The Lord Reigns, He is Clothed in Beauty
Not quite six months after his arrival in San Francisco, its fifth Archbishop, Joseph T. McGucken, faced the destruction by fire of St. Mary’s Cathedral on Van Ness Avenue. With courage and vision he stood in the ashes and proclaimed that there would be a new cathedral.
The first attempt at a design was timid and stereotyped. The public reaction was mixed but the archbishop listened carefully to criticism from many sources. The new cathedral had to be something great, imaginative, a structure which would capture the beauty and power of San Francisco. Recognizing, as Archbishop Riordan had after the earthquake of 1906, that he was a citizen of no mean city, Archbishop McGucken determined that he had to go back to the drawing board in search of something that would embody vision and hope and greatness. The existing design would not do.
He thus invited Pietro Belluschi to join the architectural team to work with the engineering genius, Pier Luigi Nervi. Archbishop McGucken charged them to do three things: design a cathedral that would accommodate large numbers of people; one that would enable even large crowds to surround the altar; and a structure that would be a statement that God is present in beauty in the earthly city.
Belluschi himself prized two things in his designs– integrity and simplicity. These qualities eminently reflected what the Second Vatican Council, then in session, sought in the liturgy of the Church: a noble simplicity which was to be one of the most striking qualities of St. Mary’s Cathedral. I have often stood at the entrance of the Cathedral as people came for evening Mass, heard them talking as they made their way to the door when suddenly, as they stepped inside, the conversation stopped and there was a cry of astonishment at the immense soaring beauty of the place. Such integrity of material and workmanship, such simplicity of line, the colors of the upper windows, such majesty and grace of the pipe organ, the power of the great altar, the embracing lower windows drawing into the sacred place the human activity and life of San Francisco.
St. Mary’s Cathedral is a window on the infinite, lifting the human spirit to the Infinite and Eternal Beauty which is God. This is precisely what Dorothy Day perceived here. At a meeting called by the U.S. bishops about social issues in our country, Dorothy listened to vigorous criticism of the money spent on building St. Mary’s Cathedral. When she finally spoke, she said, “I hope you bishops will not pay attention to this criticism. The Cathedral in San Francisco is one of the few places where the poor can go and sit down and be with God in beauty.”
In the depths of tragedy, something stirred in the soul of Archbishop McGucken. A vision gradually took shape in him that something new and great could be done. He grasped the dream. And now a timeless thing of beauty stands in noble simplicity – a “luminous tent” as Gyorgy Kepes, designer of the windows called it. It is a great hymn to God’s transcendent glory. How fitting to describe it all are the words of Eliot’s poem:
We thank Thee who has moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.
And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory.”
Archbishop John R. Quinn is Emeritus Archbishop of San Francisco. He served from 1977 to 1995 as the sixth archbishop of the Archdiocese and as president of the U.S. Catholic Conference and National Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1977 to 1980.
Archbishop Quinn’s commentary is the first in an occasional series marking the 40th anniversary of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The cathedral staff is planning a series of events to appeal to the entire Archdiocese, culminating in a special liturgy next May. More than 100 priests and half-a-dozen bishops have been ordained at the cathedral. During his visit to San Francisco in 1987 Pope John Paul II gathered people from around the country for two meetings in the cathedral.
By Archbishop John R. Quinn
From September 24, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
