Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, on 555 West Temple St in downtown Los Angeles, California, is unlike any cathedral I have ever seen. The first word I wrote in my notebook was "wow," the second, "austere." I went two Mondays ago for the weekday mass with a friend of mine from high school, Nedah. From the outside, it is very Californian, made of solemn tan/yellowish-dyed cement, ala California missions. The main entrance is rather inconspicuous, compared to the rest of the massive building. We learned when we took the tour that it was the Virgin Mary encapsulated in sculpture above the door, the namesake of our lady of the angels, and she was 8ft tall, made of bronze, and not recognizable at first like any Mary I'd seen before. She was in plain garb, which according to our old whizened tour guide meant that it was meant to seem like she had just been surprised from the kitchen and was here to welcome us in. (thanks, traditional gender roles for women) A pleasant surprise about her sculpture was that apparently the artist (Robert Graham) made her face by incorporating a facial characteristic of every race of woman in the world. Not sure exactly how that was possible, but a distinctive face it was nonetheless.

Apparently she was surrounded by the sun and atop the moon. (didn't notice the crescent until he said that)

The huge bronze doors cost $3 million to make and the artist's mother's rosary was embedded into the metal, low enough that you could touch it:

We sped ahead into the service. Our Monday 12:10pm service was attended by a decent crowd, including a large group of 2nd graders from Manhattan Beach, who had just taken their first communion that morning. The priest wore green and the reader (a woman, which is apparently a relatively new development for Catholicism, or at least some of Catholicism) wore bright pink. The sermon was brief, intended to be shorter than a lunch break, it seemed. The message, as best as I remember: God chose the ravens to feed Elijah. Not some pretty birds, but ravens. Symbolism, folks. I was terribly distracted during the service by the gorgeous yet simple decorations. The whole cathedral inside, most noticeably the floor, was slanted towards the gorgeous red marble altar (six tons!) at the front:

And I just can't resist showing you the close-up of what held up this altar:

Whew. We sat in the 50K each pews (thanks wikipedia) and marveled at the windows and the tapestries. The windows were made of alabaster stone, so they let in light without any of the glare. Instead of stained glass windows, there were huge tapestries on the walls, depicting people looking towards the altar as well, along with the slanted floor. Most noticeable was that the people were not just saints and holy people, but normal people as well! Here's a pew:

One of the tapestries even had a little white boy in sneakers!

Notice! He's even wearing shorts. (it's the second tapestry from the left and he's standing next to a black boy wearing tan pants.) Also appreciate the chandeliers, with the three lamps clearly representing the trinity--what might be less noticeable is that the center metal thing was actually a speaker! Because the acoustics were so bizarre, they just decided to rig up a huge speaker system out of every chandelier in the whole place.

The sermon continued. One thing that surprised me was that when the donation plates were passed around, when other churches would usually let newcomers pass it by, this priest instead said: "Especially if it's your first time, please give generously." Not sure how to interpret what that meant for us and stereotypes of Catholicism, Nedah and I let it pass us by.

It was then that I perhaps did something... bad. The time came to take communion and I did not know what to do. I had been told by a Catholic friend many years ago that if I was not baptized, I was not allowed to take communion. However, no one mentioned this at this fine noon service at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels that morning. The ritual began, with bread and wine given to each congregant who came up to the priest and several female attendants. And I decided, both in the interest of research and experimentation, to go along with it. Now, I can't lie. Those were not the only reasons I did it. It was actually in that moment that I had a kind of epiphany. Maybe it was the grandeur of the place, the very underscored cross at the front, but I felt confident. And I decided to not give in to the shame and guilt inherent in being in a Catholic cathedral and not having been baptized. Being excluded from such a ritual because I had not taken part in another ritual... thinking that I was not allowed to participate gave me an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had heard of Catholic guilt before, but guilt for not being Catholic seemed to be another thing entirely, and what I was experiencing in that moment. And so I did it. I took full communion. No, I did not become Catholic in that moment. And I was not smitten by lightning either. I took the little chewy cracker and sipped the tasty red wine that even the 2nd graders got to sup, and I refused to feel guilty. I participated in a time-honored ritual, paying tribute to a god, perhaps. I did not feel that my not being baptized made my tribute any less worthy. And I decided that I would not be cowed. There was no one to stop me and no one even looked at me twice when I was up there, in line, in front of the priest, or in front of the attendant. Nedah was my only witness, and she stayed back in our pew, unwilling to participate in something so foreign to her beliefs. But I decided that I was practicing openness in doing this project, and that I was going to go along with everything that happened at these services to the fullest of my potential. I don't want to be solely window shopping, but trying things on as well. With no intention to buy, still similar to window shopping, but more like at least pretending for a second that I owned that article of clothing, that thing I was trying on that I saw in the window, in this case Catholicism, and trying to see what it would feel like. Metaphors aside, I felt the guilt wash away from me, then come back a bit, like a wave tends to do in a Catholic cathedral, and then I decided that what was done was done, and refused to listen to it again.

