An Existential Dilemma in the Land of Vlad Tepes

A heated debate is raging on in the eastern European country of Romania, a member of EU since 2007 but not of the Schengen zone.  Members of the Schengen zone can travel freely without a passport between the member states. The debate has divided the population along party lines, ideology, faith, experience, education, and even families in their extended relationships.

Romania is a paradise of spectacular landscapes, mountains, valleys, rivers, gorges, the famous Danube River, the Danube Delta with its rich fauna and flora, the Black Sea, and fertile lands that could grow so much wheat and corn, it was known as the bread basket of the Balkans. Many yet to be explored natural resources are hidden beneath the soil and rocks:  gold, coal, iron core, bauxite, manganese, lead, salt, silver, zinc, petroleum, and natural gas.

Temporarily forgotten are the economic problems that ail a crony capitalist system emerging from decades of communist dictatorial oppression. What is important at the moment is whether Bucharest will build the biggest mosque in Europe, in the middle of predominantly Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. It is an existential dilemma in the lands that Vlad Tepes, the infamous Dracula, and many voivodes and rulers after him, protected with guts, blood, and glory, from the constant invasions of the Ottoman Empire during five centuries.

Why would Bucharest need such a huge mosque? Who will pray there? The population is atheist, agnostic, or Christian. Dobrogea, in the eastern part of Romania, already has mosques to accommodate the Turks whose ancestors had settled in these parts of the Black Sea.

Can the country, struggling with many economic issues,  afford the influx of Middle Eastern men of fighting age who are sure to come as war “refugees?” Apparently the prime minster, who allegedly received a new knee in Turkey, was quoted as saying that Romania is prepared to receive refugees and has opened two camps with a capacity of 500 each in the western part of Romania, but so far, few “refugees” have petitioned for asylum. Asked if such refugees will be distributed by areas or by counties, Ponta answered that the said “refugees” are free to go wherever they wish, with only one interdiction, they cannot vote.  http://www.ziare.com/victor-ponta/premier/romania-pregatita-pentru-refugiati-ponta-sa-i-integram-sa-nu-ramana-pe-cheltuiala-statului-1385886

“The mayor of Arad, where unemployment is zero, told me that they need workers, especially those who are easy to train. Nothing happened what ‘the crusader Basescu’ said,” Ponta concluded. Basescu, the former president, vehemently opposed the Bucharest mosque and the “refugees” being settled in Romania.

Those who survived Ceausescu’s four-decade long dictatorship are divided. Some who are too old to work and fend for themselves, are nostalgic for his tyranny because they did not have to work very hard, did not have to be responsible for themselves. As long as comrade government provided meager rations and salaries, enough to survive on, they were satisfied.

The young, representing the “tyranny of the oppressed,” have no memory of Ceausescu’s regime and thus think that socialism and communism are great ideas – who would not want to be taken care of in the fashion of the western European Fabian socialist societies whose governments are bankrupt?

These two groups do not see any problem with building the largest mosques in Bucharest – the more the merrier. The fact that the two cultures, Islamic and western, are incompatible, does not seem to faze them.

A short list highlights the alleged corruption and theft affecting society and the economy profoundly. These events took place after Ceausescu was executed on Christmas 1989 when a period of chaos ensued. How long this period lasted is debatable but the results are still felt today.

-          Part of the national bank’s gold was allegedly taken out of the country.

-          Factories that may or may not have been productive were sold to foreign investors or destroyed and sold for scrap metal and the money was pocketed by those in power.

-          Diesel payments for ships sailing under Romanian flag were stopped, the ships were sold as scrap metal in the ports where they happened to be docked, and the money was pocketed by those governing and making such decisions.

-          Even though Romania had no debt, once some industrial and agricultural production was stopped, it was necessary to make loans from foreign banks in order to keep the country afloat, thus Romania began its indebtedness to the western bankers.

-          Oil, gas, and gold were given to foreign investors in exchange for substantial bribes to governing individuals.

-          Laws were passed that allowed foreigners with money to invest in “agriculture” to exploit the land and to harvest timber, gold, and frack for natural gas, desertifying large tracks of land in the process, and poisoning rivers with cyanide and other toxic chemicals; the said foreign investors were not required to clean up the ecological disaster they left behind.

-          As more and more taxes were imposed, the money were not put to good use, benefitting or building schools, hospitals, and orphanages; the money built thousands of churches and fattened the pockets of the governing individuals who used priests to preach to their flocks to vote in the most corrupt politicians who were skilled orators.

-          The alleged sabotage of Romanian investors who found efficient and non-toxic ways to explore for gold without destroying the natural habitat.

-          Out of control deforestation resulted in landslides and floods and the destruction of entire villages.

-          Alleged damage to tourism at the Black Sea due to fracking for natural gas in Dobrogea.

-          Creation of a class of EU-style welfare dependent citizens and parasites who watch mind-numbing telenovelas while their country is being destroyed.

