On May 20, the Most Rev. Bruce Lewandowski, CSsR (57), a Redemptorist and formerly Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore, will be installed as the 10th Bishop of Providence, R.I. I had previously written about the bishop’s coat of arms when he was first made Auxiliary Bishop.

Now that he is moving to become a diocesan bishop his armorial bearings will now be marshaled to those of his diocese. The Bishop had employed his sister, a Felician Sister who “works in media” for her Province to design his coat of arms. As they were back then, so too, are they something of a dumpster fire, heraldically speaking.

In an interview for The Catholic Review, the Baltimore archdiocesan newspaper, in 2020 the Bishop said, “Why would I ask anyone else?” when asked why his sister was designing his coat of arms. I think I can answer that. How about: in order to turn to someone with knowledge of a specific topic that isn’t really a DIY project? How about that? In her own part of the same interview, Sr. Lewandowski remarked about some of the particular elements of her design:

“The Holy Spirit is depicted as breaking the upper edge of the shield ‘as it is the privilege of the Holy Spirit to inspire new life and envision endless possibilities for the Church, God’s people,’ the description says. The designer noted that she was not sure if that was “allowed” but in her research she did not find any parameters that said it couldn’t be done that way.” (emphasis added)

All I can say is that must have been one quick and not very diligent Google search. Even the most cursory bit of online research should have clued her in to the fact that charges emerging through the edges of the field was a puerile and amateurish mistake. Quite frankly, I don’t see how she could have done any research and reached the conclusion that she did! There are numerous resources out there for someone unfamiliar with good heraldic practices, to say nothing of the huge online presence of groups and organizations that could have happily offered her assistance in her project.

But, this, instead, is the worst kind of so-called heraldry: heraldry as logo. (It summons up the bile just by thinking about it!).

In the same aforementioned article she said:

“…she believes a bishop’s coat of arms should tell people who he is and what he stands for. And I believe it should be a more spiritual piece, not just a historical piece,” she said. “And a lot of the coats of arms that I’ve seen and that I kind of read into, it’s a real historical document, but it doesn’t always tell you who the bishop is. She said she tried to tie in Bishop-designate Lewandowski’s spirituality into the symbols she used.”

Well, she got the first part right. A coat of arms should tell people who the armiger is. But, then she rode that right off the rails with the second part. A coat of arms does not tell people what the armiger stands for. It is for identification alone. I have often mentioned that a coat of arms is not one’s C.V. in pictures. Similarly, it isn’t an expression of personal ideology; a manifesto of one’s own spirituality or (for the clergy) a catechetical tool that expresses one’s personal beliefs as a kind of pictorial homily. Unfortunately, that’s precisely how the Lewandowski kids decided to view this project, with disastrous results.

In the latest rendering the overcrowded and poorly composed original coat of arms now falls victim to, perhaps, my second favorite pet peeve: they were changed in order to combine well with the diocesan arms. That’s not an option, full stop. (I suppose Sister didn’t find anything in her research that said she couldn’t do that either!) In addition, the charges form the personal arms are still going beyond the divisions and boundaries of the shield and/or spilling over from one impalement to the other. Clearly, this is also the classic mistake of thinking that the diocesan arms now somehow “become” part of the bishop’s coat of arms rather than being an example of two distinct and separate coats of arms marshaled together on one shield so as to express the relationship between the two!

The list of things wrong with this just goes on and on, and on…

Suffice it to say that he had a poorly designed coat of arms to begin with which would have and could have benefitted greatly from some expertise and advice from an organization, an individual, or even a decent book on the subject in order to take the elements and arrange and depict them according to good heraldic practices. Now, that poorly designed coat of arms has been badly modified and marshaled inexpertly to the point that the diocesan coat of arms of the See of Providence is depicted incorrectly!

EPIC FAIL!

But…what do you expect when a coat of arms is approached as an exercise in graphic design to tell us who the armiger really is? I’ll leave that question unanswered, thank you.