Patrick Comerford
Newman University Church or Catholic University Church in Dublin is celebrating the Feast of Saint John Henry Newman at 11 am and 6:15 today (6 October 2024), with Archbishop Dermot Farrell, the University Church Singers and the Vocare Ensemble.
The church is tucked away behind a terrace of buildings on the south side of Saint Stephen’s Green, beside Newman House and between the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Justice.
This beautiful church, formally known as the Church of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, has been a distinctive landmark in Dublin city centre for almost 170 years and I visited it once again last week during yet another fleeting visit to Dublin.
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was the most prominent member of the Oxford Movement, reconnecting Anglicanism with its Catholic roots and heritage. Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 9 October 1845 and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 30 May 1847.
Newman was the founding Rector of the newly-formed Catholic University of Ireland in Spring 1854, and work on building Newman University Church in the gardens of 87 Saint Stephens Green began in May 1855.
The church opened a year later on Ascension Day, 1 May 1856. The interior decoration was completed some months later. Although the church building project was placed under the protection of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the church was formally placed under the patronage of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom.
John Henry Newman was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, choosing as his motto Cor ad Cor Loquitor, ‘Heart Speaks to Heart’.
The church is distinctive in its architectural style and exceptional in its decoration. The English architect John Hungerford Pollen (1820-1902) designed the church in a Byzantine Revival style, in response to Newman’s dislike of Gothic architecture.
Pollen was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1845. He became a Roman Catholic in 1852, and resigned his fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, where he had worked on the hall ceiling.
Pollen’s other works, mainly in collaboration, include the University Museum in Oxford, the Arthurian murals at the Oxford Union, in a group that include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and Brompton Oratory. Pollen was Professor of Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Ireland from 1855 to 1857. He later settled in Hampstead, worked for The Tablet and became assistant keeper of the South Kensington Museum.
Artistically and architecturally, the church in the style of a continental basilica and embraces both the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity. The cost of building the church came to £5,600, almost double its original estimate, and a substantial donation from Newman helped to defray most of the costs.
The church is entered through a porch built with polychromatic brick with four short columns whose capitals bear the symbols of the four evangelists along with the figures of six angels. A suspended belfry was later built above the porch. Inside the porch, six steps lead down to the atrium, and beyond the atrium is the church.
Inside, the richly decorated church is oriented on a south-north axis rather than the traditional east-west liturgical orientation. It is rectangular in shape, following the dimensions and orientation of the garden on which it was built. The floor of the church is paved with unglazed Staffordshire black and red tiles.
The flat red-timbered roof is painted with acorns, oak leaves and branches. It is supported by red painted beams and joists. Just below the roof at irregular intervals are windows with knots of glass made at a bottle factory in Ringsend, Dublin.
The sanctuary, inspired by the sanctuary in San Clemente in Rome, is raised above the level of the nave and is approached by a flight of five steps. A short alabaster communion rail divides the sanctuary and the nave.
The semi-dome above the sanctuary features Our Lady enthroned as Sedes Sapientiae – the ‘Seat of Wisdom’. A great vine – the Tree of Life – fills the semi-dome, its coiled branches bearing the images of martyrs holding palm fronds, symbolic of their victory in Christ. They are surrounded by various animals of creation.
There is a richly decorated elaborate gilded baldacchino over the altar, and a marble reredos. The original alabaster altar frontal has 12 discs of Derbyshire fluorspar crystal set in two groups of six. Six tall Byzantine-shaped gilded candlesticks stand on the altar along with a cross made of brass.
At the Gospel side of the sanctuary, a choir gallery is supported on eight marble pillars. The choir gallery is over nine meters in length but only some 1.8 meters wide.
Opposite the choir gallery, outside the sanctuary area, the pulpit stands on four pillars of polished marble, each pillar bearing the symbol and name of one of the four evangelists. Perhaps because of his evangelical Anglican background, Newman placed great emphasis on the importance of preaching. He hoped to make Dublin a Catholic centre of religion and learning, as he had experienced as an Anglican in Oxford.
The walls of the church are decorated to a height of 4.5 meters with marble of diverse colours originating from counties in the four provinces: black from Kilkenny, green from Galway, red from Cork, and brown and grey from Armagh and Offaly.
The upper tiers of the side walls display a series of large paintings. The original work by French copy artists and chosen by John Henry Newman, were copies of tapestries designed by Raphael in the Sistine Chapel and images of the Apostles in the Church of Tre Fontaine.
All 22 paintings darkened over the years and were no longer legible. Several professional attempts at cleaning them were to no avail and the originals were replaced at the time of the 150th anniversary of the church in 2016 with paintings by the American-Turkish artist Levent Tuncer.
Eleven arched panels on the side walls feature saints related to Ireland or to Christian education. The lunettes in the sanctuary depict Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid, patrons of Ireland, and Saint Laurence O’Toole, patron of Dublin. Those in the nave depict Saint Dominic, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Philip Neri, Blessed John de Britto, Saint Benedict, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Fiachra and Saint Ignatius Loyola.
Shortly after Newman returned to England, an organ was built for the gallery.
The Lady Chapel was added to the church in 1875. Three square stained-glass windows depict the Nativity, the Adoration of the Wise Men and Christ with the Doctors in the Temple – an appropriate image for a church linked initimately with life of a university. The Lady Chapel) also has small marble altar with a niche and painted statues.
The posthumous bust of Newman in the church is by the Dublin sculptor Thomas Farrell and dates from 1892.
There is an interesting memorial in the church to Thomas Arnold (1823-1900), Professor of English at the Catholic University until 1862 and later Professor of English Literature at UCD from 1882 to 1900. He was a son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, and a brother of the poet Matthew Arnold. One of his last students in UCD was James Joyce. Arnold was the grandfather of both Julian Huxley and Aldous Huxley.
There is a memorial in the atrium to Eugene O’Curry (1794-1862), the first Professor of Irish History and Archaeology at the Catholic University of Ireland from 1854.
The church can accommodate a congregation of 600, including 100 people in the organ gallery.
Initially, the church was attached to the neighbouring Catholic University and later to Saint Kevin’s Parish, Harrington Street. It became a separate parish church in 1974.
I was in the University Church for two funerals in the same year: for over half a century, my third cousin Sean Comerford (1938-2011) was the long-serving Sacristan of the Catholic University Church; and later in 2011 was there for the funeral of Caroline Walsh, the Literary Editor of The Irish Times.
The church has been in the care of the University of Notre Dame since 2016, and the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason, founded in 2017 at the invitation of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
The church says it ‘welcomes every person as a beloved child of God’ and fosters ‘faith development through respectful dialogue between Church and culture and the meaningful integration of faith and reason’.
The parish team includes the Revd Gary S Chamberland CSC, Director, Dominique Cunningham, Associate Director of Liturgy and Music, and Katherine Dunn, Director of Information Technology and Communication.
Sunday Masses are at 11 am and 6:15 pm, and weekday Masses (Monday to Friday) at 1:05 pm. There is Taizé-style worship on Tuesdays at 6 pm. There is no public Mass on Bank Holidays or Saturdays.
4 comments:
We married in this church in 1989
Amazing, I will definitely visit next time I'm in Dublin. Keep up your amazing blog
Wow, I will definitely visit next time in Dublin.
Great article, I will definately visit next time in Dublin. Keep up the good work
Post a Comment