Last modified: Friday, August 17, 2007 10:45 AM PDT The Rev. Calvin Blankinship rests for a moment Wednesday morning in the new Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Fruitland with the altar furniture he designed and his Scottish terriers, Ruby (left) and LaVerne. A graceful, new church By Johna Strickland - Argus Observer Fruitland - Wednesday morning Rev. Calvin Blankinship sat in the fruit of his labors, literally. Close by, his two Scottish terriers — Miss Ruby and LaVerne — roamed under the mahogany pews of the new Corpus Christi Catholic Church building. The new church — situated at 900 N.W. Seventh St. in Fruitland — brings the Catholic congregations of New Plymouth and Payette together as Bishop Todd Brown envisioned in 1999 when he combined the two churches. Until three years ago, the local diocese supported both a church in Payette and New Plymouth. However, the New Plymouth church property was sold and now Corpus Christi’s 600 families have a new $3.4 million facility to worship in together. After years of exploration, committee meetings, consultations with an architect and fund-raisers, the new church broke ground Aug. 1, 2006. Major construction finished in July. Blankinship, who arrived to lead the Catholic community in Payette County in 2001, conducted the first mass Aug. 11 and a dedication ceremony is planned for Sept. 5. Rising out of a flat, dusty landscape, the church’s tan exterior holds the things of a shared past. “We wanted to use as much from the other churches as possible,” Blankinship said. Inside sun glints through stained glass windows moved from the old churches to the new and past prints of the stages of the cross from the Payette church. A wall dotted with glass doors into the sanctuary holds blank spaces for restored statues from each church. The decorating and color choices from the structure came from a series of “town hall meetings” with parishioners, Blankinship said. Final color selections were blue — the pew cushions and sanctuary carpeting — and brown, seen in the blocks of the 77-foot bell tower; the polished granite of the baptismal and the manufactured stone background of the altar. Father Blankinship left his own fingerprints in the church. “I designed the altar, tabernacle table and two lecterns,” Blankinship said, pointing to the furniture Red Simonsen built. “I come up with concepts, they turn it into reality.” The tables have a base shaped like a cupped hand with the fingertips holding the table’s surface. Another touch is the 8-foot tall oil on canvas painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe that Blankinship commissioned from a friend. The cascading baptismal design involving a pump, glossy granite channels and four pools is his also. “It’s absolutely silent. That’s something I insisted upon,” Blankinship said. Overall, the church was designed to grow and change. Someday stained glass will replace clear glass windows, the cross hanging over the altar will have a corpus and walls will be demolished to accommodate a commercial kitchen, administrative offices, a food bank and a parish hall. “It’s designed to expand,” Blankinship said. “Everybody is welcome to come and worship with us.”