GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — In Orange County, California, an iconic church of 20th-century evangelical Protestantism will no longer be called the “Crystal Cathedral.”
For the past several months, the 1.2 million Catholics in the southern California county have been calling it “our new cathedral.”
But as of June 9, when Bishop Tod Brown announced at the end of an ordination Mass that the proposed new name for the Reformed Church in America’s Crystal Cathedral had been approved by the Vatican, they are calling it Christ Cathedral.
“I wanted the name to be Christological,” said Bishop Brown. “Our cathedral can unite all Christians to share our common belief in Jesus Christ.”
Founded by pastor Robert Schuller, Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy in October of 2010 when some of its creditors sued for payment.
In November 2011, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the Crystal Cathedral and the campus on which it stands would be sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange — an outcome that had seemed anything but certain in the months the diocese had worked to acquire the 34-acre property in Garden Grove.
When lay leaders first suggested to Bishop Brown that the diocese should look into the possibility, the bishop was not so inclined. The diocese had established Christ Our Savior Cathedral parish just a few years before. Bishop Brown’s former priest-secretary was named rector, and an architect was engaged. The parish was thriving, with seven weekend Masses in three languages.
But the projected cost savings (tens of millions of dollars at minimum) of purchasing the Crystal Cathedral, the Memorial Gardens, school and accompanying buildings that could house the diocesan offices, rather than building a new cathedral from the ground up — and the possibility that the Crystal Cathedral might no longer be a place of worship in the hands of another purchaser — changed the bishop’s mind.
An early leader in the process, the diocese was swiftly overtaken by Chapman University, located in Orange — the same city where the diocese’s Holy Family Cathedral stands. At one point, the private university was declared the preferred buyer — and small wonder: Chapman’s offer included one component that the diocese’s plan lacked: the opportunity to lease back and even repurchase some of the core buildings.
What the diocese could offer was, as General Counsel Maria Schinderle dubbed it, a “soft landing” that would offer a chance for Crystal Cathedral Ministries to continue its work.
In addition to renting back the property after purchase, this “soft landing” included an option for Crystal Cathedral Ministries to move onto the campus of St. Callistus Catholic Church, located a few blocks from the Crystal Cathedral. On June 7, Crystal Cathedral Ministries announced that it would exercise that option, moving to St. Callistus in June 2013. The St. Callistus congregation and school will then move to the cathedral campus.
The Diocese of Orange purchased the property for $57.5 million. The “campus swap” will be among the earliest of many changes for the diocese and Holy Family, Christ Our Savior, and the Marywood Pastoral Center that houses the diocesan offices.
St. Callistus parishioners and clergy alike expressed tentative enthusiasm for their future facilities on a recent tour of the property. After all, they point out, the church is not the building in which the people meet, but the people themselves.
“I follow Christ,” says Luis Avila, a Hispanic community liaison for the parish, where he has worshipped since 2000. “Wherever he takes me, that’s where I go.”
Transformation Begins
But the lineup of changes for the diocese starts well before the proposed moves for Crystal Cathedral Ministries and the St. Callistus congregation; they begin July 1, when Father Christopher Smith, the diocesan vicar for priests, starts in his new position as episcopal vicar and rector for the cathedral. He will oversee a transformation that will include installing a cathedra, or bishop’s seat; baptismal font, pews and kneelers; creating a place for the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and selecting sacred imagery that will honor centuries of Catholic tradition without clashing with the very modern architecture of the building itself. Once all this has been taken care of, the cathedral will be solemnly dedicated in the first Catholic Mass celebrated there.
For Holy Family Cathedral — a parish church that was elevated to a cathedral when the diocese was created from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1976 — little is likely to change (besides the church’s name, which may become Holy Family Pro Cathedral).
With 850 seats, the church has long been too small to host diocese-wide celebrations — such as the chrism Mass or ordinations to the priesthood — so those have taken place at the 1,500-seat St. Columban Church in Garden Grove. The Crystal Cathedral, by contrast, seats 3,000.
Christ Our Savior — such a new parish that the community worships in modular buildings — is located in the county seat of Santa Ana, which is already home to eight Roman Catholic churches (in addition to two Eastern-rite churches), many of them with standing-room-only Masses on Sundays and major feast days. Its name will change at least in part — it is no longer the cathedral parish, after all — but construction of a church will proceed, albeit on a smaller scale than originally planned.
