History of St. Paul Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts

History of St. Paul Church

It is impossible at this stage to sort out Graham's ideas from those of Ryan, whose obituary gives him credit for the design, but a complex program of iconography was exploited. The Irish heritage of the parish is prominently displayed by an altar to St. Patrick and a mural of St. Columban, in Ryan's words, "parting with his Irish home and mother, as he and his companions set their faces to the journeys and labors that have immortalized their names." The other characteristic feature of the parish, its aggressive setting beside an expanding secular university, is seen in the choice of the bas-reliefs, St. Paul addressing the philosophers of Athens and inspiring the Ephesians to burn their false books of divination. Moreover, in an appropriate but unusual statement of Catholicism's own scholarly tradition, the stained glass parades the doctors of the church and other intellectual giants: from Athanasius and Ambrose to Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. The last window in the cycle is that of Ignatius of Loyola, whose purpose Fr. Ryan stated was "to combat in the universities of his day the rationalism that culminated in the French Revolution"--a broad view of the Enlightenment but a pointed one for the local audience. The Church's two constituencies are brought together not only in the facing statues of St. Peter (given by the Knights of Columbus) and of St. Paul (in memory of the six Harvard Catholics who died in World War I), but also in the unusual mission mural picturing parishioners and Harvard alumni going off to spread the faith, all under the pastor's benevolent watch and the Cardinal's blessing.

While the church was under construction, fundraising continued apace. The annual field day held in the summer of 1918 drew five hundred parishioners and friends. The Cambridge Chronicle of June 22 recorded several festive activities:

The parish was divided into four districts and each district had a table and booth in the basement of the new church as well as in the parish school where home made candy, fancy articles, ice cream and soft drinks were for sale, presided over by the women of the parish. During the afternoon, sport and field events were held by the children, and dancing in the evening. Special features were held in the afternoon, and there was a road race, over a course of about a mile and a half on the streets around the church for boys under 18, which was won by John Murphy....A potato race was held in the basement of the new church, and a three-legged race for boys furnished much amusement.

The picture of the pewless St. Paul's is taken from a booklet (which bears no date or other publication information) found in the parish files. It was published at the express request of Cardinal O'Connell, who after listening to a report by the then-pastor on the construction of St. Paul's as it neared completion, said, "The edifice you describe, Father Ryan, is a book in stone, and must be put into print. At the first opportunity, I enjoin you to write what you have said to me, and a great deal more....It would be an absolute loss to leave unrecorded the lessons conveyed by that edifice, interiorly and exteriorly embodied in symbolism and embellishment. All this, I repeat, should be prepared for the inquiring public." The book's author (presumably the pastor) writes of the St. Paul's shown in the picture: One day he encountered three craftsmen who were viewing the interior which, at the time, "was receiving the final strokes of the decorative brush." They were wondering what the edifice should be called. "'It is not a church, commonly understood, it is not a basilica. What, then, is its proper designation?' 'It is a temple, complete in vision and execution,' was the answer promptly returned, 'and I wish to state also,' the speaker continued, 'that I should desire, if it were possible, to have the church without pews, as at this moment, so that the open space, after the European way, might not be occupied by fixed sittings which detract so much from the sense of freedom and beauty.' Unhappily, the American plan must prevail."

One somehow suspects that "the speaker" of those sentiments was not one of the craftsmen and, further, that the pastor of St. Paul's was, liturgically speaking, more than a little ahead of his time.