How Awesome Is This Place!

"How Awesome Is This Place" is the story of how the Cathedral in Oakland California became a liturgical Mecca with a national reputation. It unfolded in the 1960s through the 1980s, decades fraught with turmoil within the country and the Catholic Church. Father Don Osuna, cathedral music and worship director for nineteen years (ten as rector) recalls in graphic and entertaining detail how one congregation successfully gave a form and face to the radical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. His memoir is a fascinating snapshot into the soul of a community struggling to realize Pope John XXIII's vision of the Church in the modern world. The creative liturgical "experiments" embraced all the arts, including film, choreography and electronic music, in the service of worship. This combination of art and rubric, innovation and tradition was not without controversy. Nor were some of the principal players. But not even a clerical "scandal" and a Prodigal Son "sequel" was able to destroy a parish and a people that learned to pray, minister and grow spiritually together. It took an unexpected act of God to bring down the "awesome place."