St. Raphael's Cathedral, Madison, WI

St. Raphael's Cathedral - 1946

St. Raphael's Cathedral - 1955
To you out of state readers, St. Raphael's was burnt down(arson) in 2005 by this guy. Father Z posted a nice photo of a painting depicting firefighters in the Cathedral wreckage. 

I think even when a church needs additional space in the sanctuary, that there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water.  It's like there was this effort to make sure that no church would ever again look like those old outdated ethnic parishes.  I would have loved to see someone adapt the ethnic parish look and feel but be innovative enough to extend it's look to meet the modern need.  I mean, what's with the UFO lights?  I feel like the La Crosse Cathedral had a similar situation.  We needed to extend the space and did make a grand, large church, but lost something in the translation. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like 1955 setup better than what I saw in 2004.

Badger Catholic said...

Lance, do you have pictures from when you were there? I saw they did do some work before the fire like replacing the spire as well.

Unknown said...

Speaking of churches looking like old churches, check out St. Paul's Catholic Center on State St in Madison. It was newly built in 2016-17 after the old church was torn down. The chapel looks like a church from centuries ago.