Churches/Lives of Service
Dupré, Judith & Daniels, Jim
DOORS OF SALVATION Churches Judith Dupre HarperCollins, $35, 168 pp. Lives of Service Stories from Maryknoll Jim Daniels Orbis, $25, 128 pp. Patrick Jordan It is not often one can confess...
...Father Bob Mc-Cahill of Goshen, Indiana, says a solitary early morning Mass, then carries a dying Muslim into a teeming Bengali hospital...
...a Hindu Bengali dye maker's magenta-stained hands welcome a visitor...
...the graduated wooden gables of Norway's thirteenth-century Borgund Stave marry Norse mythology, Catholicism, and pagoda-like layers...
...Curiously absent from many of the photographs are actual worshipers...
...Readers of Maryknoll magazine will recognize his photography and relish the folio-size treatment offered by Lives...
...True to its American roots, for ninety years it has melded both daring and diversity to bring the gospel to the earth's poorest peoples...
...In such a setting, the effort to worship fruitfully-to pray in unison, with self-forgetfulness and delight- can seem painful, even futile...
...Unfortunately, the book provides no maps...
...A limited study of nine contemporary Maryknoll missioners, lay and religious, on four continents, Lives conveys the immediacy of God's presence as manifest in the missioners' everyday lives...
...From there the reader is drawn into a panoramic, double-page reproduction of the fourth-century apsidal mosaic of San Clemente in Rome, a veritable garden of Christian iconography...
...his talent and respect for his subjects are apparent throughout...
...Patrick Jordan It is not often one can confess with the psalmist, "We will go up to the house of the Lord with joy...
...It ranges across the full Christian timeline and draws examples from the corners of the earth...
...At each site, he chronicles the Mary-knollers' lives in at least two distinct venues...
...Often the house of the Lord is not merely less than magnificent, it is tacky...
...The theological spectrum is also broad, from Coptic to Unitarian...
...and Doctor Susan Nagele conducts an outdoor clinic amid war and mayhem in Sudan...
...Church structures in particular are important, since they locate communal memory and facilitate the personal encounter with life's mysteries...
...Daniels spent four years on the project...
...Here Christianity is not mere edifice or past history, but open, young, and exploratory, a confirmation of God's interest...
...There is even a ring of living trees that ascends the structure's exterior, like a living crown...
...The reasons are many...
...Sister Juana Encalada nurses a woman dying of aids in Phnom Penh...
...Dupre's selection is necessarily subjective, an occupational hazard unfortunately reinforced by chatty asides (Westminster Abbey is "a veritable icon of the Protestant faith...
...She commences brilliantly, with a six-teen-by-twelve-inch wrap-around cover depicting Donatello's 1433 gilded limestone sculpture, Annunciation, from Santa Croce, Florence...
...The actions of its ministers can add to our sense of inner distraction...
...Often, the contrast represented is between urban setting and mission outpost, reached only after arduous, often dangerous travel...
...They are part pilgrimage, part proclamation...
...Yet their brilliance and nobility convey a liberating vitality...
...Despite a heavy emphasis on cathedrals, the book includes a wide range of denominational meeting spaces, high and low...
...In a word, here Christianity is worshipful...
...Moscow's recently reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Savior strives to banish memories of its destruction under Stalin...
...The photographs' inherent beauty and painful subject matter provoke a sense of dissonance...
...despite its gorgeous photographs, there is no substitute for standing beneath the Pantheon's awe-producing ocu-lus or for hearing the "Salve Regi-na" disappear into the golden domes of San Marco...
...The Maryknoll mission society has a proud, courageous history...
...Judith Dupre's Churches, a chronological guide to Christian church architecture, examines over eighty houses of worship, from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People in Queens, New York...
...He visits Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, war-stricken Sudan, Tanzania, New Guinea, and Panama...
...That quote tends to haunt the rest of Churches...
...No matter how often one opens this book, the entrance rite itself elevates the imagination and promises page after page of visual treasure...
...This disappoints since the author inaugurates the volume with a substantive interview with Swiss Italian architect Mario Botta...
...Brother John Belching visits displaced Cambodian war refugees in Thailand...
...These images are gorgeous yet far from romanticized...
...the glistening beads and skin of Toposa girls shine in warring Sudan...
...Dupre's stated aim is to create "a work of art that reflects the grandeur of its subject matter...
...These two oversized volumes, handsomely illustrated but strikingly different in scope and theme, give some indication as to both the difficulties and the glory involved...
...His Marian chapel at Tamaro, Switzerland soars over an alpine valley, making you feel as if you were sky diving...
...Maryknoll not only anticipated much of the new missiology promulgated at Vatican II, but has long promoted en-culturating the gospel where it meets people...
...While the indigenous people presented are our contemporaries, they live in different centuries...
...Patrick Jordan is Commonweal's managing editor.eal's managing editor...
...the silhouette of Admat fishermen reflects off glinting waters in New Guinea...
...To which Botta responds, 'A photograph is only an approximation...
...It glistens with a thick varnish-like finish that compels opening, parting at the center like a medieval church's baptistry doors...
...The walls of colored glass at Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, rise up like glowing stones...
...His cathedral at Evry, near Paris, combines natural light and textures with a keen sacramental understanding...
...This not only diminishes a sense of human perspective but gives the faulty impression that the structures represented are simply tourist destinations rather than centers of prayer...
...Daniels provides a short description of Maryknoll's three branches-which include priests and brothers, sisters, laypeople and associate priests- and then takes off for the far field with camera in hand...
...Dupre gives Botta ample space to describe his architectural rationale, a combination of Romanesque and modernist, and to present examples of his work...
...Just how rich and kaleidoscopic this turns out to be is vividly captured by Daniels's camera: the blood-red robes of Masai tribesmen dance against Tanzania's green hills...
...In a revealing exchange, Dupre says that Botta's buildings "are strikingly different in person than they appear in photographs...
...Best known in this country for designing San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, Botta seems to thrive on creating public buildings, particularly libraries and churches...
...An eleven-by-eleven-inch photographic journal, Lives combines brief commentary with 120 vivid images by National Geographic photographer Jim Daniels...
...In contrast, Lives of Service is the People of God (the church, in its broad sense) observed in prayer, action, and sometimes heroic circumstances...
...We each carry a great deal of personal, communal, aesthetic, and theological baggage...
...In a church, Botta observes, "you are already part of what has transpired and will transpire there...
...Botta is a serious thinker and craftsman for whom architecture is an art that is spiritually transformative while providing concrete points of reference...
...Churches is part photographic extravaganza (more than two hundred color and black-and-white photographs), part history and guide book...
Vol. 129 • March 2002 • No. 5
