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A Forthright EditionTM

Sophia Institute Press awards the privileged title “A Forthright Edition” to

a select few of our books that address contemporary Catholic issues with
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Forthright Editions are direct, explaining their principles briefly,

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Michael S. Rose

Ugly as Sin

Why They Changed Our Churches

from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces —
and How We Can Change Them Back Again

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS®

Manchester, New Hampshire
Copyright © 2001 Michael S. Rose

Biblical quotations are based on the Catholic Edition of the Revised

Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1965, 1966, by the Division of
Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the United States of America. Used by permission.

All rights reserved

Jacket design by Lorraine Bilodeau

On the jacket: Background photograph: St. Patrick’s Cathedral,

New York © 2000 Michael Pasdzior/The Image Bank; inset
photograph: © Jaroslav Hejzlar/Sovfoto/Eastfotot/PictureQuest

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rose, Michael S., 1969

Ugly as sin : why they changed our churches from sacred places to meeting
spaces and how we can change them back again / Michael S. Rose.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN HDCVR 1-928832-36-9 PPBK 978-1-933184-44-9 (alk. paper)
1. Catholic church buildings. 2. Church architecture — 20th century. I.
Title.

NA4828 .R67 2001

246’.9582’09045 — dc21 2001049617
 Image

Contents

Foreword

1. The three natural laws of church architecture

(or, the minimum you need to know

to evaluate the church down the street)

2. Our pilgrim goes into the house of the Lord

(or, the essential elements of every proper church)

3. Our pilgrim goes into the

worship space of the people

(or, why you find it so hard to

pray in that modern church)

4. Why modern architects secularized our churches

(or, bad theology has done

more damage than bad taste)

5. How we can make our churches Catholic again

(or, what the Vatican wants you to do

to help restore the Faith in our day)

References and resources for further research

Recommended architects and artists

Glossary of church architecture terms

Photo credits

Biographical note: Michael S. Rose

 Image

Foreword

Why do the Catholic churches built over the past three or four decades look
the way they do? Why are they so different from churches of past ages,
which all seemed to be built in a similar arrangement, using familiar
elements and forms most people immediately associate with a church
building? Why are our modern churches so ugly, so banal, so uninspiring?

Is it just a matter of taste?

Or is something more fundamental at stake?

To many people, these questions seem as unanswerable as they are

mysterious. Ugly as Sin answers these hard questions and shows how
Catholics can — and must — return to building sacred places worthy of the
title “house of God.”

Modern church architect Edward A. Sövik underscores this point when he

writes that “architecture is a more influential factor in the life of society
than most people suppose.”1 Church architecture affects the way man
worships; the way he worships affects what he believes; and what he
believes affects not only his personal relationship with God but how he
conducts himself in his daily life.

In other words, church architecture is not negligible but significant, not the
concern only of architects but central to your life and mine. The elements
of our churches express a theology, manifest a particular Faith. Contrast the
Quaker meetinghouse with a Gothic cathedral, and you must conclude that
these two buildings represent two distinct theologies, two distinct
ecclesiologies, two very different ways of looking at the Church founded
by Jesus Christ.

Successful, authentic church architecture reflects the doctrines of the faith

it represents. A Gothic cathedral no more reflects the faith of the Quakers
than the Quaker meetinghouse reflects the truths of the Catholic Faith.
What, then, can we say about modern Catholic church architecture?

That’s the topic of this book, which is more about architectural theology
than it is about church architecture per se. But don’t be intimidated by the
term architectural theology. It simply means that church architecture is
more than a matter of taste and more than a matter of tradition: what we
build as a house of God should reflect what we believe about God.

The basics aren’t hard to understand. Once you grasp them, you’ll
understand why modern Catholic churches have deviated from the natural
laws of Catholic church architecture to take the often bland and grotesque
shape that they have.

And you’ll know why it’s so important that we return to those natural laws
that guided church builders of old, leading them to create churches that lift
the soul to God by authentically representing the Catholic Faith.

Michael S. Rose
 Image

Ugly as Sin
Chapter One
 The three natural laws of church architecture
(or, the minimum you need to know
to evaluate the church down the street)
Notre Dame, the crowning jewel of Paris, is arguably the most famous of
Christendom's great cathedral churches. Countless chronicles, poems,
novels, and artistic treatments have been devoted to the subject of this
architectural masterpiece. Yet considering it's neither the tallest, the biggest,
nor even the most beautiful of cathedrals, Notre Dame's universal appeal
isn't easily explicable on the natural order.
There's something more.
Paris, of course, as the capital of France, provides a prominent setting not
enjoyed by most churches, yet it's the building's own transcendent qualities
that have led countless pilgrims from all parts of the world to marvel at its
presence and enter into its sublimity. “Itinerant merchants and priests,
pilgrims, diplomats, foreign students, traveling knights and crusaders, freed
serfs seeking new homes — the whole wandering human fabric of the
Middle Ages passed through the capital of France and admired its Cathe-
dral. So reports Allan Temkoinhis 1955 book on Notre Dame.2
These pilgrims, he adds, called Notre Dame the ecclesia of Paris, the
church par excellence in a city of many remarkable churches. And since
that time long ago, pilgrims and tourists have never ceased to come to this
heart of medieval Paris on the Île de la Cité.
The grand church is no mere icon for the city, as we might say of the
Eiffel Tower or even the great Arc de Triomphe. Rather, it's truly the
epicenter — the soul — of one of the great cities of Christendom. In 1902,
Hilaire Belloc even described sprawling Paris as the fringe of the great
cathedral's garment. He spoke of the church in distinctly human terms: as a
lady in a great house who is the center of the estate.
Nearly a century earlier, in his novel about the hunchbacked bell-ringer
of the great Notre Dame, Victor Hugo, too, personified the cathedral,
although in a more indirect and symbolic way. In Hugo's novel The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo the bell-ringer represents that
maternal bond of intimacy between man and the Church, and ultimately
between man and God. To this hunchback, Notre Dame is egg, nest, home,
country, and universe, just as is the Church universal for all the baptized.
When still a child, Quasimodo dragged himself through the cathedral,
wrote Hugo, as if he were “some reptile native to that damp, dark pavement
upon which the Roman capitals cast so many grotesque shadows.”3 Indeed,
Notre Dame was the hunchback's dwelling, his wrapper, peopled with
marble figures — kings, saints, and bishops — who blessed him and looked
upon him with goodwill. In a certain sense, Hugo depicts this “dwelling
place” as a living, breathing soul prepared for the intimacy of mere mortals
— a view all the more remarkable since Hugo had more of a revolutionary
mind than a Christian one. Nevertheless, whether Hugo knew it or not, the
great cathedral of Notre Dame transcended his own world view. He could
not escape the “other-worldly” character of this great church, and he admits
that he gave himself up to a power and order greater than himself. In short,
Hugo encountered, however unwittingly, a foretaste of the heavenly
Jerusalem.
 Built over nine decades, from 1163 to 1250, the Parisian Notre Dame is
noted for its verticality, permanence, and iconography.

Standing in the cathedral plaza, the pilgrim comes face-to-face with Notre
Dame's awe-evoking western façade, which is so familiar to us today.

Throughout the Christian centuries, the church building has been

understood to be what Notre Dame exemplifies so well: the domus Dei
(“house of God”) and the porta coeli (“gate of Heaven”), that dwelling
place where we go to find God, that sacred place in which we seek the
treasures of the heavenly kingdom. Ever since the days when King
Solomon received the commission directly from God to fashion the holy
temple, men of every epoch have toiled and labored with devout hands and
have spared no resources to build such splendid palaces for the King of
Kings.
Built over nine decades, from 1163 to 1250, the Parisian Notre Dame,
noted for its elegant proportions, served as a model for the many Gothic
cathedrals that were built in northern France in the thirteenth century. Inside
and out, the building has inspired countless pilgrims over the centuries.
Each has approached the cathedral from one of Paris's many streets or along
the quays of the Left Bank, catching glimpses of the tall towers from afar
and, later, in the cathedral plaza, standing face-to-face with the awe-evoking
Western façade that's so familiar to most of us today. Yet even the
familiarity acquired from a distance through travel guides, textbooks,
magazine articles, movies, and even cartoons doesn't detract from the
overwhelming sense of goodness, beauty, and truth that the pilgrim feels on
first experiencing the church in person. Its flying buttresses, its stained
glass, its great rose window with its delicate bar traceries that resemble the
petals of the flowers, its richly carved portals, the soaring heights of its
columns that flower into barrel vaults, its many shrines and reliquaries, its
altars, and the presence of Jesus in the great tabernacle all work together to
raise the pilgrim's mind to heavenly things.
Temko's description of just one of the front portals is enough to show
how this house of God is intimately connected to the heavenly Jerusalem,
peopled by the communion of angels and saints:
Around the Virgin in majesty, in tiers of glory, is her Court of Heaven.
Closest to her is a corps of fourteen angels; then fourteen patriarchs
and sixteen prophets; and, outermost, sixteen old men of the
Apocalypse, with their musical instruments and vials, as they were
seen by St. John the Divine. . . . Singing, dancing, their rich beards
tossing in the winds from the corner of the earth, they sail upward, as
if mounted on a wheel of air, to the Lamb of God and, at the apex of
the triangle, to the Christ of the Apocalypse — alpha and omega, the
beginning and the end, the first and the last, whose terrible, two-bladed
sword, after seven centuries, has shattered his teeth.4
In this cathedral, faith is incarnational, just as the Catholic Faith is an
incarnational Faith — “the Word became flesh.”5 The kingdom of God is
manifest to us, century after century, through the medium of this church
building, stone laid upon stone, sculpture after sculpture hewn from rock,
built and carved of human hands — a Gospel in stone brought to life!
But Temko doesn't stop there.
In the same breath, he describes the hundreds of gargoyles — inhuman
bird-like figures with half-human faces — perched and grimacing on the
balustrades overlooking the city. These grotesques were driven from the
interior of the church by the Virgin, who banished them from her sanctuary
but kept them as terrifying guardians of her outer walls and towers. This
building, we easily understand, is a representation in toto of Christendom,
from the saving power of Christ to the doom of the fallen and damned. The
pilgrim senses here the spiritual struggle between good and evil, between
the sacred and the profane, between the eternal and the temporal.

Notre Dame preaches the gospel in stone through its many works of sacred
art, those beautifully crafted representations, both figural and symbolic,
that point beyond themselves to religious truths.
 Notre Dame is a permanent structure — massive and durable, meant to
withstand the violence of man and the brutality of nature. For more than
eight hundred years, the cathedral has stood as a survivor of many epochs,
witnessing to the permanence of the gospel and of Christian society.