And the hilltop home of the diocesan offices, the Marywood Pastoral Center, is expected to be sold to help fund the new property’s purchase. (Diocesan offices will move to the new campus.)
The diocese is well aware that its work on the Crystal Cathedral campus will capture not only the attention of local Catholics and non-Catholics but also that of fans of Schuller’s Hour of Power television program around the world.
The diocese’s move has not occurred without criticism. A recent essay by Duncan Stroik, a founding faculty member of Notre Dame’s classical program in the school of architecture, pointed out to readers of Sacred Architecture his belief that “without a radical transformation the building will always come across as a technological mega church rather than as a sacred place.”
“Can the Crystal Cathedral be converted to a Catholic cathedral?” he asks. “We shall see.”
In the Diocese of Orange, many parishioners don’t harbor such doubts.
“This property ... will be completely Catholic,” said Rob Neal, the chairman of the architecture and renovation committee. “Our hope is that, many years in the future, some people will have to be reminded that it was anything but a Catholic church.”
Register correspondent Elisabeth Deffner writes from Orange, California.
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One more monstrousity for the Church. Dear Lord Jesus, when will you put an end to this?
I deeply appreciate the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, the members of St. Callistus, etc., for having the foresight to move forward with the purchase and ‘swap.’ The ‘jockeying’ about may well be what God is doing in His larger kingdom.
For you IrishEddieOHara it will come on the day you meet our Lord face to face.Hopefully for the rest of us Christs Cathedral will be but a visual reminder of the mansions or Lord has prepared for all those who love Him and keep faithful to His word.
“If it brings you closer to God, or others closer to God, it is from God!”
Even the iconic, evnagelical BUILDINGS are becoming Catholic. Rather than bemoan with pettiness the “monstrosity” for (or do you mean ‘of’) the Church, why not marvel at the mysterious grace and power of God that is firing up a ‘calling home’ of the scattered flock…
This cathedral is big, but not as big as the incredible work of the Lord in the midst of this cultural attack and rejection of the Church.
Maybe I should make myself clearer. This thing is, speaking from the standpoint of religious archetecture, a hideous piece of postmodernist trash. Do younot understand that our faith and our beliefs are reflected in the buildings in which we congregate? Thisis why, foe instance, that Protestant buildings do not have stauary or icons in them. They don’t believe in the comminionof the saints and thereforetheir walls are barren. They don’t believe in the ongoing Sacrifice of the Mass, therefore their buildings have no altars.
Now compare this building to one of the magnificent greystone cathederals in Europe. Which one points you to God and which one speaks of the glory of man? If you think this slingshot heaven speaks about God, you are one of the millions of functional and intellectual postmodernists who are in the Church.
I’ve always liked driving the two freeways that bisect several blocks away from the cathedral and seeing it’s mirror like glass shinning in the blue sky off in the distance. I’ve always liked going into the formerly named Chrystal Cathedral to see its airy, bright natural light and openness. I think God’s presence will be felt there more so than ever before, especially in Holy Communion which I hope they offer in both forms.
I look forward to attending there, it is so close.
“Christ Cathedral” sounds too much like a protestant church. But since the good Bishop wants it to “unite all christians”, I guess the name will do that.
Those beautiful European cathedrals were built in different times and reflected the culture and the faith life of those times. We now actually DO live in postmodernist times - what’s wrong with a building from that period? It would not make any sense to limit ourselves to trying to reproduce cathedrals that were build sometimes hundreds of years before settlers came to the US… Can somebody with more knowledge of architecture and history tell me how the architecture of those ancient European cathedrals was seen in their times? Perhaps there were just as many critics!
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ…When I was in the Navy, I recall hearing Mass on the fantail of the battleship U.S.S. Iowa. The picture of a turret of three 16-inch guns as a backdrop for Mass, with a folding table as the altar, is still etched in my mind. And how about the Masses that were covertly celebrated in the Nazi concentration camps during WWII?
It’s not the building that makes the Church. We, who gather together as family with Christ around the table of the Lord, whether its in a church, or at home, or on the battlefield, or in a crystal cathedral—that’s what Church is all about.
