Chasing Catholic Cooties Out of a Cathedral

. No disrespect is meant to either Christian denomination mentioned. The sardonic title was chosen merely to indicate one party's strength of feeling about another, but who had to deal in a civil manner for a sales transaction. Please explore this with me as an inquiry into human culture and ritual processes.
. What makes a certain space or location sacred? I remember a prayer from long ago in which this line was included:

"Lord, this place is sacred not because You are here

but because we are here."

That about sums it up: without the reverence of humans, sacredness would be an empty concept.
. Currently many Catholic church buildings are being given up and placed on the market. Unlike other sales citing the square footage, specifying the heating system, etc. there is an important value that cannot be readily shown to buyers: it is a holy place. I encountered such a situation first hand at a church in Massachusetts, where the Catholics there put up for sale a very large, well kept church with generous parking space. Ironically the new tenants were not a commercial firm but a church, but also one with whom relations are historically difficult for Catholics.

. The roots of the animosity go at least as far back as 306 A.D. when Constantine I, Emperor of Rome adopted Christianity for himself and his empire while also moving the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Though the Empire continued to include the West until the "Fall of Rome" in 476, major political and religious power had already passed East to the new capital.

. Europe and Asia Minor continued to adhere to a tradition of Empire, then under Christianity and non-Roman leaders, but in reality fractured into many independent kingdoms. These political divisions continued to haunt the Church appearing, by proxy, as theological disputes culminating in the eleventh century. In 1054 the Pope of Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch excommunicated each other, beginning the formal division of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Interestingly the Catholics continue to accept the validity of Orthodox ordination of priests, a recognition not returned by the Orthodox.

. Which leads me to the present story... One might assume that since it was already consecrated, all the new parish had to do was ask the Catholics not to secularize the building and then just move in.

. That's not what happened. A special two-day Orthodox Rite of the Consecration of a Church was performed. The Metropolitan (like a Cardinal) of the District presided over a Vigil ceremony lasting three hours on the first evening and an all-morning service the next day, cocelebrated by many clergy.

. I was there as part of a non-denominational choir invited to sing the first nine hymns of the vigil liturgy. We had rehearsed these pieces in their original Slavonic, as composed by Rachmaninoff. That is the liturgical language used by the Russian and some other Eastern European Orthodox churches. So our participation was very welcome and fit right in.

. When our half-hour stint was over I was able to turn my attention to the physical surroundings as I was very curious how far they would go in "de-Catholicizing" the building and the worship space. First I noticed that they had left the pews in place, though some Orthodox churches do not install them. I also expected they would remove the fourteen mural depictions called Stations of the Cross, common in Catholic churches. Contrary to their tradition the new owners did not remove them. I speculated that was either because these were not paintings, but bas-relief sculptures architecturally part of the walls and thus difficult to remove; or were left in a spirit of ecumenism and tolerance.

. The organ sits unused up in the choir loft, as all their services are sung a cappella. The rack of votive candles in the foyer was allowed to remain and appeared to be well-patronized, apparently for their parallel custom of lighting a candle as a symbol of a spiritual petition.

. But the altar area was completely reconstructed. The new star of the altar is a beautiful iconostasis, a panel spanning the entire breadth of the altar nave. It was elaborately carved and painted with sacred art by Serbian artisans -- taking three years -- then shipped to the USA.

. The parish hall downstairs was immediately put into use by these lively people as is. The post-vigil evening included a meal, Serbian musicians, singers and dancers.