Notre Dame Cathedral exemplifies the best in church architecture

Notre Dame is easily recognized as art in the noblest sense, architecture

of the highest order, a building established as a “sacred place” — a sacred
place that is first of all, a house of God, a place of His earthly habitation,
wrought in the fashion of heavenly things.
But what makes it so?
First, Notre Dame is a permanent structure — massive and durable,
meant to withstand the violence of man and the brutality of nature. It has
served as a silent witness to the tumultuous history of France over the past
eight hundred years in the heart of its grand capital. It has stood as a
survivor of many epochs, witnessing to the permanence of the Gospel and
Christian society, despite the secularization of almost everything around the
great cathedral. The edifice has transcended both time and culture — not an
easy feat: it is a permanent structure.
Second, the heavenly and eternal is evoked through the soaring heights of
the cathedral's interior spaces, made possible by the many elements of the
Gothic structural system (pointed arches, flying buttresses, and vaulted
ceilings, for instance). Thus, it is a vertical structure.
Third, the grand cathedral is “brought to life” as a gospel in stone
through its many works of sacred art, those beautifully crafted
representations, both figural and symbolic, that point well beyond
themselves to religious truths. In other words, Notre Dame presents an
iconographic architecture. The pilgrim can almost hear the patriarch Jacob,
after his dream of angels ascending to and descending from Heaven,
announcing, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house
of God, and this i the gate of Heaven.”6
Notre Dame Cathedral reveals the natural laws of church architecture

One basic tenet that architects have accepted for millennia is that the
built environment has the capacity to affect the human person deeply — the
way he acts, the way he feels, and the way he is. Church architects of past
and present understood that the atmosphere created by the church building
affects not only how we worship, but also what we believe. Ultimately,
what we believe affects how we live our lives. It's difficult to separate
theology and ecclesiology from the environment for worship, whether it's a
traditional church or a modern church. If a Catholic church building doesn't
reflect Catholic theology and ecclesiology, if the building undermines or
dismisses the natural laws of church architecture, the worshiper risks
accepting a Faith that is foreign to Catholicism.
Architecture isn't inconsequential.
That's why the Church's Code of Canon Law explicitly defines the church
building as “a sacred building destined for divine worship.” The Catechism
of the Catholic Church reiterates this point and goes further by stating that
“visible churches are not simply gathering places but signify and make
visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men
reconciled and united in Christ.7
 This is a tall order, to be sure, and the architect today naturally wonders
how a mere building can accomplish so much. Fortunately he doesn't stand
alone in a perilous vacuum but has at his command more than fifteen
hundred years of his craft on which to reflect.

Notre Dame evokes the heavenly and the eternal through the soaring
heights of its interior spaces, made possible by the many elements of the
Gothic structural system. Thus, it's a vertical structure.
 Iconography is perhaps the most direct and efficacious way to achieve a
transcendent architecture. The worthy church building presents an
iconography that points to transcendent truths.

When he turns to the Church's great architectural heritage, he discovers

that from the Early Christian basilicas in Rome to the Gothic Revival
churches of early twentieth-century America, the natural laws of church
architecture are adhered to faithfully in the design of successful Catholic
churches, buildings that serve both God and man as transcendental
structures, transmitting eternal truths for generations to come. Indeed, it's
remarkable that churches of every century — grand and small, in large
cities, small towns, and rural settings — have achieved what Notre Dame
has achieved through faithful adherence to these natural laws.
Yes, the results are manifested in individual styles, products of a
particular time and place, each of which the Church has gladly admitted
into her treasury of sacred architecture.8 Yet each also serves as a house of
God that looks to the past, serves the present, and informs the future.
 How do they achieve this?
In every case, these successful church buildings firmly establish a sacred
place to be used for worship of the triune God, both in private devotion and
in public liturgy, and they make Christ's presence firmly known in their
surroundings.
In every case, they conform to the three natural laws of verti-cality,
permanence, and iconography, as exemplified in Notre Dame Cathedral.9
These natural laws are perhaps taken for granted by many, yet, for those
who seek to understand how Catholic churches ought — and ought not —
to be built, they're the most obvious starting points, primarily because these
qualities create the proper atmosphere for worshiping God.
Consider the alternative: if Notre Dame lacked verticality, permanence,
and iconography, Hugo wouldn't have written a novel about a hunchbacked
bell-ringer, nor would Temko have composed what he calls a “biography”
of the great cathedral. In fact, if it didn't adhere to the natural laws of church
architecture, Notre Dame wouldn't exist today in any meaningful way.
Lacking verti-cality, the cathedral wouldn't have inspired us toward the
otherworldly; it wouldn't have effectively served as the soul of medieval
Paris, let alone the present metropolis; nor would it have effectively marked
Christ and His Church present and active in the French capital. Without
permanence, the building would have been destroyed by barbarians or
revolutionaries centuries ago. Devoid of iconography, Notre Dame would
never have attracted pilgrims to this gospel in stone.
In other words, without the qualities of verticality, permanence, and
iconography, Notre Dame wouldn't have established itself as a sacred place;
it wouldn't be known to us today.
Therefore, let's consider more closely each of these three natural laws,
which are indispensable to successful Catholic church architecture.
The first natural law: A Catholic church must have verticality

In contrast to most other buildings, the successful church is so

constructed that the vertical element dominates the horizontal. The soaring
heights of its spaces speak to us of reaching toward Heaven, of
transcendence — bringing the heavenly Jerusalem down to us through the
medium of the church building. It's no coincidence that the text the Church
reads in the Liturgy for the dedication of a church is taken from St. John's
vision of the celestial Jerusalem:
And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven
from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard
a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold the dwelling of God with
men, and He will dwell with them; and they will be His people, and
God Himself will be with them as their God. And God will wipe away
every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall
there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things
have passed away.10
According to these words of St. John, the interior spaces of the church
ought to be characterized by a dramatic sense of height — in a word,
verticality. It's a fact of human experience that verticality, the massing of
volumes upward, most readily creates an atmosphere of transcendence and,
in turn, enables man to create a building that expresses a sense of the
spiritual and the heavenly. It's this transcendence that makes sacred
architecture at all possible. The building's architectural elements — such as
windows, columns, buttresses, and sacred art — should reinforce this
heavenward aspiration. Likewise, the articulation of the ceiling should
further create a sense of reaching toward the heavenly Jerusalem through
the use of mosaics, murals, and coffering, as well as by incorporating the
mysterious play of natural light into the body of the church.
 Verticality — the massing of volumes upward — most readily creates an
atmosphere of transcendence and, in turn, enables man to create a building
that expresses a sense of the spiritual and the heavenly. The church's
architectural elements, such as windows, columns, buttresses, and sacred
art, should reinforce this heavenward aspiration.
 The articulation of the ceiling or dome creates a sense of reaching toward
the heavenly Jerusalem through the use of mosaics, murals, and coffering,
as well as by incorporating the mysterious play of light into the church's
body.

Consider also that the early Christians, prior to the Con-stantinian era,
solemnized the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in inconspicuous places — most
likely in homes and sometimes in the catacombs — that had no recourse to
an emphasized verticality. Yet once public Christian worship was legalized
by Constantine, the Christians quickly adopted the basilica form, in which
spaces were emphatically vertical and conspicuous. Not only did the
soaring spaces of such structures lend themselves to symbolizing the
reaching toward God and toward things heavenly; it also represented a
kingly nobility, for the basilica was the Roman “House of the King,”
fittingly adapted as the House of the King of Kings.
It's difficult, isn't it, to visualize the kind of spaces that would be created
if the ceilings in such grand churches as Notre Dame, St. Peter's Basilica, or
Constantinople's Hagia Sophia were lowered to, say, twelve feet or even
thirty feet. Despite the exemplary iconography and permanence of these
structures, they would fall drastically short as sacred places, as houses of
God, if their building's proportions were reduced to reflect an emphasis on
the horizontal rather than on the vertical.
This need to emphasize the reaching toward the heavens was primarily
what inspired Gothic builders to develop a structural system that allowed
for even greater soaring spaces. The Gothic architect knew that without an
emphasized verticality, the church is effectively emasculated, its raison
d'être subverted.
The second natural law: A Catholic church must have permanence

The church building, representing Christ's presence in a particular place,

is also necessarily a permanent structure (“Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever”11) conceived in theory and practice “with a firm
foundation.” So, too, is the Catholic Church enduring and permanent,
transcending space and time. The medieval canonist Bishop Gulielmus
Durandus (1220-1296) reminds us that the Church is built with all strength,
“upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself
being the chief cornerstone. Her foundations are in the holy mountains.”12
The permanence of our church structures reflects these qualities of the
universal Church. And just as verticality points to the heavenly and the
eternal, so, too, does the requisite principle of permanence. It's another way
in which architects create an atmosphere of transcendence.
Nineteenth-century architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc writes of
Notre Dame that “everyone who understands construction will be amazed
when he sees what numberless precautions are resorted to in the execution
— how the prudence of the practical builder is combined with the daring of
the artist full of power and inventive imagination.”13 Viollet-le-Duc refers
to the permanence of what has become known to us as the Gothic structural
system, an ingenious method of building that lends itself both to verticality
— soaring heights enabled by the unique system of buttressing — and
permanence. The Gothic churches constructed in Europe throughout the
medieval centuries can't be accused of being cheap, tawdry structures
doomed to decay. No, structures such as Notre Dame were conceived as
solid and enduring temples, perpetual reminders of Christ's presence active
in the world. The same can be said of most churches built in the Early
Christian, Romanesque, Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical
styles. Each of these architectural epochs has respected the necessity of
permanence.

Churches such as the Florence Cathedral were conceived as solid, enduring

temples, perpetual reminders of Christ's presence active in the world.

There are several ways a church can assert its permanence. First, and
most obvious, is by its durability. The church, a building that will serve
generation after generation, transcending time and culture, must be
constructed of durable materials. Mere sticks and stones, shingles and tar
won't do. Typically, one or another type of masonry construction is used,
employing the finest materials available.
Related to durability is massing: the church must be of significant mass,
built with solid foundations, thick walls, and allowing for generous interior
spaces. This massing is another aspect of the architectural language of
churches. It's integral to both verticality (the massing of volumes upward
creates verticality) and iconography (the massing of the church helps it
convey its iconic meaning, i.e., its massing can make the church look like a
church and function like a church).
Third is continuity. Churches whose design grows organically out of the
past two millennia of churches identify themselves with the life of the
Church throughout those two millennia and, by their continuity with the
history and tradition of Catholic church architecture, manifest in another
way the permanence of the Faith.
In other words, to convey that aspect of permanence rooted in continuity,
the architectural language of churches must develop organically throughout
time, such as when the language of the Renaissance churches permutated
into the Baroque language, or when the Gothic forms emerged from the
language of the Romanesque.

