Another renovation ruckus.

For Milwaukee Catholics, it is the best of times and the worst of times. It is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness. They're having a dickens of a time over their ongoing cathedral renovations.

Last year, the Milwaukee archdiocese announced plans to renovate their Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist and the area around it known as the cathedral block. In addition to the renovation of the cathedral itself, other buildings on the block will be updated to house outreach ministries such as the Door Ministry food program, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, an AIDS ministry, Alcoholics Anonymous, and mental health programs.

One particularly vocal group of people who don't like this ambitious project tags the renovation a "wreckovation." This summer, working through a canon lawyer in Rome, the group even succeeded in getting the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship to intervene. A spokesperson for the group claims the planned renovation will remove the "Catholic character" of the cathedral. Among their objections: moving the main altar to the center of the worship space; placing an organ where the altar once stood; replacing pews with chairs, and removing the baldachin. He asks, "Are we now going to be worshiping an organ?"

My own suspicion is that Milwaukee Catholics will not have any difficulty realizing that the organ is not to be worshiped. Likewise, most Catholics know that participants at the Last Supper did not sit in pews. There is nothing distinctively Catholic about pews. Many Catholic cathedrals in Europe have chairs rather than pews. So much for the "Catholic character" argument.

The opposition to the present renovation project, in addition to not having much faith in the intelligence of churchgoing Catholics, fixates on the interior worship space of the cathedral proper. It has little if anything to say about the planned renovations of the cathedral block and its relationship to the Eucharist.

Happily, most contemporary Catholics are ahead of the opposition here also. They have a sense of the Eucharist that transcends the ritual space. They believe the Eucharist is intimately connected with the world. They know the Eucharist will not be fully celebrated in a world where even one person hungers. Particularly in Milwaukee, many Catholics have a vision and practice of the Eucharist that is more encompassing than the internal placement of altars and organs because of the impressive document Eucharist Without Wails the Milwaukee bishops wrote just a few years ago. One of its four major points: Fully live the Eucharist through out reach to others. "Eucharist is not just a single act that happens in church. We take the Eucharist with us into the marketplace, to where we live, work, and recreate."

This entire renovation project reflects a mature understanding of Eucharist that does not confine the sacrament exclusively to ritual. I can only hope the Roman micromanagers take a good look at this entire project--the relationship between the cathedral as ritual space and the cathedral block as outreach space--and not just isolated rubrics.

"Eucharist without walls" is a powerful image, a great thought, and, if fully practiced, surely would "stretch out to cover the land with goodness." I said so in my August 1998 Odds & Ends column. I say it again now.

This planned renovation project, the dickens of a controversy aside, looks like it admirably captures and reflects Eucharist Without Wails. The Catholic people of Milwaukee should be quite proud of the sacramentality embodied in this entire project. 'Tis a far, far better thing they do now than they have ever done before.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.