Was Crystal Cathedral Successfully Converted?

Though the conversion is done, this topic is still timely, especially for Catholic priests, bishops, abbots, and abbesses, who may become involved in building or renovating a Catholic church.

This article is a follow-up to “Can a Protestant Worship Space Be Flipped to a Catholic Cathedral?” from the Spring 2024 edition of Latin Mass Magazine¹—the remarkable journal of Catholic culture—which I republished as a Substack post here. This second part was published in the Fall 2024 edition. I am republishing it here with some revisions, to reach a wider audience.

This two-part series is about the controversial decision of the Diocese of Orange California to purchase televangelist Robert Schuller's "Crystal Cathedral," and to remodel, dedicate, and name it as Christ Cathedral, instead of building a new diocesan cathedral. In the first part of the series, I quoted principles of sacred architecture proposed by traditional church architect Duncan Stroik, wrote about how the architecture of a church should ideally teach the faith, and noted some criticisms of the purchase.

Even though the conversion is a fait accompli, this topic is still timely for Catholics in general and especially priests, bishops, abbots, and abbesses, who may become involved in building or renovating a church.

How Rev. Schuller’s Idiosyncratic Theology Shaped the Buildings He Commissioned

Robert H. Schuller (1926–2015), who founded the Crystal Cathedral, was a minister from the Calvinist Reformed Church of America, and he started out by leading typical Protestant worship services, with their emphasis on preaching and music. As Schuller became more and more successful in attracting bigger congregations and building spectacular buildings, he left the Reformed Church of America behind, not by resigning, but stylistically (with his theatrical preaching, his academic gown —with its resemblance to High-Church vestments—and his dramatic preaching style), and theologically—(with his slogan of "if you dream it you can do it," which he called Possibility Thinking, and his theology of self-esteem).

Schuller wrote in his autobiography, My Journey: From an Iowa Farm to a Cathedral of Dreams, that his “reinterpretation of Calvin’s teachings" liberated “humanity from a shaming, blaming, and cowering Christianity, with its railings against the ‘sin’ of pride,” replacing shame “with a God-inspired drive for self-worth. I didn’t know it then but expounding this liberating force would become my life’s work."

(For more details about Schuller's philosophy, you can read my detailed review of his autobiography posted here.)

Schuller early on discovered a talent for growing congregations. He also developed a formula enabling him to construct buildings costing much more than the available funds. He first would hire a famous architect to design a distinctive building, which would then inspire generous donations from his existing congregation and then attract an ever-expanding congregation after it was built. He would teach the newcomers about tithing, and their donations would help pay off then-easier-to-obtain construction loans and seed ever bigger projects. His methods resembled a spiritual Ponzi scheme, which in his case ended with creditors not being paid and finally to bankruptcy, after one building project too many. The rapid growth of his ministry peaked and began to shrink after it lost its novelty, membership aged, and money stopped being so easily available.

The rectangular Arboretum on the Garden Grove campus now owned by the Orange Diocese was Schuller's first worship space that had all-glass walls.

Schuller came to prefer clear glass over stained glass, to evoke the feeling of being outside in nature he had enjoyed when he had begun his California ministry preaching on Sundays from the roof of a snack bar at the Orange Drive-in to a congregation who listened through the drive-in’s speakers hung in their cars’ windows.

Schuller starting out in the Orange Drive-in preaching at the Orange Drive-in

At the start of each service in the Arboretum, Schuller opened a 24 square-foot glass door so he could preach both to those inside and those outside—who listened through speakers in their cars. In 1970, Schuller began a weekly television show. As Executive Producer, his wife Arvella chose the music and edited the words of the hymns, replacing “sexist” language and passages inconsistent with Positive Thinking. The “Hour of Power” became the most popular religious television program in the U.S.

Schuller dedicated his last and most spectacular worship space, the Crystal Cathedral, in 1980. When working with internationally-known architect Philip Johnson, Schuller asked for not only glass walls but also a glass ceiling.

Reportedly, when Schuller saw Johnson's model, he exclaimed "Why, it looks like a Crystal Cathedral!" And the name stuck. In that enormous new star-shaped building with asymmetrical glass walls of varying heights, the glass doors opening onto the parking lot were 90 feet tall.