Early Christian
Romanesque

Byzantine
 Gothic

Continuity: The authentic Catholic church building is a work of art that

acknowledges the previous greatness of the Church's architectural
patrimony. It refers to the past, serves the present, and informs the future.

Image
Renaissance

Image
Baroque

Image
Neoclassical

Image
Neogothic
In both cases, the growth of the language was organic. The style may have
changed, as when the semicircular arch gave way to the pointed arch. But
here was no sudden break with tradition, no disregard for the churches of
past centuries (arches were as much a part of the Gothic language as the
Romanesque). Architects built on what they knew from the past, refining
certain aspects of the language and developing others.
Architects of future generations need to comprehend the language of
church architecture in order to build permanent sacred edifices for their own
times and future centuries. No successful church architect can be — or even
pretend to be — ignorant of the Church's historical patrimony. Continuity
demands that a successful church design can't spring from the whims of
man or the fashion of the day. The architect who breaks completely with
architectural tradition robs his church of the quality of permanence that is
essential to any successful church design. An authentic Catholic church
building is a work of art that acknowledges the previous greatness of the
Church's architectural patrimony: it refers to the past, serves the present,
and informs the future.
The third natural law: A Catholic church must have iconography

The third requisite principle is that of iconography, which speaks

specifically to the “sign” value of the building. First, the structure itself
ought to be an icon. This is accomplished primarily through its form and the
church's relation to the surrounding environment, whether urban or rural.
Second, the worthy church building presents an iconography that points to
something other than itself. St. Thomas Aquinas,14 among other great
intellectuals who preceded him by centuries, realized that man's mind is
raised to contemplation through material objects. Likewise, in his Spiritual
Exercises, published in 1548, St. Ignatius Loyola15 stressed the importance
of visualizing the subjects of meditation; painting, sculpture, and
architecture are meant to work together to produce a unified effect.
Thus, it's here that these works of art,16 the material objects that are
effective to this end, with their reliance on the breadth of religious
symbolism, come into play. Architectural beauty should reflect God's
creation, particularly man, who is created in the image and likeness of God.
It should beget an environment that lifts man's soul from secular things and
brings it into harmony with the heavenly.
 Architect Ralph Adams Cram wrote, “Art has been, is, and will be
forever, the greatest agency for spiritual impression that the Church may
claim.”17 It's for this reason, he adds, that art is in its highest manifestation
the expression of religious truths. It's through art that Christians have
developed the ingenious symbolism that raises our faculties of soul to God.
The tradition of iconography and symbolism in Catholic culture is broad
and rich. Meaning is conveyed through formal elements, from basic
geometric shapes18 to figural imagery19 to literal representation of people or
scenes, as in sculpture or paintings. The meanings conveyed through a
church's iconographic programs are most typically that of religious truths or
historical events of religious significance. They're always expressions of the
Catholic Faith.
Inspired by churchmen such as St. Ignatius and St. Charles Borromeo,20
the masters of the Catholic Counter Reformation, for instance, expressed
the Catholic Faith in the very birth of their art by means of elaborate high
altars and tabernacles, special niche and aisle shrines dedicated to the Virgin
Mary and to the saints, prominent pulpits for preaching, and an abundance
of art in glass, sculpture, mosaic, and painting devised to teach the truths
necessary for salvation. The atmosphere created on this model is one of
religious mystery wherein we can experience a little of the unearthly joy of
the New Jerusalem, where we can encounter Christ in a unique way. These
iconographic churches, these icons, tell the story of Christ and His Church;
they teach, catechize, and illustrate the lives of the Church's saintly souls.
They manifest eternal and transcendental truths.
Again, if we're to look to Notre Dame, we understand easily how a
pilgrim can spend days — even weeks — meditating on the mysteries that
are “enfleshed” in the architecture of the cathedral's sculptural programs. A
student of the Church may spend months and years reflecting on the
ingenuity and beauty of the Catholic truths revealed in the art and
architecture of this gospel in stone. Ordinary laymen, too, are drawn into
the church, into the house of God, attracted by the iconography of this
medieval edifice, which still speaks clearly to us today, more than eight
hundred years later.
This is possible only because architecture has the capacity to carry
meaning. A church building is a “vessel of meaning” with the greatest of
symbolic responsibilities: it must bear the significance of eternal truths that
are transmitted through its material form, its adorning architectural
elements, and its sacred works of art. These elements — indeed the whole
of the church edifice — must create an other-worldly feel that inspires man
to worship God, to humble himself before his Creator, to partake in the
sacred mysteries, and to focus himself on the eternal. Iconography is yet
another way — perhaps the most direct and efficacious way — to achieve a
transcendent architecture.
These three natural laws of church architecture — verticality,
permanence, and iconography — transcend the different epochs of
Christianity, which is why they're qualities of all the truly great churches of
Christendom. They're the foundation, as it were, on which good church
architects build churches that succeed in becoming for their own time and
for all generations gates of Heaven and worthy houses of God.
Chapter Two
Image
 Our pilgrim goes into the house of the Lord
(or, the essential elements of every proper church)
Architects who build successful Catholic churches rely on the three natural
laws of church architecture, but, over the centuries, have developed many
other ways by which they employ elements of the church structure as means
to draw souls to God and to teach them about the Faith and help awaken in
them the responses of awe and reverence that are called for by the
encounter with God Himself in His dwelling.
One of the best ways to learn about these architectural elements is to
travel with a pilgrim as he makes his way to a Catholic church, enters it,
and moves forward through the church to the sanctuary.
Let's send our pilgrim first to a traditional Catholic church and watch
with him as he encounters it from afar and up close. Let's consider the
experience that the church affords him and what that says about God and
our pilgrim's relation to God. Then let's have that same pilgrim approach a
modern Catholic church in the same way, enter it, and move toward the
tabernacle there. Then we'll evaluate the experience that the modern Church
affords him.
By this method, we'll be able to gauge the success of each church as an
appropriate house of God and as an architectural instrument meant to serve
the faithful and manifest the Faith.
Our pilgrim approaches a traditional church. From the time he catches a
glimpse of that bell tower, steeple, or dome in the distance to the moment
he approaches the altar of God to receive the Holy Sacrament, he is, in the
traditional sense, making a pilgrimage. He's seeking the heavenly Kingdom;
he's seeking God, and he desires the salvation God offers us through the
eternal sacrifice of His Son.
This experience is accomplished in the eucharistic celebration of the
Paschal mystery, in which Christ is “at the summit of the revelation of the
inscrutable mystery of God.”21 We undertake this pilgrimage in imitation of
our forefathers in Faith who ascended the Holy Mountain at Jerusalem for
the great solemnities of Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of
Tabernacles. The tribes of Israel journeyed forth from neighboring villages
and distant cities to praise the name of the Lord, to enter into communion
with Him in worship while dwelling in the tent of His sanctuary.
It was also in Jerusalem that the central event in the history of salvation
took place: Christ's Paschal mystery.22 Thus, it's no coincidence that the
Holy Land was the first sacred place of devotional pilgrimage both for the
Hebrews, who had been led by Moses into that Promised Land flowing with
milk and honey, and for Christians, who have never ceased honoring the
holy places of the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and
those that marked the beginnings of the Church.
In our own pilgrimages today — to our parish church, to the local
cathedral, to Lourdes, to Rome, to the Holy Land — we honor the heavenly
Jerusalem, which is replicated on earth through the consecration of each
church. This “new Jerusalem,” built of material goods by the hands of men,
isn't a mere representation of the Holy Land of the Middle East, but is a
portent of the heavenly kingdom and a reminder of our eternal pilgrimage
to our Father's house. Our pilgrimage, therefore, has a transcendent end in
which we're destined to be “citizens with the saints, and members of the
household of God.”23
The church building, reflecting the Church herself, should assist us in this
eternal pilgrimage by drawing us near, serving as our maternal sanctuary,
facilitating the Church s Liturgy,24 and memorializing the Holy Sacrifice on
Calvary. With this in mind, let's consider the various parts of the church
building as a sequence of spaces and furnishings that work together in
service of our great pilgrimage to our Father's house.
A traditional church beckons to souls from afar

During His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His followers that they
were to be the light of the world. “A city set on a hill cannot be hid,” He
said, just as men do not “light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a
stand, and it gives light to all in the house.”25 For church architects, the
words of Christ are instructive. As we have already seen, our houses of God
need to show Christ and His Church present and active in a particular
locale. Suitably, another historical term for the church building is a “city on
a hill.” This refers not only to the preferred location of our churches in high
places (just as Solomon's Temple was built on Mount Moriah, the highest
point in Jerusalem), with the sense of being a fortified, protected sanctuary,
but also as occupying a place of prominence in the community. The church
building shouldn't be hidden, because hidden signs are bad signs (“a city on
a hill cannot be hid”). Rather, the church should be integrated into the
neighborhood and landscape so that its location reminds the pilgrim of the
building's importance and purpose.

During His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His followers that they were
to be the light of the world: “A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” In terms of
churches, the words of Christ are instructive. Suitably, another historical
term for the church building is a “city on a hill.”

