So it is not a part of the Ordinariate or Anglican, but it is a part of the Reform of the Reform, of which we too are a part. It is the new chapel for the University of Southern California's Catholic Student Ministry: the Church of Our Savior.
A view of the nearly completed sanctuary at 9pm on Dec. 2 (Photo taken by one of Bl. John's members who is a student at USC)
Tonight, Archbishop Gomez consecrated it for use and will be a beautiful addition to the Los Angeles ecclesiastical heritage.
Here is an interesting article from tonight's LA Times which I will post without comment:
Lavish new church, meeting center to serve USC Catholics
By Larry Gordon
Workers make finishing touches in the new Our Savior Church in Los Angeles.
(Christina House, Los Angeles Times / November 30, 2012)
The schedule of Sunday Masses for Catholic students at USC
accommodates their studying, partying and sleeping habits. Services are
offered at 10:30 a.m., 7 p.m. and at 10 p.m., a popular option that is
lightheartedly nicknamed the "Last Chance Mass."
Upward of 400 USC students previously attended at least one Mass a
week at a now-demolished chapel just north of the university's main
campus. The showing was respectable but still a small fraction of the
estimated 10,000 Roman Catholic students — about a quarter of the
overall enrollment — at the nonsectarian university.
Officials are expecting those numbers to rise sharply starting this
week when a lavish new $29-million Catholic church and meeting center
formally open their doors. Supporters also hope the complex will become a
religious and architectural landmark for the school and the
neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles.
On Sunday, Los Angeles
Archbishop Jose H. Gomez is scheduled to lead a Mass to consecrate the
300-seat church and inaugurate the adjacent student activity building,
called the USC Caruso
Catholic Center. Our Savior Catholic Church is an Italian
Romanesque-style structure — designed by the team that did the Grove and
the Americana at Brand shopping centers — with a 76-foot bell tower, a
gold-leaf apse and huge stained glass windows depicting Bible scenes and
saints.
Father Lawrence Seyer, the pastor, hopes the new complex at West 32nd
and Hoover streets will help "show students that their Catholic faith
is something relevant to their lives. They are growing in mind and body,
but we want them to grow in spirit and recognize the important things
in life such as love, truth, justice and faith."
Students who drift from religion as college freshmen often embrace it
again as upperclassmen, he said, adding: "They say: 'Partying was fun
but I feel empty.' "
The buildings, which surround a public courtyard, are designed to
attract the attention of the thousands of student pedestrians and
bicyclists who are headed to campus just a block away.
"But in the end, a building is just a building. Ultimately it is the
programming and community life that will make them want to become
involved," Seyer said. Besides the Masses, activities will include
interfaith meals and a weekly gathering to prepare and deliver food to
the homeless on skid row.
The biggest donor and the new center's partial namesake is Rick
Caruso, the civic activist and shopping mall developer who created the
Grove in the Fairfax district and Americana at Brand in Glendale. A 1980
alumnus with two sons enrolled at USC, Caruso gave $7.5 million to the
church and center and has pledged $1 million more for programming,
officials said.
So far, about $36 million has been raised in all, including $7
million for an endowment, mainly from alumni. The Catholic Archdiocese
of Los Angeles owns and runs the complex, which is affiliated with USC's
Office of Religious Life.
As an undergraduate, Caruso said, he barely noticed the previous
Catholic center and instead attended Sunday Mass with his family in
Beverly Hills. With USC student life more focused these days on and
around the campus, he said he wanted to help create "a statement that
faith is important, that Catholicism is relevant in your life however
you view Catholicism."
The church has an exterior of Italian travertine, marble floors and
altar and interior wooden arches reaching 50 feet. On a recent day,
craftsmen from the Judson Studios in Highland Park were installing some
of their final stained glass windows, each 24 feet high, illustrating
the Beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Suspended over the altar is a 7-foot bronze sculpture of the
crucified Christ, created by Christopher Slatoff. Along the side walls,
the 14 Stations of the Cross feature original oil paintings by artist
Peter Adams, who traveled to Jerusalem to research the scenes.
Caruso said he is not a fan of the starkly modern Cathedral of Our
Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. So for the USC project, he
was instrumental in hiring Elkus Manfredi Architects of Boston, the firm
whose designs of the Grove and the Americana triggered much debate
about re-creating historical styles.
Caruso said he wanted the church, which echoes elements of a 13th
century sanctuary, to have "a feeling of permanence and solidity ...
that calms you down and that allows you to contemplate, to pray and to
think." Contemporary design, he said, "would not have conveyed that."
Around the country over the last decade, the trend at colleges has
been to build or renovate interfaith chapels, rather than ones devoted
to one denomination, according to the Rev. Lucy Forster-Smith, national
president of the Assn. of College and University Religious Affairs.
At USC, in contrast, the motivation seems to be creating "a very
compelling and exciting space that would be inviting to USC students"
and help them become the next generation of Catholic activists, said
Forster-Smith, a Presbyterian minister who is the chaplain at Macalester
College in Minnesota.
Sergio Avelar, a USC senior who is leader of the campus Catholic
community, said that some students may think the new complex is too
ornate but that most are excited about the church's beauty and the
well-appointed meeting rooms and library in the two-story center next
door.
Avelar, who grew up in Los Angeles, said the facility will be
especially important to the increasing numbers of USC students from
other states and countries who cannot attend Mass at their hometown
parishes. While the neighborhood-oriented St. Vincent Catholic Church is
nearby at Adams Boulevard and Figueroa Street, and some USC students
volunteer there, most prefer having a church adjacent to campus that
caters to their own interests and schedules, such as that 10 p.m. Mass,
he added.
Varun Soni, USC's dean of religious life and the first Hindu to hold
such an office at an American university, said he expects the complex to
become an important place for faith and activism in a neighborhood that
already has an impressive array of Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu
institutions.
"It will be a place for all students to think about their own faith
and how that connects to their own lives and careers," Soni said.