-          Laws that allow politicians to purchase land for prices below real estate values in beautiful areas and to build villas on that land.

-          Exacerbating the decades-old divide between Hungarians, Swabians, and Romanians in Transylvania through corrupt political moves, keeping the population at odds.

-          Passing laws of immunity for crimes committed by those in power who undermined the country’s economy for personal and political gain.

-          Expropriating private land of those who opposed the land grab across the country.

-          The irrational decision to pay Holocaust reparations of 60 billion euros to Israel (even though 95 percent of Jews were alleged to have survived in Romania when they were sent to Transnistria, away from Hitler’s grab) at a time when former soldiers, workers, teachers, and other poor Romanians living on pensions of 300 euros per month had to take substantial EU-dictated austerity cuts; 20 billion euros were already paid even though Romania had to likely borrow the money.

-          The Penal Code was changed and expunged of the punishment for undermining the national economy.

-          Billions of euros were allegedly funneled to finance electoral campaigns of those in power who speak so eloquently and convincingly, promising to eradicate the blatant corruption in society but deliver nothing except more wealth and power to themselves.

Despite the bleak economic reality, the useful idiot voters who applaud and reelect to power the very same corrupt politicians who have relegated them to comfortable poverty, are busy on social media, discussing passionately the pros and cons of the mosque, while the economic and societal quagmire around them continues unabated. They seem to be deaf and ambivalent to the historic song of previous generations, “Wake up, Romanians, from the sleep of death.”

Whether some of the allegations can be proven and could stand up in a court of law remains to be seen. It is a fact that the majority of the population is still relatively poor even after twenty-five years since communism “fell” while a few politicians and oligarchs have become millionaires and billionaires many times over.  Crony capitalism has replaced one set of ruling elites with another. The only difference now is that the masses can idle their time with tele-entertainment on every channel and food is available. They can criticize the new regime, but nobody listens.

 

 

 

The Washington National Cathedral, Not an Ordinary Place of Worship

Photo courtesy of the web

On the highest point of Washington, D.C., Mount Saint Alban, a fourteen-century English Gothic style cathedral stands out – the Washington National Cathedral – with its centerpiece of the high altar, “The Majestus,” designed by sculptor Walker Hancock and carved in stone by Roger Morigi.

Also known as the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Cathedral’s construction began in 1907 and was finished and consecrated on September 29, 1990, eighty-three years after the initial laying of the foundation stone.

Designed by architects George Frederick Bodley and Henry Vaughn, and completed by architect Philip Herbert Frohman over his fifty year tenure, the cathedral was built and carved by hundreds of stone cutters, wood cutters, metal and glass artists, and other workers who built the great towers, the flying buttresses, the crypt, carved gargoyles, grotesques, pinnacles, finials, angels, and thousands of decorative details.

Some stone cutters and carvers hailed from the same part of Italy, with its rich limestone, a material used by Italian builders for their cities, cathedrals, palazzos, monuments, villas, and tombstones. The stone carvers of the National Cathedral came from small towns in Italy as early as 1890. And they all went to Barre, Vermont.

Roger Morigi, who studied at the Academia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan, arrived in New York harbor from Genoa in 1927. After years of apprenticeship in Milan, Morigi became Master Carver at the Washington National Cathedral in 1956 where he labored for twenty-three years until his retirement. The last sculpture he carved was Adam. His major pieces are Majestus (the centerpiece of the altar), the statue of the Good Shepherd, and Adam of the west portal.

After Morigi’s retirement, Vincent Palumbo became Master Carver in 1978. Vincent started as the youngest and most inexperienced member of the crew, working with his father, Paul Palumbo. He worked at the Cathedral for “thirty-eight years since he immigrated to the United States from southern Italy in 1961.” (p. 77)

Vincent worked on the figures of Saint Paul and Saint Peter on the Cathedral’s west façade. He spent two years with three other carvers working on scaffolding above the Cathedral’s west entrance carving the Creation tympanum.

Frederick E. Hart created the famous base relief sculpture Ex Nihilo (Out of Nothing) that adorns the tympanum over the main entrance of the cathedral. It depicts “creation of humanity out of the torrential void.” Four life-size males and four females with closed eyes are “emerging from the primordial cloud,” a birth revealing the “majesty of the Divine Will.”

Paul Palumbo carved the keystone of Christ on the Cross, an unusual depiction of a very muscular Christ with oversized arms. Paul Palumbo also carved sculptor Granville Carter’s Archangel Michael statue, located in a niche in the south transept of the Cathedral.

Frank Zic and Roger Morigi worked for almost five years carving forty-four voussoir angels in the south portal and ten years above the south portal carving angels, canopies, and other sculptures.

Unfortunately, the stone carvers’ workshop, stone yard, and studio no longer exist on the Cathedral’s grounds; they have been demolished long time ago.  According to Marjorie Hunt, a folklorist with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the workshop was a veritable “League of Nations,” with carvers from all over Italy, Greece, England, Germany, and the United States.