When that's done, there's no doubt that the church is the most important
structure in the environment. By the church's physical location, the pilgrim
recognizes that Christ is, was, and will be “present and active” in this
locale.
Not only does a church serve as a beacon by its situation on the heights
or its rising high above the cornfields, but it's audible, too. Through its
bells, the pilgrim is reminded of Christ's presence, His importance in the
lives of the faithful, and our need to honor Him in adoration and prayer. All
tolls and peals of the church bells, no matter what the occasion or time of
day, are a summons to prayer — whether for the souls of the faithful
departed, for the pious recitation of the Angelus, or as a call to worship
through participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The pilgrim can't help but be profoundly moved by the peal of cathedral
bells, by the ebullient ringing of wedding bells, or by the mournful toll of
the funeral bell. For our pilgrim, that distant sound may well be the first
indication that his destination isn't far off. He then looks forward to
catching his first glimpse of the church tower or spire rising above the
urban fabric or seeing the silhouette of the church building atop a distant
hill.
The bell tower, often called the campanile, is one of the primary elements
that draws the pilgrim to the church from a great distance, not only by the
sound of its bells, but by its visual profile. Pointing upward to the heavens,
it's a welcoming sign to pilgrims and tourists, parishioners and merchants
alike.
In other church buildings, the dome, rather than the campanile, is the
primary ascendant element, especially in those Renaissance and
Renaissance-inspired churches that are so familiar to our pilgrim. Unlike
the campanile, the dome has significant effects on the interior of the church:
it adds to the verticality and sense of transcendence — symbolizing the
heavenly kingdom — in both its height and in the way it allows shafts of
light to penetrate the interior of the church.
The typical Venetian campanile, such as this one at San Giorgio Church, is
built as a tall, slim, square shaft that's frequently tapered, rising to an open
belfry. This Venetian-style campanile was revived during the nineteenth
century in England and in North America.
In some churches, the dome is the primary ascendant element, especially in
those Renaissance and Renaissance-inspired churches that are so familiar
to the pilgrim.
The dome also has significant effects on the interior: it adds to the sense of
verticality and transcendence — symbolizing the heavenly kingdom — of
the church in its height and in the way shafts of light penetrate the church's
interior.

The traditional church's atrium leads us from the profane to the sacred

As our pilgrim makes his way from the vanity and materialism of the
world toward the sacred womb of God's sanctuary, guided by pealing bells
and the compass of tower, dome, or steeple, the connection between the
church and its surroundings becomes important. This juncture has been
successfully addressed for centuries in urban areas through the piazza
(plaza or square). Here's a place for the faithful to congregate, for the
curious to linger and gaze upon the church; it's the first transitional space
that prepares us for our dramatic entrance into the gate of Heaven, and it's a
place that often serves as a backdrop for functions both religious and civic.
 On a much smaller scale than the piazza is the atrium, an open courtyard
(recalling the forecourts of Solomon's Temple) that's more of an integrated
element o the church building.26 In the center of the atrium, which is
surrounded by colonnades of a cloister, is a fountain, where our pilgrim
washes his hands before entering the church. Flowers and greenery give the
effect of a garden. As such, the atrium is otherwise referred to as a
paradisus, having obvious biblical connotations, not the least of which is
the Garden of Eden, where our first parents lived in innocence before the
day of the serpent. The symbolism of the atrium as paradise is rich: just as
the garden in Genesis was the earthly forecourt to the heavenly kingdom, so
the atrium serves as the forecourt to the house of God. And those who stand
at the forecourt, as did Adam and Eve, can choose the profanity of the
world by following the serpent or the sacredness of the porta coeli by
approaching the altar of God.
The piazza hearkens back to the Greek agora (“open space”), the center of
political, commercial, religious, and social life in the cities of ancient
Greece. The agora, surrounded by public buildings and temples, frequently
with colonnades on the side facing the square, gives precedent to the
piazzas of Italy, which often use the colonnades of buildings to mark their
perimeters. In turn, the piazzas of Italy, such as Piazza San Marco in
Venice, gave rise to the “Cathedral squares” of northern and eastern
Europe and North America.
Flowers and greenery give the effect of a garden. As such, the atrium, such
as this one at Rome's St. Paul Outside the Walls, is referred to as a
paradisus, having obvious biblical connotations, particularly the Garden of
Eden.

Such atriums have been a part of churches since the early Christian ones,
such as Old St. Peter's in Rome and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. At the
“new” Basilica of St. Peter, Gian-lorenzo Bernini integrated atrium and
piazza to produce Christendom's most recognizable colonnaded forecourt:
St. Peter's Square (1667). This dynamic ovular space, formed by two vast
semicircular colonnades, designed to accommodate major liturgical events,
is richly symbolic. According to Bernini himself, the form of the colonnade
that encloses the large piazza was designed “to receive in a maternal gesture
Catholics in order to confirm their belief, heretics in order to reunite them
with the Church, and infidels in order to reveal to them the true Faith.”27

At the “new” Basilica of St. Peter, Gianlorenzo Bernini integrated atrium

and piazza to produce Christendom's most recognizable colonnaded
forecourt: St. Peter's Square.
 The familiar colonnade appears as the extended arms of Holy Mother
Church, welcoming the faithful with a huge embrace. This metaphor is
farther reaching than it first appears. The church building, reflecting the
Church herself, is maternal — the womb, so to speak, that serves both as
sanctuary to the faithful and as home to God in a very real and particular
way.
Alas, not all churches can accommodate a proper atrium. When having
an open courtyard isn't possible, some churches have instead a large porch,
or portico. These covered exterior spaces serve useful liturgical purposes, as
does the atrium — for instance, at the beginning of the processions on Palm
Sunday and at the Easter Vigil. From ancient times, the Easter Vigil has
been considered the pre-eminent event in the Church's liturgical cycle.
Since the restoration of the rites of Holy Week by order of Pope Pius XII,
the Vigil has assumed its former grandeur and primacy of place. It's here in
the atrium or on the porch in the darkness of Holy Saturday night that the
Easter fire is kindled and the Easter candle blessed with the Church's
beautiful ritual, full of symbolism and Christological meaning. After the
candle is lit from the fire, a procession forms as the candle is held aloft,
with the faithful bearing small candles lit from the flame of the Easter
candle. Then all enter into the darkened church, chanting lumen Christi,
“light of Christ.” It's this light of Christ that the church ought to broadcast
in every element of its building, as well as through the unity of its parts as a
whole.
The traditional church's façade tells us of the riches awaiting us inside

Once the pilgrim draws near to the church building, standing perhaps in
the piazza or near the fountain of the arcade-studded atrium, he comes face-
to-face with the façade, that is, the front exterior. Often the most memorable
part of the building, the façade may incorporate a bell tower or other
towers, statuary, sculptural reliefs, frescoes, stained-glass windows, and, of
course, the main entrance doors to the church. In a modern urban setting, in
which a church (such as St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City) may be
dwarfed by surrounding structures, the façade takes on an extra importance
in that the church itself becomes identified with its façade. This front
entrance is the “face” that the church presents to the world. It's often the
only part of the building that people will see (not everyone enters the house
of God, unfortunately), and thus it's the façade that has the greatest
opportunity to evangelize, teach, and catechize. This is accomplished most
obviously through the incorporation of exterior artwork.
The façades of the great churches of Christendom have been approached
with great care by the architects of every age. History books show us that
there's no one way to design the façade of a church. The emotionally
elaborate Gothic exteriors, the austere, geometric-style “wall architecture”
of the Renaissance, and the irregular, undulating sculptural façades of the
Baroque all evoke a profound sense of goodness, beauty, and truth — that
which naturally draws both the pious pilgrim and the curious skeptic nearer
the porta coeli. All do so through very different means, yet it's an
iconographic beauty that is at the basis of their creation: proper proportions,
purity of forms, and manifold works of art.
The façade acts as a “vessel of meaning” in the most straightforward of
ways: it's the foreword of a book as much as it's a grand summa — a
foreword to the Catholic Liturgy that takes place inside, a prelude to the
great truths of the Faith, and a welcoming invitation to the maternal
sanctuary; simultaneously, it's a summary of the Faith in its totality (its
catholicity).
Even the façades of some early basilica churches, often mistakenly
described as “plain,” were richly designed to fulfill their calling as vessels
of meaning. The upper surfaces above the projecting portico were often
ornamented with colorful mosaics. The major basilicas of Rome serve as
excellent examples. They're perhaps the earliest evidence of façades that are
meant to inspire, awe, and invite, while “telling a story.” Yet while the
façades of the churches of the first millennium were indeed beautiful
vessels of meaning, none compared with the Gothic façades of later
centuries in complexity, detail, and craftsmanship. Victor Hugo, for
instance, makes this observation about the grand façade of the Parisian
Notre Dame: “. . . crowding upward before the eye without disorder, their
innumerable details of statuary, sculpture, and carving [create] a vast
symphony in stone . . . like divine creation whose two-fold character it
seems to have appropriated: variety, eternity.” At Notre Dame, the pilgrim,
standing at a distance in the cathedral square or on the steps of the
cathedral, stands face-to-face with eternity — a feeling evoked by an
architecture that evinces the natural laws of verticality, permanence, and
iconography.
 The front façade is the “face” that the church presents to the world. It's
often the only part of the building that people see, and thus it has the
greatest opportunity to evangelize, teach, and catechize. This is
accomplished most obviously through the incorporation of exterior artwork.
 Two elements of the façade are of particular interest to our pilgrim: the
front portals and the rose window. If only for practical purposes, the
portal,28 made up of the architectural elements surrounding the door, is of
greatest importance in the façade. For this is the door to the domus Dei, to
the porta coeli. It's the means through which our pilgrim reaches the
threshold of God's house. Through the centuries, architects and church
artists have responded to the obvious by paying particularly close attention
to the design of the elements that surround the openings into the church.
These are often elaborately treated with carved ornaments of saints, kings,
men, animals, or foliage, depending on the popular symbols and images
employed during different ages.
Our pilgrim recognizes biblical scenes from the Old Testament and from
the life of Christ depicted in the semicircular arch above the deeply
recessed central portal on what is called the tympanum. Since our pilgrim
must enter the church through its doors, the space directly above each
entrance provides the most prominent location for iconographic sculpture
that serves as a visual extension to religious teaching. Accordingly, the
portal sculpture is rich in both figural meaning and Christian symbolism.
Above the central portal is a large circular rose window of awe-inspiring
beauty. Our pilgrim likens the segments of stained glass that radiate from its
center to the unfolding petals of a rose. The rose isn't only one of the most
beautiful flowers of God's creation, but it's also our Lady's most prolific
emblem. Representing the beauty and love of the Virgin Mary, this rose is at
the heart of the façade. At the center of this heart is an image of Christ
sitting on the lap of the Virgin, who offers her incarnate Son to the world.
The images that radiate from Christ are narrative images from Scripture and
from the lives of the saints. Sometimes referred to as “the eye of God,” the
rose window is a powerful work of art that anticipates the Beatific Vision of
God's beauty in the eternal kingdom. It's a representation of the perfection,
balance, and harmony of the purified soul as it prepares to enter that
kingdom forever.
The portal is of greatest importance in the façade, for the portal is the door
to the domus Dei, to the porta coeli.
 The tympanum scene of the Last Judgment was perhaps the most common
New Testament narrative depicted during the twelfth century. One of the
most vivid of these, with angels and demons portrayed, is Chartres
Cathedral's famous Portail Royal (1155), part of the only remaining
element from the Romanesque church that burned to the ground in 1194.
The great rose window, American historian Henry Adams wrote, “is one of
the flowers of architecture which reveals its beauties slowly without end.”
 The traditional church's narthex draws us toward the sanctuary