Its pipe organ is the fifth largest in the world. Affectionately called "The Hazel," it was purchased with donations from Hazel Wright, a regular viewer of the "Hour of Power." Some of its 18,000 pipes are elevated on the wall on the north side above raised seating for singers and musicians, behind Schuller's podium. The remaining pipes are on the south side. The organ's trumpets are in the east and west balconies, which deliver a “surround sound."

“We gather Oh Lord your people of faith to dedicate this Crystal Cathedral. . . . We offer this structure a shining star as an example to the world of the power of possibility thinking.’” [Emphasis mine.]—From Schuller’s “Litany of Dedication” on the day Crystal Cathedral opened.

Around 2010, possibility thinking stopped bringing in enough money to pay the bills, and, after bankruptcy, the Crystal Cathedral along with the surrounding complex of buildings designed by famous architects was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in 2011.

What Needed To Be Changed?

How does one convert a building to Catholicism that preaches a lower-case gospel of Positive Thinking and personal empowerment, and was designed to attract members by its spectacular design, the preacher's charism, and the absence of potentially off-putting Christian art and theology? How does one reorient it so its main focus is on Christ's sacrifice of the Eucharist?

Architect Matthew Alderman wrote about the changes he believed were needed in a 2012 article:

"The structure is laid out on a cruciform plan, but its principal axis lies within the short 'transept' arms. The interior should be reoriented to follow the long axis to give a sense of procession. ... The theatre-like upper balconies should be played down visually. The old choir platform and pulpit area in one transept should be screened off to form a raised choir area; ... which in turn will lead the eye more easily toward the chancel. A large, straightforward retablo will do much to terminate the processional axis . . ..—Matthew Alderman "Crystal Cathedral Revisited." The Living Church, September 26, 2014.

Terms: chancel: the area around the altar, also called the sanctuary; cruciform: shaped like a cross; nave: the long central main part of a church; retablo: the Spanish term for a large altarpiece, screen, or elaborate wooden structure with sculptures behind the altar (sometimes called the reredos); transept: the part of a cruciform church that crosses the nave at right angles and symbolically forms the arms of the cross.

What Did They Actually Change?

In 2012, the Diocese of Orange hired L.A.-based Johnson and Fain architectural firm to handle the remodeling. Scott Johnson, the firm's principal architect, is no relation to Philip Johnson—although Scott worked briefly at Philip’s New York firm in 1970. The remodeling needed not only to make the interior space suitable for Catholic worship but also to address serious problems with heat, light, and acoustics within the greenhouse-like glass building.

Inside temperatures were known to go as high as 110°, and the glare was so bad many worshippers wore sunglasses.

Glass deadens sound. The acoustics were abominable. In 1980, after Beverly Sills performed at an acoustically disastrous benefit show for Crystal Cathedral, an LA Times reviewer quipped, “People in glass houses shouldn’t give concerts.”

Johnson Fain attempted to mitigate these defects by creating "a building within a building," an interior shell made up of what they call quatrefoils. "Quatrefoils" are translucent, triangular shades made of plastic and aluminum mounted in squares of different sizes. The squares are distributed with their vanes angled in varying degrees to admit or block light, based on computer analysis.

Johnson knew they needed to deflect criticism that the quatrefoil shell closed off the openness to the external world that had been so important to Schuller. He tried to develop a new rationale .

“[The quatrefoils are] random, so when you look up at them they’re the seeming randomness of the stars in the sky, so in a metaphoric way they are still like the heavens or the sky or the universe, but in a different way.”

I 'd paraphrase this as, “Don’t criticize us for blocking the view of the sky. Our quatrefoils are random like stars, so looking at them is like looking at the heavens, ‘but in a different way.’” Sure!

The Hazel organ is fine for a Catholic cathedral, since, as Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II document on the liturgy, states, the organ is the instrument best-suited for divine worship. But it needed a 3 million dollar restoration. According to Rev. Christopher H. Smith, rector of Christ Cathedral,

“This building did not have any air conditioning . . . and so as you can imagine it got very hot. That did a number on the pipes … birds and other animals found the pipes as a lovely home.”

