{"id":1068,"date":"2005-10-18T23:08:07","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T23:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/well-heres-a-category-in-which-were-ahead-of-some-europeans.html"},"modified":"2005-10-18T23:08:07","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T23:08:07","slug":"well-heres-a-category-in-which-were-ahead-of-some-europeans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/well-heres-a-category-in-which-were-ahead-of-some-europeans.html","title":{"rendered":"Well, here’s a category in which we’re ahead of some Europeans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish row over proposed cathedral renovation:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

A Roman Catholic bishop has caused uproar in Ireland over his plans to redesign a neo-Gothic cathedral built by one of the most celebrated ecclesiastical architects.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Bishop John Magee, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, has been granted planning permission to rip up an historic mosaic floor and dismantle a 100ft marble altar rail in St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh.<\/p>\n

The alterations are part of his plan to extensively remodel the sanctuary, nave and transepts of the cathedral designed by Edward W Pugin, a man regarded as one of the most important Victorian architects of the Gothic revival.<\/p>\n

Dr Magee, the Bishop of Cloyne and the former secretary to the previous pope, believes the changes are necessary to bring the style of worship in the cathedral into line with Vatican II guidelines that modernised Mass by ending the use of Latin and bringing the priest closer to the congregation.<\/p>\n

Dr Magee wants to strip out 20 pews to extend the sanctuary into the body of the cathedral and lower it to the same level by removing three steps. He also wants to bring the bishop’s chair and altar forward.<\/p>\n

The move requires the removal of large portions of the mosaic floor laid by Ludwig Oppenheimer, of Manchester, who worked on the Co Cork cathedral built between 1867 and 1919.<\/p>\n

The delicate mosaics depict religious symbols as well as the harp, signifying St Colman’s sixth-century role as the Bard of Munster.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Interesting. Magee was, indeed secretary to PVI, JPI and JPII (the last for four years)<\/a> That link is to a John Allen story on Magee, after the death of John Paul II.<\/p>\n

Here’s the bishop’s letter to the diocese on the redesign<\/a><\/p>\n

The interior, which actually doesn’t look that bad to me – <\/a>heck, I think the altar in our church, built in the 1950’s, and renovated since, is farther away from the first pews than this one is. The exterior setting of the cathedral is pretty awesome – right there on the water. Never seen a cathedral perched quite like that before.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irish row over proposed cathedral renovation: A Roman Catholic bishop has caused uproar in Ireland over his plans to redesign a neo-Gothic cathedral built by one of the most celebrated ecclesiastical architects. Bishop John Magee, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, has been granted planning permission to rip up an historic mosaic floor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWell, here's a category in which we're ahead of some Europeans - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/well-heres-a-category-in-which-were-ahead-of-some-europeans.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Well, here's a category in which we're ahead of some Europeans - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Irish row over proposed cathedral renovation: A Roman Catholic bishop has caused uproar in Ireland over his plans to redesign a neo-Gothic cathedral built by one of the most celebrated ecclesiastical architects. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}