When our pilgrim finally steps through the church doors, he has arrived.
It's here in the narthex, the threshold of God's house, that he will pause to
get his bearings, knock the snow from his boots, remove his hat, or close his
umbrella. But this is no mere foyer, mudroom, or lobby; it's primarily the
final transitional space from the outside world (the profane and temporal) to
the church's interior (the sacred and eternal). It's here where our pilgrim will
first smell lingering incense and the burning wax of vigil candles. It's here
where he'll be given a hint of where he's headed. Thus, it's a dimly lit place
decorated modestly with religious art, perhaps a crucifix hanging on the
wall, with a prie-dieu beneath it. It's the first devotional space of God's
house.
In addition to its primary function as a transitional space, the narthex
serves a practical liturgical function: providing a place for processions to
assemble. Thus, the narthex is known as the “gali-lee,” since the procession
from narthex to altar symbolizes Christ's journey from Galilee to Jerusalem
for the Crucifixion. It isn't uncommon to see a wide red carpet beneath the
central door to the nave leading down the central aisle up to the altar, a
reminder of the symbolic road our Savior walked to redeem the world.
The traditional church's baptistery reminds us of our entrance into the
Church Universal

At one end of the narthex, our pilgrim passes the baptistery. He's
reminded that he's a pilgrim also by reason that he has been baptized.
Through this first sacrament of initiation, our pilgrim was not only reborn
as an adopted son of God and sanctified as a temple of the Holy Spirit, but
he was also incorporated into Christ and His Church through participation
in Christ's death and Res-urrection.29 He becomes part of the “pilgrim
Church on earth.” It's fitting, then, that the catechumen pilgrim30 be
baptized at the threshold of God's house, here at the narthex.
The baptistery appears as a chapel, at the north end of the narthex
(because pagans came predominately from the north). Polygonal in shape,
the chapel contains a font consecrated for the sole purpose of Baptism,
placed at the center beneath a cupola. The form of the chapel recalls that of
the martyrium (a martyr shrine), thought to be most suitable because
Baptism is equated with the descent into Christ's tomb and a rebirth into
Christ's Resurrection, according to St. Paul's letter to the Romans: “You
have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to
another, to Him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may
bear fruit.”31
The polygonal chapel often has eight sides, referring to the Resurrection
as the “eighth day” (Sunday comes after Saturday, the Sabbath, or seventh
day of the week).
The baptistery's location is also used to explain and symbolize the
meaning of the sacrament. The location in the narthex, at the threshold of
the church, is symbolic of the pilgrim's entrance into the Church universal.
The spiritual rebirth, provided by the sacrament, fittingly takes place at this
threshold of God's house. In other words, just as Baptism is the beginning
of a Catholic's pilgrimage to his heavenly Father as part of the pilgrim
Church on earth, the baptistery is suitably placed at the threshold to God's
house.
Our pilgrim understands readily that the font is the most significant part
of the baptistery.32 Its an iconographic element just as much as the
baptistery itself. Designed and built as a beautiful piece of religious
artwork, the font has Christian symbols and imagery sculpted into its
pedestal and basin. The imagery depicts the struggle between good and evil:
angels and devils battle for souls, and there are representations of snakes,
dragons, and other beasts. Nevertheless, the most prominent image is that of
St. John the Baptist, clad in a garment of camel hair tied with a leather
girdle, and the Holy Spirit depicted as the descending dove, alluding to the
Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, “Behold, the heavens were opened and He
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove.”33
The traditional church's nave declares that the Church is the ark of
salvation

Once through the narthex doors, our pilgrim finds himself in the main
body of the church. As his eyes adjust to the relatively dim light at the back
of the nave, he instinctively looks for the nearest holy water stoup into
which he will dip his fingers to bless himself with the Sign of the Cross.
The holy water reminds him of his own baptism, when he was blessed with
holy water and baptized into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Each time he
dips his hand into holy water, he recalls that through this sacrament he was
made a child of God. Consequently he's reminded of his responsibility to
keep God's commandments — to know, to love, and to serve God.
Holy water also reminds our pilgrim to be sorry for his sins, since
blessings with holy water cleanse us of our venial sins. In fact, during some
Masses, there's a rite of sprinkling. The priest or bishop walks down the
aisle and blesses the congregation by sprinkling holy water over them.
During this rite the Asperges is
sung.34
The third reason our pilgrim uses holy water is for exorcism. An
exorcism is literally driving away the Devil. The traditional prayer for the
blessing of holy water emphasizes the power of holy water to exorcise:
O God, Creator of unconquered power, King of invincible empire and
Victor ever great: who put down the powers of hostile dominion and
conquer the fury of the roaring enemy, who fight powerfully against
our wicked foes: trembling we beseech You, O Lord, we implore You
and beg You that You might graciously look upon this creature of
water and salt, kindly illumine it, sanctify it with the dew of Your
 loving kindness, so that wherever it is sprinkled, through the
invocation of Your holy Name, every infestation of the unclean spirit
be cast out, and the terror of the poisonous serpent be driven far away.
And may the presence of the Holy Spirit deign to be with us always,
we who implore Your mercy.
Thus, when our pilgrim blesses himself with holy water, he's exorcising
himself. He's protecting himself from “the fury of the roaring enemy.” All
of this considered, then, it is right and just that our pilgrim purifies himself
with holy water on entering fully into God's house, into this first wholly
sacred place. He does this by making the Sign of the Cross, the outward
gesture that reminds him of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Once our pilgrim's eyes adjust, he finds himself both awed and humbled
by the cavernous space commonly called the nave, a term derived from the
Latin word for “ship” (from which we get the English word naval). This is
the place where the worshiping congregation dwells and is called nave
because it represents the “ark of salvation.” The symbolism of the boat,
ship, or the ark is rich in both Scripture and Tradition. A boat signifies
safety and well-being, usually during a tumultuous voyage. Noah's
protection from the flood via the ark designed to God's specifications is the
most obvious allusion. But the Church herself is this ark, too, sometimes
referred to as the Barque of Peter, the place where Christians are given
sanctuary and are guided on their pilgrimage to the Father's house. We see
this represented in Scripture when the apostles encounter a fierce storm
while crossing the Sea of Galilee. They're convinced that their death is
inescapable, yet Jesus, when awakened from His slumber, assures them of
their safety and chides them for their lack of faith in Him.35
In the same way, the nave is also symbolic of the mother's womb, in
which pilgrims are kept in a nurturing environment that helps them to
develop, mature, and grow toward their eternal destination with God in the
heavenly kingdom. The Church, in fact, has long been referred to as Mater
Ecclesia, Mother Church, mother of all. The church building, then, is a
physical representation of the maternal place on earth, where the pilgrim
goes so as no longer to feel a foreigner, where he goes for sanctuary. It's a
sacred place conducive to prayer and worship.
Image
The nave's central processional aisle leads directly to the sanctuary and the
altar, where the Church memorializes and re-presents in an unbloody
 manner Christ's one, holy Sacrifice on the Cross.

The Fathers of the Church often spoke of the maternity of the Church,
and church builders have long manifested this maternal aspect of the
Church in her sacred structures. Thus, the church building is also seen as a
representation of Mary, who nurtured in her womb and brought forth the
incarnate Son. This was reflected particularly in the Middle Ages, when
almost all of the Gothic cathedrals in France were named after Our Lady:
Notre Dame. This maternal aspect also accounts for the significance of
Marian imagery and symbols in churches, most of which represent her as
the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, or as Mother of the Church, the
Mother of All. In this way, we can see that Mary, too, leads our pilgrim to
Christ, helps him remain “on the Way,” in the safety of the Barque of Peter.
Another aspect of the nave is that it's always directed toward the
sanctuary, at the head of the building. Indeed the nave is also a
representation of the body at the service of the head, just as the Body of
Christ is at the service of Christ the Head. A famous diagram shows the
image of Christ superimposed over a floor plan of a typical basilica-style
church, and this is informative. The head of Christ fits in the sanctuary; the
arms become the transepts, and the torso and legs fill out the nave. So here
we can see literally the idea of the church building representing the body of
Christ. Neither is it a coincidence that the floor plan is laid out in the shape
of a cross, called cruciform, which reminds us of Christ on the Cross.
The traditional church's pews promote adoration, directing our eyes to the
altar

Just as the “ark of salvation” is prepared to receive our pilgrim, the nave
is also prepared to serve the public liturgy of the Church. The layout and
various artistic and architectural elements that the nave comprises help to
reflect Christ's journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, that same journey that
plays out during the Mass. Here, our pilgrim easily comprehends that the
nave is divided into four sections of seating with a central processional aisle
leading to the sanctuary and altar, where the Church memorializes and
represents in an unbloody manner Christ's one holy Sacrifice on the Cross.
Two side aisles, one on each side of the processional aisle, also lead to the
sanctuary up front.
Image
 Perhaps the most common elements of the nave are the pews and their
kneelers. The traditional arrangement of the pews is unidirectional, facing
the sanctuary.
Perhaps the most common elements of the nave are the pews (wooden
benches with backs) and their kneelers. The traditional arrangement of the
pews is unidirectional, that is, one behind the next, facing the sanctuary.36
These marching rows of pews are what form that central aisle from narthex
to sanctuary. They help define the road our pilgrim will take to approach the
altar to receive the Holy Sacrament. They contribute to making a church
look like a church as much as function like a church, rather than simply like
a meeting hall.
Pews are a part of our Catholic patrimony and have commonly been used
in the West since at least the thirteenth century, when they were designed as
backless benches. By the late sixteenth century, because of the Counter
Reformation's emphasis on preaching long sermons, most Catholic churches
being built included wooden pews with kneelers and high backs. The new
designs accommodated long periods of sitting. But even before full pews
were commonly used, the faithful knelt during much of the Mass.
Kneeling, in fact, has always been a distinct posture for Catholic
prayer:37 in reverence and adoration of Christ, in supplication, and as a
posture of humility. Through such a posture of the body, humbleness of
heart is expressed, as are penitence and sorrow for sins committed. In fact,
the early Church Fathers equated kneeling with prayer and worship.
Eusebius, for instance, once wrote that St. James's continual kneeling in
prayer gave him “knees as callous as those of a camel.”38 And Origen
maintained that kneeling is necessary when forgiveness is sought.39 With
this in mind, our pilgrim, as a penitent, genuflects, kneeling briefly on one
or both knees, before taking his place in a pew. The genuflection expresses
a reverence and adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, either
reserved in the tabernacle or exposed in a monstrance for adoration. This
initial genuflection reflects an attitude of the heart, a prayerful and
reverential one that prepares our pilgrim to offer adoration, thanksgiving,
reparation, and supplication, through private devotion and prayers as well
as to help celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass through the Liturgy.
Thus, Catholic worship — both in private devotion and in public liturgy
— embraces both adoration and the humbling of ourselves before God. In
the Liturgy, for instance, the Church calls for the faithful to kneel during the
Eucharistic Prayer, when bread and wine are transubstantiated into the
Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. The pew is meant to
accommodate and encourage this particular posture of worship. As such, it
has become a memorable part of our churches.
The traditional church's confessional prepares us to receive the Eucharist