I met Marjorie Hunt ten years ago at Georgetown University. She had co-produced and co-directed The Stone Carvers, an Oscar-winning documentary about the stone carvers she described in her 1999 book with the same title.

I toured the Cathedral with Marjorie Hunt as a guide but I saw this jewel of architecture through my own eyes. While I understood and admired the carving beauty built for posterity, the intricately sewn needlepoint pillows in the pews, bearing the names of powerful men in Congress and the Supreme Court, struck a strange chord with me.

What is so fascinating and unusual about this Cathedral is the fact that the carvers had complete freedom in choosing pinnacles, corbels, capitals, gargoyles, and grotesques.  The grotesques decorate buttresses supporting the nave.

According to Marjorie Hunt, carvings such as gargoyles, angels, columns, pinnacles, and grotesques intertwine “the world of work” with hilarious moments in time, pranks, jokes, stories, memorable characters, quirks of various carvers, their habits and unusual traits of character, and the carvers’ imagination, using the world around them as inspiration:

-          a scholarly owl , a wild cat, a winged creature, flowers, fish, pumpkins, sunflowers, carvers’ faces, the foreman, the laborer, the engineer, the boss, a golfer’s grip

-          an image of Roger Morigi with his mallet and chisels, with a mushroom cloud above his head and a devil’s tail and horn, signifying his fiery temperament, and a set of golf clubs above his head, a symbol of his extra-curricular passion

-          a pinnacle carving of Roger Morigi with his “beloved golf clubs and the master carver’s eagle eye”

-          Vincent Palumbo, holding an air hammer,  with exaggerated curly hair and moustache

-          one carver on the scaffolding whistles at the passing girls while the next carving depicts the former dean of the Cathedral, Francis B. Sayre Jr., with a horrified expression of shock and disapproval

-          Frank Zic carved himself “dreaming of deer hunting and winning the Maryland lottery,” with a wishbone on his left side and a deer antler on his right” (The Stone Carvers, p. 151)

-          Frank Zic carved Gino Bresciani, the trice retiree, who was preparing for his fourth retirement with “a bag of money over his shoulder and his suitcase in his left hand (p. 152)

-          Malcolm Harlow carved his family on the base of a pinnacle

-          He also carved the caricatures of construction laborers Allen Goodwin and Henry Thomas  – Goodwin with a chain hoist and dolly, Thomas with a cup of coffee, a doughnut, hot dog, and piece of pie

-          Malcolm carved a tribute to all secretaries in a grotesque, with telephone, typewriter, and file cabinet (a grotesque is a gargoyle without a water spout)

-          A pinnacle with columns and Ionic capitals honors the Cathedral sculptor Constantine Seferlis, a Greek

-          Richard Feller, the canon clerk, is depicted with his drafting tools and the mountains from his native West Virginia

-          Ludwig Malisky, a carpenter, is portrayed with his hammer and saw

-          Walter Fleming, the foreman of all Cathedral laborers, is holding a whip wrapped around his head

-          There is even an angel holding an Oscar, honoring  Marjorie and the documentary The Stone Carvers that won an Academy Award in 1985

-          Seferlis carved a hippie, an elephant, a donkey, a lawyer, a television producer, an angry cat ready to pounce, a man riding a stolen pig with a chicken in one hand, and a boy with a broken halo and his hand in a cookie jar

-          Vincent Palumbo carved a good boy with a halo – the two boys were carved at the special request of a Cathedral donor

-          A gargoyle was carved for a dentist, depicting him working on the cavity of a walrus

-          John Guarante carved a lion roaring in anger and pain because his tail was tied in a knot; his ninety-six angels with overlapping wings and praying hands holding a dice with 7 encircle the central tower  (pp. 156-157)

A memorial to Joseph Ratti, who died falling from scaffolding, was designed by sculptor Heinz Warneke and carved by Roger Morigi. There are two uncarved blocks of stone on the north wall of the Cathedral, in the spot where Ratti fell to his death. The statue depicts a stone carver working on an unfinished gargoyle, a tribute to Joseph Ratti, but also a reminder of the dangerous work involved in building the Cathedral.

The keystone of Mary Magdalene and Christ, located on the nave’s vaulted ceiling, is the last carving that Vincent Palumbo and his father worked on together before Paul Palumbo’s death.

The Washington National Cathedral is not just a symbol of Christianity and the house of God; it is a “compendium of life and work experiences, … a collection of texts that bear the imprint of the carvers’ hearts, hands, and minds.” (Marjorie Hunt, The Stone Carvers, p. 163)

It is sad that the Cathedral that bears the name of George Washington and represents our Judeo-Christian nation has been desecrated.  What would the stone carvers, devout Christians - Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox – think and feel if they knew that their place of worship they spent almost a century to build with blood, sweat, and tears, has been changed, even for a short moment in history, into a mosque?

 

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014