Our parish in Fayetteville is trying to build a new church, but with rising costs it can't afford all of the neo-Gothic gee-gaws it wanted, so it's back to the drawing board.
This is not a new problem for the Catholic Church. Back in the day, we're talking 1626-50, the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius (Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Campo Marzio), faced a similar problem. The church was constructed in the Baroque style, but it ran out of the money needed to construct a proper dome and cupola at the church's crossing. Andrea Pozzo, who painted the ceiling of the nave, opted instead to create a trompe-l'oeil on a flat surface by painting a faux dome and cupola. Apparently, there was a fire a couple of hundred years later, so the false dome we see is a reproduction.
By the way, this is a Jesuit "Latin Catholic titular church." Thank you Wikipedia. What this means is that the church is assigned to a "cardinal deacon" (maybe an ordained priest since it looks like he could later become a cardinal bishop?). I was totally unaware of the hierarchy within the College of Cardinals and invite you to check out "Titular Church" in Wikipedia, if you're curious.
I must confess that the Roman revelers were out last night partying until the wee hours of the morning below our window. As a consequence, the complexities of the Church bureaucracy seem a bit fuzzy this morning!
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