Tied in with the posture of kneeling and with interior iconography is

another important element of the nave: the confessional, where the penitent
(that pilgrim who is repentant of his sins and seeks the forgiveness of God)
solemnly receives the sacrament of Penance. The word penance is derived
from the Latin word poeni-tentia, meaning sorrow, regret, and change of
heart. Penance is also called the sacrament of conversion, the sacrament of
Confession, the sacrament of forgiveness, and the sacrament of
Reconciliation. This sacrament itself is a journey from conversion of heart
to reconciliation with Christ and the Church. The confessional, then,
appropriately makes provision for the posture of kneeling, which is
logically the primary posture for sacramental Confession.
St. Charles Borromeo, writing in his seminal Instructiones on church
architecture, developed the use of what we now consider the traditional
wooden confessional “box,” with a kneeler for the penitent and a screen
placed between him and the priest confessor. St. Charles recommended that
confessionals be placed at the sides of the nave in some clear, open space.
He also recommended that the penitent be facing the sanctuary — if
possible, turned toward the altar, the focal point of the church — when
confessing and receiving the sacrament. After all, the sacrament of Penance
is a preparation and strengthening on the pilgrimage road toward the
sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, toward which all seven sacraments are
ordered and that which is the source and summit of the Christian life. This
pilgrimage is one directed toward maintaining a healthy spiritual life. Thus,
the sacrament of Penance, given an architectural setting in an open part of
the nave, serves to invite the pilgrim to prepare for the Holy Eucharist
through conversion and repentance. “Penance,” wrote Pope John Paul II,
leads to the Eucharist.”40
Image
St. Charles Borromeo developed the use of what we now consider the
wooden confessional “box,” with a kneeler for the penitent and a screen
 placed between him and the priest confessor. He recommended that
confessionals be placed at the sides of the nave in some clear, open space.

Just as the baptismal font provided an iconographic object to represent

the sacrament of Baptism, the confessional provides an opportunity to
represent Penance. Following St. Charles Borro-meo's recommendations,
many Baroque churches, those built in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries especially, have elaborate examples of woodwork with columns
and carved images. The figures of Moses and Christ as well as the tablets of
the Ten Commandments were often used in confessional imagery. Yet, no
matter how plain a confessional might be, it should always reflect the
dignity and solemnity of the sacrament. To this end, in place of figural
imagery, columns are often used in the design.
The traditional church's columns enhance its verticality and permanence

The column itself, in fact, plays a significant role in the arrangement and
feel of the entire nave. First, its use in arcades on either side of the nave
emphasizes the central aisle as a processional route, that road to Jerusalem.
The regularly spaced columns help focus the sight lines on the sanctuary
and the altar at the head of the building, at the “end of the road.” They also
help provide a sense of proper proportion, and for that reason, wrote Ralph
Adams Cram, they shouldn't be dispensed with because of a “prejudice
against seats behind columns,” inherited from the Puritans. He added, “This
prejudice against columns that cut off a direct view of the altar and pulpit
from a few seats in the side aisles does not seem to be one which is based
on reason. Not only does the omission of these arcades of columns and
arches militate very seriously against the dignity and impressiveness of a
church interior, it also is almost certain, particularly in the case of large
churches, to destroy all sense of just proportion.”41
Image
Columns have always provided buildings with a “sense of just proportion”
as well as a sense of dignity and solemnity, fitting for religious ritual.

Columns have always provided buildings, starting with Greek and

Egyptian temples, with “a sense of just proportion” as well as a sense of
dignity and solemnity — fitting for religious ritual. The Puritan
meetinghouse prejudice addressed by Cram is against columns, piers, or
any other architectural feature that would differentiate the structure from a
lecture hall.
Columns have a long, rich history as used in the church building. We
could devote several volumes to this topic alone, discussing the significance
of the column's size, shape, shaft, head, and base, for example. But for our
purposes here, suffice it to say that the column, when used properly in a
colonnade or arcade, emphasizes the verticality of the nave, whether using
the heavy stone columns of a Romanesque basilica or the tall, slender
columns (“ribbons o rock strung between earth and sky”42) of a Gothic
church. The column is an undeniably vertical element. As a structural
element helping to support the weight of the building, it emphasizes the
durability of the structure. And inasmuch as the column provides ample
surface area, sculptors can mold these pillars into iconographic elements.
The Apostles, for instance, who are called “pillars” of the church, especially
Sts. Peter and Paul, appear in many churches as columns bearing the weight
of the church.
The traditional church's pulpit is subordinate to the altar

Our pilgrim is uplifted by the beautiful pulpit from which the priest
proclaims the Gospel and delivers his homily in clear hearing and in sight
of all those present at the Mass. The pulpit is hexagonal and thus includes
five reliefs (the sixth side is an opening to the lectern). The scenes depicted
provide a continuous narrative with the Annunciation and the Nativity
(together), the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the
Crucifixion, and the Last Judgment. The pulpit is supported by a central
column on a base with grotesque figures representing pagan elements
subdued by Christianity. Six external columns are supported on the backs of
lions that hover over vanquished prey, a motif symbolic of triumphant
Christianity.
One function of the Liturgy now proper to both clergy and laity is
proclaiming the Word of God. Consequently the architectural setting for
reading or chanting the Scriptures — pulpit or ambo — is sometimes found
in the nave, the realm of the laity, or at the entrance to the sanctuary, the
realm of clerics and their attendants, i.e., “altar servers.”
The placement of the pulpit in the nave, however, preceded the twentieth-
century innovation of lay readers. Its placement reflected several
considerations. The first was audibility. When a new church was built, at
least from the twelfth century onward, a temporary pulpit would be
constructed and used, so that it might be moved around until the best
acoustical position had been found. Usually this was at the side of the nave
nearer the sanctuary, either freestanding or built into a side wall or column.
A horizontal piece was often placed above the head of the reader in order
for his voice to project better to the congregation. This acoustical device,
sometimes shaped like a shell or the sails of a ship, is called a sounding
board. And, of course, the raised platform not only helps acoustically, but it
also enables the congregation to see the priest or reader better.
Usually the Gospel pulpit was placed on the north side of the church (as
was the baptistery), since the north symbolized paganism and darkness. It
was large enough to accommodate the priest and his candle-bearers. On the
south side, opposite the Gospel pulpit, was often the Epistle pulpit. It was
invariably smaller and less ornate than its Gospel counterpart.
Image
Pulpits lend themselves to ornamentation and properly become another
iconographic element of the church. They're crafted as works of art, meant
to inspire and to symbolize the preaching of the Word.

A second consideration for placement of the pulpit was reverence and

respect for Christ as symbolized by the altar and truly present in the
tabernacle. Each pulpit was situated so that the preacher or reader would
look out diagonally across the congregation. This enabled him never to
have his back to the altar, the tabernacle, or — in cathedrals — to the
bishop when present.
In the early Christian centuries, churches featured an ambo instead of a
pulpit. The ambo was an elevated lectern, usually made of marble. It was
reached by a flight of steps on either side. One flight was used to ascend
and the other to descend. Only the Gospel was read from the ambo, since
the bishop (and later priests also) usually preached from his chair. In the
thirteenth century, however, the “preaching orders” of the Dominicans and
the Franciscans placed a great emphasis on preaching sermons. It was then
that the pulpit developed as a large and elaborate part of the church
building, although never in competition with the altar (just as preaching
wasn't considered in opposition to the eucharistic sacrifice). These larger
pulpits lent themselves to ornamentation and properly became another
iconographic element of the church. They were often crafted as works of
art, meant to inspire and to symbolize the preaching of the Word. Some
were domed, while others were covered with a small canopy or tester that
functioned as a sounding board.
The traditional church's choir serves the Mass without calling attention to
itself

During the chanting of the Credo after the priest's homily, our pilgrim is
again called into prayer and contemplation through his senses. This time,
just as with the bells on his journey toward the church, he's called through
his sense of sound. The voices of the choir ring out from above, resounding
beautifully off the walls and ceiling of the church, which seem to be
designed especially for sung chant and organ. Since he doesn't see the choir,
our pilgrim, too, participates in the chant by singing while focusing his
attention on the altar and the tabernacle in the sanctuary.
Choir is a name not only for a group of people but also for that place in
the church set aside for those members of the congregation who are
specially trained to lead the sung portion of the Liturgy. For acoustical
reasons, choirs are typically placed on one of the building's axes. In many
large ancient churches, especially the grand Gothic cathedrals such as Notre
Dame, the choir is made up of a series of stalls at the front part of the nave,
near the sanctuary. These were built at a time when the singers were made
up exclusively of clerics, those of minor or major orders. (It wasn't until the
Renaissance that choirs were laicized.)
The Council of Trent spent a long time considering the general state of
sacred music.43 One result of its deliberations affected the placement of the
choir. Because of the council's recommendations, it gradually became the
norm for the choir to be situated in the rear gallery, above the narthex or on
a balcony that extends out over the rear of the nave. This distinct place of
the nave has come to be known as the choir loft. The main purpose of the
choir is to chant those portions of the Mass which vary with the week or
liturgical season and which can't usually be chanted by the entire
congregation. Yet congregational singing is strongly reinforced when the
organ and the well-trained voices of the choir lead from above and behind.
Thus, the choir and organ are placed in a rear loft for acoustical reasons
meant to enhance the quality of liturgical chant.
 Image
For acoustical reasons, the choir is situated in the rear gallery, above the
narthex or on a balcony that extends out over the rear of the nave.

