Some years ago an American woman at a dinner party suggested: "Why doesn't the Church of Ireland give Christ Church back to the Catholics?" The other guests, all Catholic, were horrified. "Can't you just imagine what they'd do to it," one man said. She had innocently stumbled on one of the most notorious aspects of Catholicism in Ireland: its infamous wrecking of its churches and cathedrals.
One notorious example was what happened to the great Pugin's Irish masterpiece, Killarney Cathedral. The local bishop, Eamon Casey, spent a third of a million pounds in the 1970s gutting Pugin's interior. In the end all that was left were those bits salvaged by the locals in the hope that some day a bishop with more taste would restore Pugin's masterpiece.
Victorian Gothic churches in Ireland have been destroyed at a horrifying rate. Most regard St Macartan's Cathedral in Monaghan as the gem of the Irish Pugin, J J McCarthy. It had its sanctuary gutted, and replaced by something that looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, with the bishop on his throne like a clerical Captain Kirk. In a Victorian Gothic building it is chronically out of place.
Though not as out of place as Cardinal Ó Fiaich's infamous new altar in the spectacular Armagh Cathedral, where he placed a tabernacle that looked like a dinosaur's tooth, and an altar that looked like pigeon-droppings. It became notorious, with visitors to the cathedral unsure whether to laugh or cringe. Thankfully Archbishop Brady had it ripped out and replaced by something more sensitive to the 19th century environs. There are other notorious examples. St. John's Cathedral in Limerick got a sanctuary that could host Riverdance, while words cannot do justice to the sheer tackiness of the reordered cathedral in Cork.
The architectural historian Maurice Craig did not mince his words in the 1980s about what was happening to Irish churches. The famed 1826 church in Castlequarter, Co Waterford, was, in his words, "mutilated" in 1980, while the architecturally unique, irreplaceable church in Ballybacon, Co Tipperary, was "destroyed" in 1981-1982. Even in the 1980s he noticed how traditional reredoses (carved marble backdrops on altars into which fitted the tabernacle) were being gutted and dumped at an alarming pace. Even fewer survive now in churches; some instead are now used as decor in pubs and nightclubs.
Priests and bishops justify their butchery of old buildings by referring to the requirements of Pope Paul VI's Mass, which required greater participation by the congregation. But the claim that that required the wholesale gutting of old sanctuaries has been dismissed by the current Pope, Benedict XVI, who has made it clear that there was nothing in Vatican II about gutting altars. Later Vatican documents did give guidelines about the building of new churches, but they did not require large-scale ripping up of sanctuaries in old ones. Internationally, many churches have been renovated for the new rituals without the large-scale gutting that has been the fad in Ireland. St Matthew's Cathedral in Washington DC has just finished a major restoration. Unlike most Irish cathedrals and churches it still has its reredos and altar rails, as does Westminster Cathedral. Even in Ireland, there still are some cathedrals that managed to combine reorderings with sensitivity to the buildings. Cathedrals in Cavan, Letterkenny, Ballaghaderreen and Waterford were all subtly reordered. Bishop Comiskey even fixed a botched reordering done by his predecessor in Enniscorthy Cathedral, as did Archbishop Brady in Armagh, both to considerable praise. While Cork Cathedral became an eyesore, its sister cathedral (they share the same bishop) of Ross was sensitively and beautifully reordered.
Clergy like to claim how the only people opposing reorderings are Catholics who are opposed to Vatican II. While conservatives are often at the forefront of campaigns to stop them, support comes from liberals, young and old alike, architects, planners, historians, even some clergy. Some notorious reorderings have drawn petitions signed by thousands, only to be ignored, with the parishioners who opposed the renovation then left with the debt to pay when the priest responsible is moved.
According to architects who work with the clergy (and who privately admit their own horror at what has happened) Irish clergy got away with frequently appalling reorderings because planners, North and South, daren't say "no" to the churches. Which is why the bishops are stunned at An Bord Pleanála's decision to say "no" to Bishop Magee's plan to reorder Cobh Cathedral. Cobh is one of the few surviving architecturally significant unspoilt Irish cathedrals. While some work is needed to replace the temporary Vatican II altar, the local community, architects and planners alike were horrified at the scale of what was proposed, which involved removing the altar rails and covering the historic 19th century mosaic floor to make way for a new altar. An Bord Pleanála's decision may finally mark a turning point when the churches, like everyone else, are not allowed to do what they please with historic buildings. The tragedy is that so much has already been lost.