Star-Crossed Cathedral

Even under the best of circumstances, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels looked as if it might be a tough sell. Rising above the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles, the nearly $200-million edifice is an imposing mass of modern design, a resolutely 21st century building wedded to the tenets of an old and tradition-minded faith. Though some observers have praised the spare elegance of architect Jose Rafael Moneo’s work, others have derided the cathedral’s high price tag and lamented an austere, abstract style that has put some observers in mind of an industrial plant.

To its most persistent critics, the cathedral-in-progress epitomizes the egotism and arrogance of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and the aloofness of a Roman Catholic archdiocese they felt had turned its back on its core mission by abandoning its former skid row location for a fancy new address. The weekly alternative newspaper New Times has dubbed it “the Taj Mahony,” a phrase that has stuck in local op-ed pages.

Yet these controversies pale in comparison to the child sex-abuse scandal that’s shaking the U.S. Catholic Church to its foundations. Now, with the cathedral’s anticipated opening less than three months away, some believe that Our Lady of the Angels could become an embarrassingly high-profile focus for the larger problems of the Catholic Church. At best, they suggest, the cathedral may be seen as an unlucky victim of terrible timing, at worst as a costly 11-story fig leaf trying to camouflage the shame of its spiritual custodians.

“It’s a compromised building as a consequence of the crisis in the church,” says author D.J. Waldie, whose book “Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir” ( W.W. Norton, 1996) describes growing up Catholic in postwar Southern California. “It had been presented to Catholics in the diocese and to non-Catholics as well as a place of refuge, a bulwark, an encircling wall that would provide shelter. And now the question is, shelter for whom and shelter against what?”

Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion In Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., says the main issue isn’t the cathedral per se, but the man who has been its principal visionary and booster: Mahony. Since victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests began coming forward en masse in the past few months, it has been disclosed that more than 30 current or former L.A. priests in the archdiocese are under investigation by legal authorities. Mahony has been criticized for transferring a priest to other L.A. parishes after the priest had allegedly admitted to molesting young boys.

“I think if you were asking people who were paying close attention to this they would say, ‘Well, Mahony’s having some problems, but he’s basically on the right side,’ ” Silk says. “The extent to which that’s true and the extent to which that’s true in September,” when the cathedral is scheduled to be inaugurated will determine whether “the opening of the cathedral is attended with celebrations or with picketing.”

Church’s Urgent Issues

Part of what makes the cathedral’s situation unusual, some say, is that it is virtually critic-proof.The cathedral and its owners are not directly answerable to popular will or external political pressures.

No matter what additional misdeeds may be revealed in the coming weeks, no one is likely to demand that the cathedral opening should be canceled and the new building disassembled and sold off in pieces to pay victims’ compensation. On the contrary, the cathedral looks as physically solid as Fort Knox, having been engineered to withstand anything short of a catastrophic earthquake. (St. Vibiana, the cathedral’s predecessor, was severely damaged by the Northridge earthquake.)

Mahony has expressed hope that the cathedral will endure for several hundred years. “The building cannot be effaced,” says Waldie. “Its dedication cannot be effaced.”

But just because the cathedral will probably be around for a long time doesn’t make the issues surrounding it now any less urgent. “In an institution that’s 2,000 years old, all present views are short views,” says Waldie. “One often hears Rome saying, ‘This too shall pass, and given 250 years, 500 years, it will all seem not of consequence.’ That ought not to diminish our realization that every small element, every small brick in the wall connects to that history, to that long history.”

Others, without minimizing the seriousness of the pedophilia scandal, question how much it will taint or detract from the cathedral’s opening, which had been scheduled to be marked with several days of celebrations.

“I think Catholics are in some ways stronger in their faith in the church than anybody thinks,” says Gregory Rodriguez, a political commentator and senior fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. “We’d be a little silly to predict the end of Catholicism in America. We’d be silly to think that the scandal would somehow ruin the structure that intends or pretends to be the center of Los Angeles Catholicism.”

Among Latinos, who make up 70% of L.A. Catholics, religious folk traditions and devotions are in many ways more important than bricks-and-mortar expressions of the faith, Rodriguez says. “Mexican Catholicism is not as institutionally oriented” as, say its Irish American counterpart, he asserts, adding that curbside shrines, street processions of mariachis honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe and other “public manifestations of faith” versus those “behind church doors” tend to characterize Latino Catholicism in the United States. “If your faith in God is anchored solely on the church, then you’re in trouble at this point,” Rodriguez says.