Since the voices of the choir are perceived audibly — our pilgrim hears
them — it's neither necessary nor desired that the members of the choir be
visible to the rest of the congregation. They're present at Holy Mass as
worshipers, not entertainers. In other words, there's no serious reason why
the rest of the congregation needs to see the choir throughout the course of
the Liturgy. The rest of the congregation needs to hear the choir, and since
the members of the choir, too, are worshipers, it's most appropriate that they
face the same direction as the remainder of the worshiping congregation —
toward the altar of sacrifice. Furthermore, the “disembodied voices” of the
choir are often perceived as heavenly voices from above, the chant of a
choir of angels.
The traditional church's sacred art teaches and evangelizes us

In the twelfth century, Abbot Suger of St. Denis wrote that “art leads
minds from material to immaterial things.” Our pilgrim in the nave of the
church isn't unaffected by the environment of sacred art. Statuary, stained-
glass windows, side-aisle shrines, and other devotional art in the form of
reliefs, mosaics, frescoes, or murals are all designed to raise our minds and
spirits to God and to things eternal. It's sacred art that helps the architecture
of our churches to awe and inspire. Such art prepares our pilgrim to humble
himself before God, to offer his prayers and adoration, to prepare to
celebrate Holy Mass, and to approach the altar to receive the Holy
Sacrament. It enhances the architecture and the Liturgy, and it lifts our
pilgrim's mind to God through its beauty and meaning.
As mentioned previously, the iconography of sacred art, just like the
iconography of the architecture itself, teaches and evangelizes. In fact,
sacred art is placed at the service of the Church: it's an intimate component
of Catholic worship, both public (in the Liturgy) and private (in devotion).
Image
Sacred art helps church architecture to awe and inspire. It prepares the
pilgrim to humble himself before God, to offer prayers and adoration, to
prepare to celebrate Mass, and to approach the altar to receive the Holy
Sacrament.
 In 1963, Pope Paul VI recognized this fact formally at the Second
Vatican Council. The fine arts, the council fathers wrote, and the Pope
ratified, “are considered to rank among the noblest expressions of human
genius.” Sacred art, they continued, is the highest achievement in art,
because it's related to God's boundless beauty: “To the extent that these
works aim exclusively at turning men's thoughts to God persuasively and
devoutly, they are dedicated to God and to the cause of His greater honor
and glory.”44
Throughout the Christian centuries, the Popes have always reiterated this
point, especially when the Byzantine Iconoclasts of the eighth and ninth
centuries violently challenged the use of figural imagery in sacred art. St.
John Damascene provided the strongest argument against the destruction of
images, claiming that ultimately the Iconoclasts denied the fundamental
doctrine of the Incarnation, that God was made flesh. Christ Himself, by
His human birth, made it possible to represent Him in sacred art. For this
reason, among others, the Second Council of Nicea declared that
Iconoclasm, the belief that figural imagery encouraged idolatrous worship
and should therefore be forbidden, was a heresy.
The figural image, in fact, is a primary vessel of meaning in the house of
God. Drawing on the great treasury of symbolic heroes from the Bible —
prophets and patriarchs — and Church history, with its saints who provide
models of virtue in every vocation and walk of life in imitation of Christ,
sacred art conveys meaning on several levels.
First, the figure or image conveys a historical meaning. For instance, in
the portrayal of Abraham lifting his knife to slay his only son, Isaac, only to
be held back by an angelic messenger from God, our pilgrim can reflect on
the historical account in Scripture: God instructed Abraham to sacrifice his
only son; Abraham rose early the next morning, and, taking Isaac with him
on his saddled ass, he climbed Mount Moriah and prepared wood for the
burnt offering. Just when Abraham was about to slay his son, an angel of
the Lord appeared to stay his hand, and a ram replaced Isaac as the
sacrificial offering.45
The second meaning is symbolic. Often Old Testament scenes symbolize
New Testament events. The sacrifice of Isaac, the only son of Abraham,
prefigures the Sacrifice of Christ, the only Son of God. From eternity God
wanted His only Son to shed His Blood for the salvation of man.
 Image
Sacred art is placed at the service of the Church; it's an intimate component
of Catholic worship, both public (in the Liturgy) and private (in devotion).

The third meaning is allegorical. The figural images are used to represent
moral principles, themes, or virtues. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac represents,
for example, self-denial, fear of the Lord, and obedience to the will of God.
Literature, most obviously in the Scriptures, carries these same layers of
meaning. In sacred Christian art, as with Scripture, these meanings are
always Christologi-cal; in other words, they're always centered on Christ.
Beyond these layers of meaning, there's beauty as well, but no true sacred
art can be simply beautiful, detached from the meaning it carries. In a
church, the purpose of beauty is to make the truths represented attractive to
the senses. And if these beautifully represented truths are Christological,
they'll aid our pilgrim in prayer, meditation, contemplation, and in the
ultimate form of Christian worship: participating in the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass.
The richness of sacred art, however, isn't limited to the figural image,
although that is its most popular form throughout the majority of Christian
epochs. Meaning in sacred art is also expressed by the use of specific
objects or nonhuman figures, such as fruit, books, skulls, and candles. The
language of signs and symbols, according to art historian George Ferguson,
is “the outward and visible form through which is revealed the inward and
invisible reality that moves and directs the soul of a man.”46 The greatest
and most common of Christian symbols is, of course, the Cross, which
universally represents the whole of the Christian Faith. It also points to
Christ's sacrifice and God's love for man in the sacrifice of His Son for the
salvation of the world.
Early Christians, through fear of persecution, were forced to develop
more circumspect symbols than the Cross. They used common objects and
animals such as the fish and the anchor to represent Christ. The same was
true for representing other spiritual truths. The dove, for instance, was used
then, as it is today, to represent the Holy Spirit — clearly a Scriptural
allusion: “The heavens were opened and He saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove.”47
Throughout the following centuries, Christian artists developed a rich
system of Catholic symbols. By the Renaissance, these signs and symbols
were ordered so that their meanings might be universally understood. The
lily, for instance, represents purity and is a symbol of the Immaculate
Conception. The camel, because it could go without drink for long periods
of time, symbolizes temperance. The ox, an animal commonly used by the
Jews for holocausts, stands for sacrifice, and the ass, which sometimes
accompanies the ox in Nativity images, stands for humility.
Not only are truths, virtues, and Christian principles represented by
symbols, but saints are also identified by the objects they bear when
portrayed in sacred art. St. Peter is recognized by his keys, which represent
the papacy in Scripture through the traditio clavium: “You are Peter, and on
this rock I will build my church. . . . I will give you the keys of the kingdom
of Heaven.”48
The traditional church's stained glass creates a heavenly atmosphere with
light

Another common and important form of sacred imagery is the tall

stained-glass windows that line the side walls of the nave. The Benedictine
Abbot Suger called them “radiant windows to illumine men's minds so that
they may travel through the light to an apprehension of God's light.” He
also called them “sermons that reached the heart through the eyes instead of
entering through the ears.” Thus did the abbot describe the use of stained
glass for sacred purposes. Inspired by this abbot, Gothic architects
popularized this artistic method and used this mysterious light to obtain a
feeling of aspiration toward God and Heaven. Such has come to be the
norm throughout centuries since.
 Abbot Suger called stained-glass windows the “most radiant windows to
illumine men's minds so that they may travel through the light to an
apprehension of God's light.”

Stained-glass windows are composed of small pieces of colored glass

held together in strips of cast lead to form images that tell the story of
salvation history. Stained glass is unique in that it's the only art form that
relies entirely on natural daylight. Every other art form, such as painting
and sculpture, is designed to be seen by reflected light. With a stained-glass
window, however, the artist designs it so that the artistic effect is created by
light passing through the glass. In a manner of speaking, the artist must
“paint” with the light of God. When the sun shines through these windows,
the light is transformed into multicolored patterns on the interior of the
church, creating an other-worldly feel, a hint at the beauty of Heaven.
A great many Christian images and symbols — probably as many as
exist — have been depicted in stained glass. The imagery of the saints, of
Christ, and of the Blessed Virgin have been used and developed in the
stained-glass images. The Bible and the lives of the saints were the two
main inspirations for the donors who commissioned glaziers to create these
“poems in glass.”
 The sanctuary sets apart the holiest part of the church

Just as all the sacraments are ordered toward the Holy Eucharist, the ark
of salvation is ordered toward the sanctuary. Every aspect of the nave —
pews, furnishings, architectural elements, and sacred art — ultimately leads
to the sanctuary, the place in the church built especially for the altar of
sacrifice. This is the Christian equivalent to the “Holy of Holies” of the
tabernacle in the wilderness and in Solomon's Temple.49 Although the
sanctuary represents the apex of our pilgrim's journey and the summit of the
Liturgy, the pilgrim merely approaches it. It isn't his dwelling place; it is
God's.
In the Temple of Jerusalem, the sanctuary was also God's dwelling place,
and only the ordained entered this most sacred of places: “While
[Zechariah] was serving as priest before God when his division was on
duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter
the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the multitude of the people
were praying outside at the hour of incense.”50 In like manner, the Christian
sanctuary has always been the place for the clergy and those assisting the
clergy at Mass, just as the nave is the place for the non-ordained faithful,
whether praying the Rosary, adoring the Blessed Sacrament, or participating
in the Liturgy of the Mass.
In this way, our pilgrim is reminded that the Church is hierarchical,
composed of different members — the head being Christ; with Pope,
bishops, and priests each serving as alter Christus, “another Christ”; and
with the religious and laity serving their own functions as part of the
Church Militant.51 That hierarchy is reflected in the Liturgy on earth as it is
in Heaven. In an ad limina address in 1998, Pope John Paul II reminded a
group of U.S. bishops that “the Liturgy, like the Church, is intended to be
hierarchical and polyphonic, respecting the different roles assigned by
Christ and allowing all the different voices to blend together into one great
hymn of praise.”52 It only follows, then, that if the Church and the Liturgy
are both hierarchical, the church building ought to reflect that hierarchy.
This logic is reflected by the Church's stipulation that the “sanctuary should
be marked off from the nave by a higher floor level and by a distinctive
structure or decor.”53
 Every aspect of the nave — pews, furnishings, architectural elements, and
sacred art — ultimately leads to the sanctuary, the place in the church built
especially for the altar of sacrifice.

