By Gretchen Keiser, Staff Writer

ATLANTA--A new Holy Spirit church was dedicated July 9, fulfilling five years of planning, dreaming and building.

The building blocks and the design of the church at Northside Drive and Mt. Paran Road are both unusual for a contemporary church and planned to the smallest detail. Brochures have been printed, anticipating visitors’ interest and questions.

“We wanted a church that was traditional in design and that would have enduring architectural value,” Msgr. Edward J. Dillon, the pastor, said in explaining what guided the parish committee that oversaw the project for several years.

One principle they followed was “spending money on those things that long-term would be significant.” Enduring building materials include a brick exterior, a slate roof and the marble floor inside. Even if other elements had to wait, the planners wanted the building “footprint” to be “first class.”

In fact, the building project generated great support in the parish and it has not been necessary for the other interior elements to be delayed. Eighty-four percent of the parish is contributing to the capital campaign to pay for the new church.

The sandstone-colored bricks 350,000 in number, shape a Romanesque Revival structure. There is a narthex, where people can gather before and after Mass. It is also going to serve as a “cry room” because parents can see and hear the Mass from the narthex through large windows and a public address system.

The interior of the church is in the shape of a Latin cross, bisected by two transepts. A coffered ceiling, 63 feet at its highest point, is cream-colored. Stained glass windows, with a total of over 100 scenes inside the church and in surrounding hallways were made in Lynchburg, Va., using an antique glass process.

Dark wood paneling offsets the light cream walls. Square panels are a motif repeated throughout the church, copying the design of early 20th century architect H.H. Richardson, whose style was chosen by the building’s architects and planners.

Other repeated motifs are trinitarian arches and a quatrefoil design that appears carved on the ends of red oak pews and in other elements in the sanctuary. The red oak was also used by Georgia carver Herbert Ernst, who took architect’s drawings and hand-crafted the pulpit, presider’s chair, five sanctuary chairs, kneelers, lectern and tabernacle. An unidentified goldsmith then covered the tabernacle, modeled on the one at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, in gold leaf.

Although the Romanesque style uses the concept of a sanctuary designed in the 11th or 12th century, adaptations were made to respond to the liturgical directives of the Second Vatican Council, Msgr. Dillon said.

Among the liturgical concerns are the need to keep a sense of closeness to the altar for the congregation in a large church and the placement of the tabernacle away from the main altar while retaining a sense of the sacred, the pastor noted.

Main aisle pews were designed to maximum width, he said, which allows more people to be seated in fewer rows. In the transepts, chairs are used to permit closer seating. The tabernacle is to the right of the main altar in an area marked off by columns, visible, yet to the side. The marble altar dominates the sanctuary, while a carved linden wood crucifix of Christ robed as High Priest is suspended above.

The $6.2 million church was designed by the architectural firm of Chegwidden, Dorsey, Holmes in Marietta and built by Van Winkle & Co. of Atlanta.

Hamilton Smith, Cathedral of Christ the King music director, said the new church was designed with excellent acoustics to complement a unique organ. Sixteen ranks of pipes and another 60 ranks of digital organ ranks make it the largest combination organ in the archdiocese, Smith said. “I think this (church) will be the subject of a lot of architectural and liturgical interest,” he said.

The celebration of the Mass of dedication included brass, organ, choir and children’s choir. Archbishop John Donoghue was the principal celebrant and began the Mass outside the church where he was presented with the key to the new church.

Inside he blessed the water symbolizing baptism and processed through the church sprinkling the congregation before praying for the “Word of God” to be always proclaimed in this new place of prayer.

“You are God’s building,” the reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians proclaimed. “Everyone doing the building must work carefully. For the foundation, no one can lay any other than the one which has already been laid, that is Jesus Christ. ...Fire will test the quality of each man’s work.”

In his homily Archbishop Donoghue said that the rituals performed at the dedication of a new church are ancient and link those who follow Jesus today with spiritual ancestors in the Old and New Testament.

“Today we open a new home for Christ here on earth, a beautiful, an inspired church where we and our children may come to meet Our Lord,” he said. This church will be a place to encounter Jesus in sacrament and in Scripture, the archbishop said, but also a place to “live like Him in community.”

Jesus calls his people to a “change of heart,” the archbishop said. In his life on earth he had no place to lay his head. “Today we welcome Jesus Christ into our home which we have built and which we now surrender” to the church community which it will serve.

Archbishop Dongohue anointed the altar of Holy Spirit Church, while Msgr. Dillon and Msgr. Donald Kenny anointed the pillars and walls. Incense was then wafted around the altar and throughout the church and candles lit in the sanctuary and sconces on the pillars.

Lay leaders in the parish brought up the offertory gifts and also took part in the opening procession along with the dozen or more members of the parish building committee who were recognized at the conclusion of the dedication Mass. Special guests included Father Joseph Ware, a former pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, who concelebrated the Mass, Fulton County Sheriff Jacquelyn Barrett, and Erma Laws of Memphis, Tenn., “sister” to the late Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM.

“The fact that Msgr. Dillon chose to memorialize his parents with a stained glass window bearing Archbishop Lyke’s coat of arms is awesome to me and I think it sums up the esteem in which he held for the last archbishop),” she said later. “This really pulled at my heartstrings.”

Also memorialized at the new church Carolos Goizueta, the late son of Mr. and Mrs. Roberto C. Goizueta who are parishioners of Holy Spirit. An education center directly beneath the church has classrooms and other facilities was made possible through a gift from the family and is named the Carlos Goizueta Education Center. The center was also blessed by the archbishop and dedicated immediately following the Mass.

The parish building committee was chaired first by parishioner Bill Evans and then after a job transfer took him out of town by parishioner Jack Scalley. The project tripled the size of parish facilities he said, and during 600 days of construction all church activities were able to continue although the relatively small parish plot was a beehive of work.

Although many people contributed “nothing would have been done or could have been done without our Msgr. Dillon,” Scalley said, provoking a sustained ovation for the blushing pastor.

In response Msgr. Dillon said that the project really was the building of a parish complex, not a church. “Crowding in parish classrooms and the parish hall really galvanized the project, he said. “The heart and sole of the parish is the parishioners,” Msgr. Dillon added. “Your participation will always be critical.”

In an interview later, the pastor said the process began with a long-range planning program five or six years ago. The program identified the need for an entire parish renewal and led to the ‘Renew” program and a follow-up in the parish called “Seasons.”

The need for more space in the parish also became evident as demographics indicated the presence of more young families with children. Parish enrollment has grown from 540 families to 1,050 families, he said.

The design of the new church was presented to the parish for approval at a number of points along the way in opinion polls, votes, “the whole works.”

Perhaps that involvement, as well as the placement of a building program within a wider parish renewal, explains the overwhelming support. “I think people were excited about the (building) project and excited about the process,” the pastor said.