After repairs were completed, the wood organ casing and pipes were painted white.

The unsuitability of the vaguely diamond or star shape of the building for Catholic worship was another problem.

Johnson told a reporter. “It’s a very wide building and a fairly shallow building which is of course the opposite of a Roman Catholic basilica or cathedral, which tends to be long in the nave and then narrow in the transepts.”

They first planned to move the main entrance to the west so it would open to a traditionally long processional nave with the altar the main focus at the east end. But when the diocese asked for a less-costly design, the plan for a long nave, unfortunately, changed.

"Johnson Fain decided to orient the altar so it was sited off center to the north, so the parishioner seats would radiate around it, thereby allowing a priest to administer [sic] to everyone without ever turning his back on anyone."

Comments

This part included reactions to the first part of this article after I republished it at this Substack.

Father Joseph Locojano, IVE, was formerly an associate at a Santa Clara church now serving in the Middle East in a location that cannot be made public. He emailed me the following comments.

"Hopefully, in this article, you will consider the long history of Church sanctification of buildings. For example, the Pantheon, a completely circular building, was a well-known Pagan temple made into a minor Basilica.

"Also, being in the Middle East, I have become more aware of the long history of . . . mosques that were converted into Catholic Churches, Cathedrals, and Basilicas, especially in Spain.

"Here in the Middle East, church architecture has to be discrete in many places, much like the early house churches in the first few centuries. Does that make us less holy?"

Poet Dana Gioia, who wrote the libretto for the Fiat Lux oratorio that was commissioned to celebrate the dedication of Christ Cathedral, emailed these comments.

"It seems to me that if Catholics can convert a huge Roman bath and a pagan temple, they can handle the Crystal Cathedral."

As Fr. Locojano wrote, the most well-known conversion of a Roman temple is the Pantheon in Rome. The converted Roman bath mentioned by Gioia is the basilica that was built by Michelangelo including a portion of the Baths of Diocletian. Gioia also wrote,

"Compared to the brutalist postwar concrete churches I have attended in Germany, it’s St. Sulpice.”

As proof, Gioia also forwarded photos of St. Norbert's Church that he and his wife attended in Berlin with its mottled grey concrete walls and bell tower and goth (not Gothic) spikes on the roof.

Steven Ottományi, L. A. area sacred music director and composer, commented:

"When I was young, we would watch Dr. Schuller’s Hour of Power on television, often before going to Mass at our Catholic parish. Sometimes, we would go to the Crystal “Cathedral” for live services there. . . .

"When the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels . . . opened, I was the first associate director of liturgy and music (though my official title was “associate director of liturgy,” at least half my work was in music) and for at least two events, I was privileged to escort Dr. Schuller and Arvella to their seats . . . . my experience with them was nothing but the best. I know he had decided to sell the CC to the Catholic Church because he knew it would then always be a house of worship; at the same time . . . the news was received by all I knew with dismay. The acoustics, the building style, and so much more . . . seemed so very inimical to Catholic sensibilities that we all felt a great disappointment. Then again, what kind of building could they possibly have built? I think it could quite possibly have been worse!"

Peter Kwasniewski emailed the following:

"I was surprised you made no reference to my extensive critique of the Christ Cathedral. This article was deemed so hurtful that it elicited an official response at Pray Tell from some high-ranking bureaucrat in the Orange chancery ."

In his blistering critique, Kwasniewski stated:

"a choice was made to avoid normative Christian symbolism and to make use of signs associated with other religious traditions . . .. [RTS: For a few examples he gave, crystals are embedded in the altar, in the arms of the crucifix, and elsewhere in the cathedral, and the ends of the crucifix's arms are oddly decorated with crescents.] . . . But even if a cloaked message were not the objective of the artwork, the entire edifice remains a scandal, if for no other reason than the low quality of the work commissioned, the ugly manner in which holy persons are depicted, and the near comical awkwardness with which the mysteries of the Catholic Faith are proposed. It places a modernist caricature of the Faith before the eyes of those unfortunate enough to enter within it."

