We do not live in an age of great cathedral building. The skill, training and dedication of the great architects, matched to the confidence and taste of prudent bishops, are a combination which, we have to admit, evades us today. Nonetheless, the natural life of the Church and its continual evolution – sometimes setting out in new directions, at other times reacting to events – mean that new cathedral churches must be designed and built.
A case in point comes from Christchurch, New Zealand, where the previous cathedral was damaged in two devastating earthquakes in the space of less than half a year, between September 2010 and February 2011. The damage to the previous church was significant enough, and the cost and scale of a prospective like-for-like restoration so prohibitive, that by 2019 it had been decided to demolish the surviving ruin, flatten the site and commission a replacement. After years of careful planning, deliberation and no lack of argument, the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch has finally released the design for its new cathedral.
The good news first: the design of this proposal is such that nobody could ever mistake it for anything other than a church. In its shape, size and appearance, it cannot be mistaken for a car park, an electricity substation or a gob of molten lava that has cooled into a metallic shape. Therein lie progress and hope for overcoming the worst trends of either pure functionalism or over-engineered Expressionist modernism, to which bishops have, alas, too easily given in during the 75 years since the end of the Second World War. Here we have a cathedral that is cruciform, axial, monumental and ordered towards the altar of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
The city takes its very name from the Protestant Anglican cathedral of Christ Church, which was also gravely damaged by the successive quakes and for which demolition plans had also been drawn up. Eventually, it was decided that the Gothic icon of its eponymous city would be restored instead, with the architectural firm Warren and Mahoney leading the project. That same firm has now been entrusted by the Catholic diocese to build a replacement for its old cathedral ex nihilo.
The cathedral that was lost was no ordinary predecessor: a Renaissance Revival basilica in a bombastic – a critic might say “pretentious” – and confident style, the 1905 Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament had scale, assurance and a degree of theatricality. The architect was Francis Petre, a New Zealand-born member of the noble Catholic Petre family of Ingatestone, Essex, who had studied in France under Fr Benoît Haffreingue.
As the third son of a younger son of a peer, Francis had little chance of inheriting any family wealth and, after an attempt at a naval career, took up architecture. He was responsible for some of New Zealand’s finest Catholic buildings, including the cathedrals of Dunedin and Wellington, and here in Christchurch. Petre’s cathedral had the dome rise not above the crossing but directly over the sanctuary, a model based on the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Boulogne, whose construction his mentor, Fr Haffreingue, had led.
The overall theme of Warren and Mahoney’s design is a pared-down attempt to balance modernity with tradition. The cruciform plan of the cathedral is very welcome, despite giving in to the fashion of tilting the pews in the transepts so that they are angled towards the altar. This renders the use of the side altars flanking the sanctuary more awkward.
Importantly, however, the tabernacle, rather than the bishop’s cathedra or the celebrant’s chair, commands the principal axis. The throne and the priest’s chair flank the sanctuary without displacing its Eucharistic centre, though they might have been more effective at the sides rather than adjacent to it. This is a cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament not just in name but in built form.
The conscious restraint is selectively contrasted with decorative items recovered intact and salvaged from the demolished ruins of the old cathedral, including stained-glass windows made by the Munich firm Zettler in 1912. This is a very welcome link to the past, incorporating the legacy of the previous generations who built this parish and diocese. There is a danger here, however, that they contrast so strongly that they appear out of place and meet the viewer’s eye as items in a museum rather than devotional aids.
The designers have also linked the new cathedral to its immediate predecessor by including the words “Ecce tabernaculum Dei cum hominibus” – “Behold, the dwelling-place of God with men” from the Book of the Apocalypse – on the façade, words that appeared on the front of the old cathedral. Unfortunately, the architects’ renderings appear to reproduce this tremendous declaration in lettering of almost astounding blandness. I think it is Helvetica. It looks less like a biblical proclamation than a sign on a municipal recycling centre.
The most consequential defect is the lack of a clerestory – the upper level of the nave that is usually filled with windows. This means that the new cathedral’s interior will probably suffer from a lack of natural light. Electric lighting can surmount this problem to an extent, but not completely. As the sun moves, the building changes with it: shapes evolve, different features are highlighted and the overall interplay between sun and stone reflects the divine calendar of God’s creation in an indescribable way that we, as humans, also find comforting.
When Pugin was forced to scale back his plans for St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, by eliminating the clerestory, the lower roof profile forced the nave to rely entirely on the ground-level windows. Visitors to St George’s were perpetually complaining about its interior gloom and, when Pugin’s creation was sadly destroyed by a German firebomb in the Second World War, the reconstructing architect Romilly Craze’s first act was to insert a clerestory. These are all lessons that would be understood by a trained church architect with decades of experience. Sadly, there are no more Francis Petres in New Zealand today.
Petre built with the confidence of a young Church that expected to grow. Warren and Mahoney must now build for an older Church conscious of institutional failure, financial restraint and demographic uncertainty. The modern-but-traditional design for this cathedral broadcasts both restraint and a certain austerity.
Does this reflect a Catholic Church in New Zealand that now seeks to avoid ostentation? Like so many other countries, New Zealand has been affected by the abuse crisis, and a significant proportion of the cost of the new construction will, by necessity, rely on voluntary donations from the Catholic faithful, who are often sceptical of their clergy and hierarchs. The diocese is seeking NZ$16 million, while much of the remaining cost is to be met from insurance proceeds, asset sales and funds already raised. A Church asking parishioners to make sacrificial gifts cannot be indifferent to economy.
Warren and Mahoney are doing the best they can, and we can never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In the age of a cash-strapped and poorly catechised Church, bishops and other leaders often find it difficult to make the argument in favour of investing in the permanence of a cathedral. Petre’s cathedral stood for over a century, and it required an earthquake of exceptional force to bring about its loss. The new cathedral will unquestionably be engineered with that catastrophe in mind. Whether it will possess the same imaginative durability is yet to be seen.
