Repurposing of Sacred Spaces

When one travels to Rome, one is struck by how the Church essentially replaced a pagan culture, by repurposing temples, civic buildings etc. and converting them into churches. The Faith surplanted the previous culture, but in the US we are witnessing the reverse (perhaps symbolic of the how the Faith has fared in our culture)–of sacred spaces being converted into restaraunts, resorts, and this…from the California Catholic:

Los Angeles’ former cathedral, St. Vibiana’s, built in 1876, has gotten a new life since the Los Angeles archdiocese sold it to developer Tom Gilmore in 1999. It is now called “Vibiana’s Place,” and reopened as an art center in 2006.

“Church law requires that former churches be used for a dignified purpose,” archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg told the Associated Press in 2005. St. Vibiana’s transformation into an art center is “really a wonderful second life for the former cathedral,” said Tamberg.

From Oct. 11-13, the old cathedral served as a venue for LA’s “Fashion Week.” BOXeight, a nonprofit arts organization, held its contribution to Fashion Week at Vibiana’s Place. The event, “Have Faith in LA,” was a “fashion, music and art collaborative.”

Designers featured at the event include Jeffrey Sebelia, whose Cosa Nostra collection displays his “love of all things punk rock,” said the Oct. 10 Los Angeles Times. His most requested piece is “the flirty striped dress zigzagged with zippers.” The Cosa Nostra web site reveals women’s styles, some tight and formfitting, while others emphasize cleavage.

“Have Faith in LA” featured Louis Verdad, a designer whose collection for women, like Sebelia’s, emphasizes the sexy – bare shoulders, low cut necklines, short skirts. According to his web site, the León, Guanjuato-born Verdad is “known for his chic, sophisticated design,” and draws his inspiration from “the elegant status-driven society in which he grew up.”

Less elegant, and more revealing, are the designs by the Bohemian Society, also featured at the Vibiana’s Place show.

Among the entertainment groups featured during three-day event was “You Wear It Well,” which calls itself a “traveling presentation of short films and videos that investigate the intersection of fashion and film.” A short clip, “A Shaded View of Fashion,” featured on the group’s web site features scantily clad women, two men kissing, and a transvestite.

Another entertainment group was the Hysterica Dance Company, whose choreography, with barely clad men and women, emphasizes the erotic.

BOXeight calls itself “an arts organization dedicated to the rejuvenation of a downtown neighborhood, and the organization of a Los Angeles arts community.” It says it hopes that, through its efforts, “downtown will flourish into a standard for artists communities across the globe.”

Among BOXeight’s sponsors is the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, created by the new city charter in 1999. The council’s mission is “to unite the diverse communities of Downtown Los Angeles and to provide an innovative forum for all community stakeholders to contribute to a healthy, vibrant, and inclusive Downtown.”

Teaching the Faith means Not Appearing Like a “Clown”

Pope Benedict continues his catechesis on the Fathers of the Church, today talking about St. Ambrose and using an image that will spark some headlines, from Asia News Italy:

 Those who teach the faith “cannot run the risk of appearing like a type of clown who is playing a part; rather he must be like the beloved disciple who rested his head on the Master’s heart and learned therein how to think, speak and act”.  Because “at the end of it all a true disciple is he who announces the Gospel in a credible and effective way”, in short “authentic witness”, as was the case with Saint Ambrose.

The figure of the bishop and saint from Milan, who lived between 340 and 397, and in particular his influence on Saint Augustine’s conversion, was at the heart of Benedict XVI’s address to the 30 thousand people gathered today for the general audience.

According to the Pope, an effective announcing of the Gospel can only occur there where the “witness” of the preacher’s life and the “exemplary conduct of the Christian community” are credible, as was the case with Saint Ambrose and his Church.  As Augustine himself writes in his ”Confessions” what urged the young sceptical and desperate African to convert was in fact “Saint Augustine’s witness and that of his Milanese Church, which sang and prayed as one united body, capable of resisting the arrogance of the Emperor and his mother”, who demanded a building for the Arians. But in that building “the people held vigil ready to die together with their bishop”. “It is all too clear – commented Benedict XVI – which the witness of the preacher and the exemplary conduct of the Christian community condition the effectiveness of the spreading of the faith”.

What Augustine tells us of his meeting with Ambrose, defined as “an historical event in the history of the Church”, Benedict XVI highlighted among other things, the “the singular capacity of reading and familiarity with the Scriptures” to underline that kind of “reading where the heart commits itself to intelligently reach the Word of God”.  It is the “prayerful reading” of the Sacred Scripture which is particularly dear to the Pope and figures often throughout his speeches.  With reference to this today he recalled “Dei Verbum”, the document on the Sacred Scripture of the Second Vatican Council:  “it is necessary that all catechists and those who legitimately take part in the liturgy of the Word, engage constantly in the Scriptures, through deep and spiritual reading and careful study so they do not become a vain preacher of the Lord’s Word on the outside without ever hearing it within”.