Mary and symbols of human virtues expressed through the artistry of various cultures. There are Japanese signs of heaven, a Hebrew depiction of the hand of God, a tai chi symbol for harmony, a dog to symbolize loyalty, a peacock to symbolize resurrection, a Celtic evangelist, a Croatian cross, a Samoan kava bowl. A winding grapevine, symbolizing the church, curls around the symbols to bring unity to the whole.

Appropriate for a cathedral named after Mary, the doors’ upper panels honor various cultural representations of the mother of Jesus. There is Mexico’s Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Peruvian Virgin of Pomata, the Colombian Virgin of Chiquinquira, Spain’s Virgin of Montserrat and Our Lady of Loreto, to name a few. Our Lady of the Angels is also Our Lady of Diversity writ large.

Crowning the doors is a life-size statue of Mary with outstretched arms. Like Southern California, Graham’s Mary breaks the conventional mold. No veil covers her head. She is not wrapped in the swaddling clothes of biblical times, but a full-length dress with billowing sleeves, suggestive of Filipina attire. She could even pass as a personal trainer from the Westside. She is youthful, with a feminine sinuousness and understated athleticism. Her ethnicity? Latina? African American? Caucasian? She is a woman for all people.

Inside the great nave, which is a foot longer than St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, rich tapestries depicting “the communion of saints” hang from the adobe-colored walls. The faces of the saints recall everyday people seen on the streets and byways of Southern California, along with familiar historical renditions of exemplars such as St. Francis, with his circular monk’s haircut. In the ordinary faces of saints-children and youth, women and men-the church hopes visitors will see intimations of themselves, and their own potential to lead holier, fuller lives.

In the 2.5-acre plaza, a grand staircase beckons visitors from the sidewalks below to an urban oasis of calm and beauty amid the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. There is a grove of olive trees and palms reminiscent of the Holy Land. Even the fountains and waterfalls pay homage to Southern California’s diversity. One fountain in particular is a dramatic statement of solidarity with Jews, a course the Roman Catholic Church set upon during Vatican II in the mid-1960s and energetically pursued by Pope John Paul II, who in March 2000 visited the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The $2.5-million fountain, financed by a gift from an as yet anonymous Jewish couple from New York, is inscribed in both Hebrew and English with words from ancient Jewish sages. (“Three pillars uphold the world; divine teaching, ethical service, and loving kindness.”) It is finished in Jerusalem stone shipped from Israel to Los Angeles, which has the second-largest Jewish population in the nation. Another fountain is engraved with Jesus’ description of “living water.” There is a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico.”

The symbolic soul of the city is here,” Cathedral Pastor Kolstelnik says. “The cathedral stands as a sacred space. It is rising up as the opportunity for people to get most deeply in touch with themselves, most deeply in touch with God.” And perhaps with the city as well.

For the Catholic faithful, sharing the liturgy with their bishop in a cathedral is a powerful sign of unity. There on the cathedra--the bishop’s throne--sits a successor of the apostles. To have a bishop place his hand on your head in blessing is to be touched by a hand that was touched by a hand that was touched by hands going back in time to the Apostle Peter, who was touched by the hand of Christ. Powerful stuff, that.

A cathedral can be a unifier in the public square as well. In a city that has seen its dark side in the riotous fires of injustice and hate, as well as its good in everyday kindnesses and uncommon heroism, a cathedral can stand as a beacon of universal values in the secular city. It can move and motivate us to fulfill the promise of our most authentic humanity and common good. It can encourage those things that are noble and just, and remind all of the self-evident answer to the biblical question, “Who is my neighbor?”

But will it?