Posted on 03/13/2016 4:45:58 AM PDT by NYer
In a way what follows echoes the post about concerts in churches. HERE What is appropriate in a church and what is not?
This remarkable bit of news is from Omaha.com:
Kelly: With a pair of bolt cutters and sense of indignation, custodian cuts down what flies in church
A Mary Poppins mannequin hung from the ceiling at St. Cecilia Cathedral [?!? No, really. There’s a photo.] for its 31st annual flower festival, but a custodian used bolt cutters to send it crashing to the floor on the first morning of the event. The custodian said he hopes the incident sparks “conversation” about what types of displays are appropriate in a church.
By Michael Kelly / World-Herald columnist
On the first morning of the 31st annual Cathedral Flower Festival, with its theme of “A Night at the Movies,” an agitated church custodian made a bold move.
Mark Kenney, 59, who grew up in the parish, had worked at St. Cecilia Cathedral for three years. Around 8 a.m. on Jan. 29, he went to a work shed, picked up a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters and ascended to a catwalk high above the mostly empty nave, or main sanctuary.
He looked through a peephole, he said, to make sure he wouldn’t hurt any people. And then he cut a steel cable, which sent a suspended, umbrella-carrying, hat-wearing Mary Poppins figure crashing to the floor.
Kenney then went downstairs and removed a cardboard Buddha figure from the Nash Chapel, which also featured costumed mannequins from “The King and I.” [?!?] He threw the Buddha out one door and proceeded to toss costumed mannequins out two other doors. [Good grief! Who thought these were good ideas? Read on…]
Someone alerted the pastor, the Rev. Michael Gutgsell, who ran from the rectory next door to the church and saw Kenney.
“Mark,” he called out, “did you see who did this?”
“Father, it was me. You need to call the police.”
Gutgsell had known that his custodian had misgivings about secular displays in the church but says he was dumbfounded and didn’t understand why Kenney would take such drastic action. [It was indeed dramatic, if not drastic.] In a brief meeting that week, the pastor said, he had asked for Kenney’s promise not to be disruptive.
Now the priest was shocked, saying, “You promised!”
In response, Kenney said, he lashed out. “I started screaming, ‘Father, this is bullshit! We can’t have this in the church. This isn’t culture, it’s Disney crap!’?” [Oh my!]
Kenney — who has served three terms of up to six months in federal prisons for crossing security lines at military bases in protest of nuclear weapons — then knelt at the communion rail and prayed until officers arrived and handcuffed him.
He spent a night in jail before he was bailed out and pleaded no contest. He said he is scheduled for sentencing “on Holy Thursday,” March 24.
Damaging items at the flower festival was wrong, and Kenney said in an interview this week that he will make restitution. But he says secular items such as movie characters are inappropriate in the sacred space of the cathedral and amount to sacrilege and idolatry. [Is he right? Buddha?]
Gutgsell, a former chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese and a Catholic University-licensed “canon lawyer,” an expert in church laws and rules, disagrees.
“Obviously, context is everything,” the priest said, noting that the cathedral also is home to about six concerts a year. No sacrilege or disrespect is conveyed, he said, in the concerts or the dozens of exhibits at the flower festival. [Mary Poppins and Buddha? Here’s a question: Is it okay to play a non-sacred work on a pipe organ in a cathedral church? Some compositions written for pipe organ are not explicitly sacred.]
“Cathedrals,” he said, “are kind of the epicenter for culture presentation and development.”
Eileen Burke-Sullivan, a theologian and vice provost for mission and ministry at Creighton University, said she sees no problem. The cathedral and the archdiocese, she said, have supported the arts in Omaha for many years.
“In mixing thematic popular culture with the beauty of God’s creation in flowers,” she said, “I don’t think there’s any inherent idolatry.”
Catholic ping!
“when the dog bites,
when the bee stings,
when I’m feeling mad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
then I don’t feel so bad.”
FTA, the priest already knew the guy was slipping gears, and I suppose a mannequin is better than attacking someone during an ecumenical mass.
Same as Jesus throwing out the sellers in the Temple!!
wrong movie.
CRANK?? he’s the only one that’s RIGHT!
I wonder what the point of a cathedral is.. Is it for the glory of God, to bring people closer to Him - or is it for festivals to maybe bring some spare change in for the church coffers? Buddha, in a Catholic Church?
I suppose some will find this guy’s actions crazy but I for one am proud of him. One last guy fighting for sanctity in a world gone goofy with accommodating the secular and the profane.
Today’s Mass will be dedicated for him.
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Doh!
A little drastic, but I can see the custodian's point. Besides, if Sister Mary Theodore could look up and see up Mary Poppin's skirt, there would have been words between her and the priest who authorized this.
15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
Eileen Burke-Sullivan, a theologian and vice provost for mission and ministry at Creighton University, said she sees no problem. The cathedral and the archdiocese, she said, have supported the arts in Omaha for many years.
I will side with the custodian.
And the Bishops wonder why church attendance and numbers of men entering the priesthood are falling.
I guess they don’t see it. For the church (any church) it must maintain the awe and respect of the membership, it must remain aloof from the mundane everyday world. It can not do that if it becomes a part of the everyday mundane world.
Having secular concerts and flower shows in the nave of the church makes it no more than an auditorium. In my youth I never saw anything like this in my home parish or anywhere else. Not even the protestant churches did this to my knowledge.
And this is not just a local parish this is a cathedral; the home parish of a Bishop. To me that the Bishop allows this is mind boggling. This is the church in which sits his throne. To me he himself is attacking the dignity of his office.
The only explanation I can see for the Bishop permitting this is that the diocese is in desperate need of cash and they are forced to rent the cathedral for needed funds.
In my mind it is a bad move. The sacred can not exist long in the presence of mundane. Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple because it was the house of God. Flower shows exist to sell flowers. I hope you get the point.
Hooray for the custodian. I fight this crap all the time im our church. Mixing the profane with the sacred.
Movie characters are not allowed in a "Night at the Movies" Festival?
They certainly don’t belong in a Cathedral. This isn’t one of those all-purpose gymnasium/social-halls/worship-halls you might find in other denominations.
Sacred space isn’t for commercial pop culture.
“Some compositions written for pipe organ are not explicitly sacred.”
Arguing about the exact location of the line is moot when one is clearly over it.
Maybe the “clastic” part of this iconoclastic action should have been directed at those who thought a mannequin of a witch (the character Mary Poppins was no less a witch than Nanny McPhee and Oz’s Glenda) and a statue of the Buddha have a place in a Catholic cathedral, and who had enough audacity and bad taste to put them there. When Jesus drove the money changers out from His Father’s temple he whipped men, not their cash boxes.
The sacred can not exist long in the presence of mundane.
But the sad fact is this is just a building. God’s new dwelling is us. And the application is the same.
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