Accessibility Emphasized

In keeping with the dictates of Second Vatican Council reforms, Our Lady of the Angels was designed to convey a greater sense of accessibility and openness than had been customary in Catholic churches. For example, the altar of the new cathedral will be partly encircled by parishioners, making priests seem less distant while performing Mass and giving congregants a greater sense of participation in the ritual.

Using natural light as a substitute for ornamentation, a Moneo signature, the new cathedral will be without much of the overt religious symbolism and architectural proselytizing found in earlier generations of buildings. Though a limited number of artworks have been commissioned, there will be no great stained-glass narratives and only minimal images of saints and biblical stories and other iconography. To an unusual extent, those entering the cathedral will be invited to fill the space with their own imaginations.

Mahony has said that he wants the cathedral to serve not only as a house of worship for the faithful but also as a semipublic space where Angelenos of different faiths will gather on major civic occasions and be welcome throughout the year. In this way, the cathedral could have multiple functions and identities.

For those outside the Catholic faith, the church’s current problems ultimately may have little bearing on how they perceive Moneo’s building. “I think many people will go to the cathedral as if it were the new Getty, to see it as a work of art,” says Nancy Berman, museum director emeritus and curator at large at the Skirball Cultural Center, which recently hosted a lecture-discussion on creating sacred space at the new cathedral.

Father Virgilio Elizondo, former director of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas, and a professor at the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, suggests that Our Lady of the Angels actually might be seen by the faithful as a symbol of renewal. “The symbol of the old cathedral [St. Vibiana’s] was an earthquake,” he says. “You might compare the crisis in the church right now to an earthquake. So maybe this could be worked around the theme of a new beginning.”

With thousands of passersby having watched the cathedral take shape over the past several years, anticipation alone may be enough to ensure that Angelenos and visitors from around the world will want to visit the building and judge for themselves.

“Just practically you wouldn’t think you’d want to plan the opening at this time, but then, who knows? It might be a great boost to the morale of the Catholic population,” says Father Clint Albertson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University.

But others say it will take more than rituals and architectural metaphors to make Our Lady of the Angels feel welcoming.

Given what he calls the church’s “cover-up” over priests’ sexual misconduct, Tom Glynn, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in San Pedro, believes it’s more important than ever that the church demonstrate its willingness to deal with the scandal, to show “that we’ve totally turned the church upside down.” That includes Our Lady of the Angels. “If it becomes a very expensive, elite, inaccessible building, then I think we’re really in trouble,” Glynn says.

Waldie echoes that view. “You can’t plaster over, paper over, put a spin on the stories permanently we tell each other,” he says. “And in the pews, the story already is ingrained. In the pews, Catholics wrestle with the reality that some of their beloved pastors have been evil men. The tragedy would come if the building and its liturgies remain stubbornly unaware of how Catholics in the pews have already begun to incorporate that wound into their piety, their faith. We’re already doing that work, and the liturgists need to start doing that too.”

A Cathedral’s Significance

In fact, the prominence and expense of the new cathedral may make such a reckoning unavoidable. In decades past, says Trinity College’s Silk, Catholic parishes in the United States used large churches and cathedrals to make powerful public statements, not only about faith but also about the rising social stature of their then-largely immigrant Irish, German, Italian and other Western European parishioners. Like St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue in New York, Our Lady of the Angels is positioning itself near the center of civic life. With that prominence comes greater public scrutiny and accountability, Silk says.

“If I were the public relations firm for the archdiocese, I would be looking around for the patron saint of hurt children and dedicate a side chapel to that saint,” Silk says. “I’m not entirely un-serious about that, but the question is whether the people would regard that as sincere or simply public relations.”

Referring to the gathering of Roman Catholic bishops in Dallas earlier this month, and to Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Silk continued, “I think real action wasn’t addressed in Dallas, in spite of some good words from Rev. Gregory, and won’t be without some resignations of the people involved. Because nobody’s willing to take the fall.”

Between now and September, Silk predicts, a great deal will depend on the cardinal himself as to whether Our Lady of the Angels ultimately will be viewed as “Mahony’s tomb or a statement of greater glory to come.”

“Whatever happens, I can’t imagine it’s just going to be a pure love-fest and celebration of Angeleno Catholicism that people a year ago might’ve dreamed,” he concludes. “It’s going to be a much more complicated procedure.”