Gothic Pride: The Story of Building a Great Cathedral in Newark

Epilogue

Finishing Sacred Heart brought a season of applause for Newark clergy, architect Paul Reilly, designer Gonippo Raggi, and the hundreds of workers who labored with them. The latter visited by the dozens to take photographs and give tours to family and friends. Thousands more came to Newark to see the sparkling-clean stone landmark, say a prayer in what many of them helped pay for, and explore its new, story-filled spaces. General interest articles in the New York press compared Sacred Heart to Westminster Abbey in size, said it was taller than Notre Dame in Paris, and spoke admirably, though not knowledgeably, about its “French Gothic construction .” The Illustrated London News ran photographs with extended captions that credited O’Rourke’s contribution, noted that the cathedral could be seen from the Empire State Building, and told an international readership that no Catholic church in the United States cost more.1 Yet the architectural journals paid Sacred Heart Cathedral no notice, nor did it claim the attention , favorable or otherwise, of mainstream art or architecture critics. The Brooklyn diocese’s newspaper, the Tablet, came closest to providing a critical assessment. A well-informed local writer complimented Sacred Heart, though with a reservation: “The interior will be regarded by many as the most beautiful Gothic interior in the United States. The entire nave and apse is enclosed by a row of massive granite piers the like of which cannot be found elsewhere in the country. It is to be regretted however that the highly polished red granite piers encircling the sanctuary are somewhat blurred out by the choir stalls and the high altar at the east end. . . . Because the nave arches are comparatively low, the triforium comes into its own Epilogue 209 and I do not believe any cathedral on the continent has developed this feature so successfully.”2 A few years after Sacred Heart opened, attention in the cultural community fixed on it when the Schantz organ was completed and formally dedicated.3 Pierre Cocherau, destined to become organist of Notre Dame in Paris, came to play the dedicatory recital in 1956. His concert began with an obligatory selection by Bach, in this case, the sublime, perfect Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, dating from this unsurpassed genius’s mature years in Leipzig. The program proceeded to music by French composers Vierne, Dupré, and Duruflé and concluded with an improvisation, of which Cocherau was a supreme master. Cocherau’s virtuosic playing conjured the French cathedral music tradition, paying homage as well to other French influences found in abundance in Sacred Heart. Ultramontane, a wonderful word that derives from old French, literally means “beyond the mountains.” Figuratively, it stands for the Vatican’s in- fluence on Catholic a¤airs outside of Italy—beyond the Alps. Sacred Heart’s interior preserves in amber a moment when an ultramontane spirit reigned in America and Catholicism in the United States was approaching its apogee of social and cultural sway. Within short years of completion, Sacred Heart’s interior, descended from medieval and Counter Reformation theological constructs, liturgical practices, and devotions, all rendered in historical modes, seemed the product of an old dispensation. Ironically, conditions originating in Rome soon displaced many of the assumptions upon which Sacred Heart was designed. The Second Vatican Council, called eight years after the cathedral opened, was the culmination of theological and liturgical reforms that had gathered momentum for generations . It brought radically altered liturgy and devotional norms. The archdiocese slowly and gently responded to directives stemming from Vatican II. In 1976, it removed the tabernacle from the main altar and suspended the altar’s crucifix from the baldachin.4 Yet these and a few other changes were relatively minor, and Sacred Heart was spared the more iconoclastic alterations to Catholic church interiors in that era. Sacred Heart: Church and Cathedral As Sacred Heart began to function as the cathedral for the archdiocese and as a parish church, it could hardly have been a more spectacular setting for liturgies and services. Eucharists, confirmations, weddings, ordinations, 210 Epilogue funerals, anniversaries, ecumenical assemblies of the community, and, later, an annual Christmastime service of music that filled every seat—were digni fied and elevated by Sacred Heart’s scale, richness, and religious and historical associations. But in other ways, the completed building raised hard questions. Adjacent Branch Brook Park was a gorgeous foreground or backdrop for the cathedral...