I try to be careful about looking for things to complain about, and I have no problem with most of this to the extent that I know about it, but I am somewhat saddened by the apparent avoidance of the fullness of the teachings of the Church to appeal to people who find the truth scandalous.
I cannot help by read “we did not want to associate this new building with the Blessed Virgin, the Choirs of Angels, and all the saints”. Hopefully, the name was a devotional (rather than political) move, and that there will be no avoidance of the teachings we have been handed from Christ through the Apostles.
IrishEddieOhara—apparently you’ve never toured the CC campus. You can trip over a statue! There are statues of both Old and New Testament figures all over the property. All of the statues reflect smiles as in happy in the love and worship of our Lord.
You’re right, the interior of the building is not set up for Catholic worship. It was designed and the interior oriented for the TV ministry—from where Crystal Cathedral Ministries received the bulk of their donations. One of the original architects is still with us and just happens to be Catholic! He has agreed to help with the conversion to a Catholic worship space which will have the altar front and center as it should be. Not all cathedrals are or have to be Gothic in style—I bet that was considered “ugly modern” in its day.
I’m very excited about this acquisition. The purchase price coupled with the cost of renovations will be less than half of the projected cost of a new cathedral. The location of this property is much easier to access by those who rely on public transportation. I see this transaction as a wonderful gift from God which will enable the Diocese to do great things for Catholics in Orange County. We are the 10th largest diocese in the US—approximately 1/3 or more of total residents of Orange County are Catholic.
This is an incredibly exciting time for us. I would ask for prayers for all concerned.
I hope they continue with the Christmas pageants. They were spectacular.
I went to southern CA a protestant and left a Catholic, so even though I thousands of miles from there, I feel a connection and Im so thrilled with this I can hardly contain myself…I would like to hug whoever had this idea. What a message for the Body of Christ…(among others that you could take away from this) that most of the “churches” that men invent in our times eventually come apart, but The Church is there are the long/ever standing Body of unity.
Fiffle on those those who argue about architecture in the midst of such a wonderful event. This Cathedral will do fine, go worry about something else.
Where can I send a donation so that i can be a part of this?
The only way to unite all Christians is for them to convert to the Catholic Church which our Lord established upon St. Peter as the pillar and ground of truth and the only means of salvation.
What is wrong with a building which reflects postmodernism is that it reflects an anti-Catholic anthropological understanding. How do you not see that? Our architecture reflects our theology. You need to do a study on this and enhance your understanding of how art reflects culture and religion.
As a professional artist (although part-time), I certainly can appreciate how art reflects culture and religion. Instead of reading “anti-Catholic” in a wonderful building built by Protestant brothers and sisters of ours, why not see an attempt by those brothers and sisters to express their faith in God according to the lights that they do have. In other words, to agree to disagree until the Lord brings us all back together. And it could happen, by the way, that by witnessing the change in the use of this cathedral, many of those who contributed to the TV ministry in the first place might be brought to know, love and eventually join the Catholic church.
Vance—Sorry, no more Christmas or Easter pageants. The Crystal Cathedral Ministries stopped them a couple years ago because they couldn’t pay the vendors.
Nurse Tammy—THANK YOU for your comments—I’m sure your donation would be more than welcome. Go to the Orange Foundations’ website, oc-foundation.org for info on how to donate. If you want to verify that they’re legit, go to the Diocese of Orange’s website at rcbo.org.
Brother Robert Anthony—I like your comment regarding Mass on the fantail of a ship. My dad said that some of the best Masses he attended were in Korea where the hood of a Jeep served as the altar.
It seems quite a gracious thing to name the Cathedral what they did…it is unifying vs divisive, they could had picked a name like “Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows” or “Saint Mocholmoc of Dromore Cathedral”.
It is not gracious or unifying if it was done for the reasons you state. Valuing unity of man over unity with God leads to being separated from God.
Catholics should never have shame or reluctance to affirm the teachings we have been given.
The Church is not just a set of theological opinions, but the Church established by Christ and is guided by the Holy Spirit. Seeking “unity” with those outside the Church is forsaking the Church. Unity comes with accepting the Universal Church in full.
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