Today the chancellor of the diocese of Oakland is taking all the ISS people and most of the community around to see Oakland's new Christ Our Light Cathedral under construction. That is a fairly positive gesture on the part of the diocese. Salesians in California are going through some tribulation in other parts of the state at the moment. This too will pass.
But on to the cathedral project: this is the first cathedral to be built in the 21st century, according to local claims. Some other cathedrals in the USA, notably Los Angeles' Queen of Angels cathedral, were completed after the year 2000 but begun earlier… and I am not confident that no other cathedral has been built anywhere in the world. I'm sure wikipedia could tell us. Still, I'll let Oakland bask in the achievement.
The previous cathedral, St Francis de Sales, crumbled in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the diocese as been without a center for 19 years now. The project met numerous setbacks, and the first approved design had to be discarded when the arrangements for land use could not accommodate it. The diocese turned to a local architect, Craig W. Hartman, and ground-breaking took place on 25 May 2005 (I did not attend as I was in Rome at that moment).There have been a lot of negative comments about the design and the cost, but then I remember that there were a lot of negative comments about the design and cost of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and St Mary's in San Francisco. Come to think of it, Martin Luther complained about the cost of St Peter's when it was under construction (or was he just complaining about the capital campaign? or maybe just about the Dominicans? I forget which!). Yes, the cathedral is not gothic (which is newly fashionable in the last decades, at least in youth fashion) or romanesque. It is post-modern. And if it looks like an airport terminal, that is because Hartman's last project was the new international terminal at San Francisco International Airport. My feeling is that a cathedral built at the start of the 3rd millennium responds to the needs and the culture of the people of this time. Yes, I love St Peter's, but since no one in Oakland knows how to make gelato correctly according to the Roman norm, why should I wait for them to make a cathedral according to the European norm?
The new cathedral is long overdue. Construction, I am told, is ahead of schedule, and Bishop Allen Vigneron is slated to dedicate the new church on 25 September 2008. This new cathedral center will do much to help the local church to focus its energies and hone its ministries. Well done, Oakland!
When plans were discussed, all the priests working in the diocese were consulted, and that is when I heard that St Francis de Sales was being dumped as patron. The reason was that the liturgy committee of the diocese wanted to avoid sexist and non-inclusive names for churches. I thought then (and think now) that line of logic is absurd. How many churches are called St Mary's? Does that offend? Does it offend parishioners at St Francis of Assisi parish that the patron was a man? But I knew all the people on the committee, and they all tended toward creating uproars. I wrote a formal letter to the bishop and the committee at the time in favor of keeping St Francis de Sales as patron… I never received a reply. Did I expect one?
Aside for this element, I remain happy for the local church. I am sure our Salesian crowd, touring around in hard-hats at this very moment, will enjoy this visit.
Oh? Why didn't I go too?
Well somebody has to blog!
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