Here is an excerpt from a rebuttal Msgr. Arthur A. Holquin, a leader of the renovation project, wrote at his blog, which was reprinted at Pray Tell:

“No, Dr. Kwasniewski, the careful planning, design and execution for the repurposing of the former 'Crystal Cathedral' into Christ Cathedral, had no ulterior motive other than to reflect not only the liturgical norms and directives for the shaping of a cathedral church in this post-conciliar period, but also, to draw upon the artistic genius of the artists of this age . . .. "

It's hard to know what to say about these irreconcilable views. Many, including those who selected the artwork, see artistic genius, and many others see degraded pagan-influenced art.

What is the correct response? A shrug of the shoulders, and a casual, "De gustibus non est disputandum"?

What It Looks Like Now

Since the exterior design could not be changed, it still speaks whatever Schuller intended on the outside. The only thing to be considered is whether the interior of the now-Catholic Christ Cathedral speaks the language of the Faith, or perhaps whether really that matters, since it's better than many other cathedral designs.

A 14,000 pound rectangular stone altar sits on the raised sanctuary area three steps above the floor, with a lighted square metal baldacchino (canopy) and a crucifix suspended above it. Ascending seating and balconies surround the altar on three sides, in the non-traditional auditorium style increasingly popular since Vatican II.

The cost-saving decision to put the altar on the north side where Schuller's podium used to be put the altar in front of an elevated platform capable of seating hundreds of singers and musicians behind a black wrought iron railing over a grey marble wall in a direct sight line above and behind the altar.

The seating for the musicians is flanked by Jumbotrons. The altar is dominated also by the organ pipes and the console looming above. Putting the altar on the north side also made it impossible to install an altarpiece or some other more typical backdrop for a Catholic altar.

When I visited Christ Cathedral for the Fiat Lux premiere there, I fell in love with the interior, to my surprise. The white-painted quatrefoils and organ and the lights between the quatrefoils and the outside glass made the space brilliant. To my unsophisticated ear, whatever was wrong about the acoustics seemed to have been fixed in the remodel. I agree that Christ Cathedral is wonderful—but as a concert hall.

To address Fr. Locojano’s comment: Of course in times and places where houses of worship must be hidden, the language of sacred architecture cannot be used to shout, "This is a Catholic Church."

And to address Dana Gioia’s comment, yes, the Church has turned many pagan buildings into churches. But in the interiors of the converted Pantheon and baths of Diocletian, even though strict horizontal directionality is lacking the focus on the altars is now strong.

Better choices could have been made. But, as Gioia and Steven Ottományi wrote, it could have been worse.

I'll let architect Duncan Stroik have the last words :

"How does the bishop encourage full, active, and conscious participation in the liturgy by purchasing one of the buildings most associated with religion as theater? . . . One of the major criticisms of Catholic architecture during the past fifty years is that it has incorrectly adopted many of the forms of low-church Protestantism: the theater form, . . . asymmetrical layouts . . .. The altar area becomes a stage with a focus on entertainment . . .. A whole new generation of priests, laity, and theologians . . . find these Protestant innovations dated and lacking in substance . . . Unfortunately for the new generation and their children, the Orange diocese has chosen the opposite direction."—From "Should the Bishop Have Bought the Crystal Cathedral?" Crisis Magazine, August 22, 2012.

1. Latin Mass Magazine, The Journal of Catholic Culture. The goal stated on the About Us page of their website is:

To make known the treasures of Catholicism within the context of a Western culture that is in the process of rejecting the Faith responsible for its greatness.

To offer an antidote to the universal phenomenon of an accelerating secularism that is hostile to the One True Church and the salvific charge given to it by our Lord.

To disseminate through a variety of disciplines the fullness of Catholic culture and fight against the corrupting influence of the compartmentalization of knowledge.

Some Key Means of Accomplishing the Mission:

• Develop The Latin Mass journal into the intellectual arm of Catholics working for the return of the Church to tradition and authentic organic development.

• Identify, develop and publish writers committed to Catholic liturgical, spiritual, theological and cultural traditions.