After the service, Nedah and I went and joined the 1pm tour of the cathedral. I have never felt so educated about a building. The tour was long, but when I say long, I mean LONG. It was TWO HOURS LONG. That is one LONG tour of a cathedral. And while at the end I felt like I was going to start chewing the soles of my shoes I was so hungry, I did learn a lot about this cathedral, and even cathedrals in general. For instance! We learned that whenever a cathedral is founded, the constellations of the night it is dedicated are recorded somewhere on the grounds. We learned that the Hearst Castle donated the biggest bell of the cathedral, and that a small bell in the corner never rings and is a memorial to the man who built the wall. We learned that there are 42 languages of the Los Angeles archdiocese covered by this cathedral, the biggest archdiocese in the country. The cathedral's mantra "a house of prayer for all people" was taken far more seriously than I had imagined. On the plaza was a Jerusalem fountain, in honor of the Jewish community. The twelve palm trees of the plaza, which could hold 5,000 people for dinner, represented the twelve apostles.

We learned about the baptism pool inside, in explaining it our tour guide said: "we limit it to 20 babies every Sunday. We could do 30 babies, but you can only do so much." (tell me about it! what a large congregation!)

I think this was the world's tallest tapestry. But that's the baptism pool down at the bottom, full of holy water.

Continuing the tour, we learned that a cathedral is called such because inside it is a "cathedra," which is a chair of authority where the bishop sits:

Plus pretty organ pipes!

You can't see from that picture and I felt too weird to take a picture (yes, I'll admit it, I'm kind of afraid of crosses) but between the cathedra and the organ was Jesus on the cross, but the story of that particular art/ornament/talisman/object was really bizarre. The brass statue of Jesus himself was really creepily accurate of what a body would look like having been nailed to a cross for three days. Our tour guide explained in detail about how all the organs move down to the legs and how the pancreas ruptured and how the skin would look after being whipped, etc. It was sculpted by a Jewish sculptor, apparently, and get this: Not only did he try to make it look like a Jewish man on the verge of death. He actually ended up going kind of mad, attempted to put nails through his own hands he got so into this project... and then converted to Catholicism. Creepy, no?

At the ceiling of this huge cathedral there were two red hats that looked like Chinese New Year hats (if such exists). Apparently, those hats are given to a new cardinal by the pope. When the cardinal dies, the hat is hung up in the church and it stays up there--and the cardinal's soul does too--until the hat rots and falls down.

The last 30 minutes of the tour was of the mausoleum in the basement. Very similar to the cemeteries-in-the-walls that I saw in Hong Kong, just way emptier and newer. On our way out, I saw a sweet old Asian man crying by a picture, presumably of his late wife. Silenced, we moved away.

Overall, I've got to say: the Los Angeles Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is an incredible cathedral. Post-modern in the neatest way, with miniature art galleries inside but surrounding the main indoor room, with tasty wine, remarkable tolerance of Jews (lots of rabbis participated in the dedication and sometimes used the building itself for their own services) and many great stories. Definitely worth the visit.

Stay tuned for a brief respite from Los Angeles-specific places of worship: New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine! Exciting stained glass but not Catholic! What is this world coming to!