To put it simply and to reiterate the point: the sanctuary is meant to be a

separate place in the church. It's the place where the priest offers the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass and where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved for
adoration, an extension of the Holy Sacrifice.
The sanctuary is a raised area primarily for two reasons. The first is
figurative: since the sanctuary represents Christ the head (and also the head
of Christ), it's only natural that the head be higher than the body. Second,
the sanctuary is elevated for a practical reason: so that the congregation can
easily see the different parts of the Liturgy that take place in the sanctuary.
If the nave is ordered toward the sanctuary, our pilgrim ought to be able to
see it from the nave.
The sanctuary is also marked off from the nave by a “distinctive
structure.” In many churches, the sanctuary is not only differentiated from
the nave, but it's also framed by the triumphal arch, the portion of the wall
over the arch that separates nave from sanctuary. The name is taken from
the grand arches built by emperors or governments typically to
commemorate a military conquest. Two of the most well-known arches are
the nineteenth-century Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the fourth-century
Arch of Constantine in Rome. The first is a single grand arch, whereas the
second is formed by a large central arch flanked by two smaller ones. Both
forms have been adapted to churches. The triple-opening arch was applied
to those churches that have small side apses or chapels flanking the central
apse of the sanctuary. The single-opening arch was used even since the first
basilicas built in Rome. The oldest is probably the triumphal arch of Santa
Maria Maggiore (435), which is decorated by mosaics that portray narrative
scenes from the life of Christ.

The sanctuary is marked off from the nave by a “distinctive structure”

commonly called the communion rail. It not only serves to define the
sanctuary, but it is functional as well. Here the pilgrim, approaching the
altar, kneels to receive the Holy Eucharist in adoration and humility.

Another common structure is the communion rail, or altar rail, usually a

low balustrade made of carved wood, stone, wrought iron, stainless steel, or
other precious materials. It not only serves to define the sanctuary; it is
functional as well. Here our pilgrim, approaching the altar, kneels to receive
the Holy Eucharist in adoration and humility.54 At times outside of Mass,
the pilgrim can give thanksgiving here, praying before the Blessed
Sacrament in the tabernacle or exposed on the altar. At the rail, as in the
pews, our pilgrim has the opportunity to assume the traditional Catholic
posture of worship: kneeling.
From the sixteenth century to the late twentieth century, communion rails
were almost universal in Catholic churches where the Roman rite is
followed. Before the sixteenth century, in place of the communion rail,
there was a low wall that functioned in much the same way as the
balustrade and effectively separated the sanctuary from the nave without the
two areas appearing or being disconnected. Even in fourth-century
basilicas, these low walls, called cancelli, were extant. Since the faithful
began to kneel at the rail for Communion, the altar rail has been understood
as an extension of the altar, where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass takes
place, just as the reserved Blessed Sacrament is an extension of the Mass.
For this reason, the design of the railing reflects the design and construction
of the altar.
Finally, because the infinite act of the ultimate sacrifice is offered here,
the sanctuary is differentiated by its decor. Sacred art and architectural
elements, including the sanctuary's furnishings, express the majesty,
grandeur, and sublimity of the Sacred Mystery enacted. St. Charles
Borromeo, who called the sanctuary the “Chapel of the High Altar,”
recommended that the ceiling of the sanctuary be vaulted or at least be built
of a rarer and richer form and material than that of the nave. The walls
should be richly decorated with mosaics, paintings, frescoes, or stained
glass. And all should “be proportioned to express harmonious unity.”

In many churches, the sanctuary is not only differentiated from the nave, but
is framed by the triumphal arch, the portion of the wall over the arch or
arches that separates the nave from the sanctuary.

The traditional church's altar is the focal point of unity, reverence, prayer,
and worship

In a manner of speaking, the entire church ought to reflect the design of

the altar, since the church building is actually built for the altar rather than
the altar being just another furnishing in the house of God. The altar is the
focal point of unity, reverence, prayer, and worship. To it all things are
tributary, and at the same time, it's the soul of the entire organism. This is
the reason why all sight lines in the building naturally lead to the altar, why
all pews face in one direction toward the altar, why the kneeling penitent
faces the altar in the confessional, and why the Liturgy reaches its climax at
the Consecration, when, through the hands of the anointed priest, the bread
and wine are transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of
Jesus Christ.
Architect Ralph Adams Cram explained it this way: “Every line, every
mass, every detail, is so conceived and disposed that it exalts the altar, that
it leads to it, as any work of art leads to its just climax. By the lines of
arcades, the curves of arch and vault, the ranged windows, and the
gathering chapels and aisles with their varied lights and shadows, the eye,
and through the eye the mind, and through the mind the soul, is led onward
step by step until it rests on the altar itself.”55
The sacrificial altar is so important and central to Catholic worship, not
primarily because it's a table on which a banquet is prepared, but because
this is where the priest re-presents Christ's Sacrifice on the Cross. The altar,
in fact, not only represents the Last Supper and the Sacrifice of the Cross,
but Christ Himself, who is the Victim of this ultimate Sacrifice. The Church
recognizes this by defining the altar as “a sign of Christ Himself, the place
at which the saving mysteries are carried out, and the center of the
assembly, to which the greatest reverence is due.”56
The Latin word altare, from which is derived altar, literally means “a
place of sacrifice.” The word sacrifice, in turn, is derived from the Latin,
meaning “to make holy.” The principal purpose of sacrifice is to give honor
and glory to God. It's the highest form of worship, which was central to
almost all religions throughout history and is certainly central to
Catholicism through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most perfect of all
sacrifices.
The altar is the focal point of unity, reverence, prayer, and worship. To it all
things are tributary, and at the same time, it's the soul of the entire
organism.

Accordingly, in the vast majority of churches built in the past two

thousand years, the altar is centered in the sanctuary, either freestanding or
built up against a wall with a decorative structure, e.g., a reredos, retablo, or
altarpiece, behind. When Christians gained freedom of public worship in
the fourth century, permanent altars, usually made of stone, were erected for
the first time in Europe. In those days, the veneration of the martyrs, who
had died for Christ, was so great that almost every church in those years,
especially in Rome, was built over the tomb of a martyr; and the church
took the name of that saint — for instance, St. Peter's Basilica. Because of
this tradition, relics of the saints were placed within a part of the altar called
the sepulchrum; and until recently altars were required to hold the
authenticated relics of at least two canonized saints.
The most important aspect of the altar, however, is the plain horizontal
stone slab on which the priest places the Holy Sacrifice. At its consecration
by a bishop, this stone, which is a symbol of Christ, is marked with five
crosses, symbolic of Christ's wounds: one cross in each corner and another
on the cover of the reliquary sepulchrum. The use of stone not only recalls
the stone altars commissioned by God Himself in the Old Testament as well
as those used in the Roman catacombs before the Edict of Milan, but it's
also a symbol of Christ, “the Stone which the builders rejected.”57
Accordingly, St. John Chrysostom once wrote, “This altar is an object of
wonder: by nature it is stone.”58
Although the earliest stone altars were simple slabs supported by
columns, blocks, or sarcophagi, in later centuries the supporting stonework
was often carved with reliefs of the Last Supper, the Sacrifice of Abraham,
or other sacrificial imagery. Thus, the altar not only maintains pride of place
in the church, but its ornamentation also speaks volumes of its primary
importance. The altar, like the baptismal font, the confessional, and the
pews, became an iconographic object, using figural images and Christian
symbolism.
Since the altar is relatively small in comparison with the size of its
church, it's surrounded with pleasing accessories that draw the eye, the
mind, and the soul to this piece of stone. For instance, it's often adorned
with altar linens of intricate needlework, with candlesticks, and with a
crucifix. In the most fortunate churches, a grand wooden, stone, or metal
canopy is built over the altar. This is called a baldacchino. It consists
usually of four columns supporting a dome-like top that sits over the altar.
Arguably, there's no better way to draw attention to a freestanding altar.
Often resembling a jeweled crown, it's a symbol of the authority and
kingship of Christ. Similar canopies made of textile and supported on poles
were once held over Byzantine emperors during processions as a sign of
their dignity and authority.59 Likewise, in pagan basilicas, a similar canopy
surmounted the chief magistrate's seat as a symbol of his authority derived
from the Roman emperor. As such, the baldacchino emphasizes the dignity
and majesty of the altar as representing Christ Himself.
These beautiful structures have been used since the fourth century, when
Constantine had one erected over the high altar of the Basilica of St. John
Lateran. Today, all of the Roman basilicas have ornate baldacchinos, the
most acclaimed being that of St. Peter's, designed by Bernini, a masterful
feat of engineering, architecture, and monumental sculpture.
In other churches where a freestanding altar isn't used or where a
baldacchino can't be used, a decorative structure built behind the altar
serves the same purposes of decoration and demarcation. These structures
take two main forms: the reredos and the altar-piece. The reredos is a great
screen of statuary niches and sculptured panels that rises from the back of
the altar. It commonly contains architectural, sculptural, and painted
components. Gothic reredoses were also commonly designed with fretted
pinnacles, resembling those exterior elements adjunct to the flying buttress
and resembling spires. These medieval reredoses often resembled the
Gothic façades. In the Baroque era, the reredos became quite elaborate,
especially in Spain and Latin America, where it's known by the Spanish
term retablo. Extensively decorated with carved polychrome figures, the
Latin American retablos combined the solomonic column form from St.
Peter's Basilica with stone sculpture, painted tiles, stuccowork, and
frescoes.
By comparison, the altarpiece is made up of fewer images and figures but
is ideally equal in beauty. It consists of paintings, carved panels, or both,
usually reflecting the dedication of the church to a particular saint. Some
are more elaborate, showing various narrative scenes from the life of Christ
or the life of Mary. Siena Cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin, for instance,
has a painted altarpiece known as the Maesta. The main scene is that of
Madonna and Child surrounded by angels and saints, while smaller
paintings depict scenes from the life of Christ.
Sculptural altarpieces such as Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Santa
Maria della Vittoria, are a product of the Counter Reformation Baroque.
Other altarpieces are made up of separate panels that are hinged together: a
diptych contains two, a triptych three, and a polyptych four or more. One of
the most acclaimed polyp-tychs is the altarpiece known as Adoration of the
Lamb at St. Bevon Church in Ghent, Belgium, painted by Flemish brothers
Hubert and Jan Van Eyck.
The majority of post-Reformation churches include the tabernacle as an
integral, if not central, part of the reredos or altarpiece, giving it due
prominence and an essential intimacy with the altar of sacrifice.
 In the most fortunate churches, a grand wooden, stone, or metal canopy is
built over the altar. This is called a baldacchino. It consists usually of four
columns supporting a dome-like top that sits over the altar. Arguably there's
no better way to draw attention to a freestanding altar.
 The reredos is a great screen of statuary niches and sculpted panels that
rises from the back of the altar. It commonly contains architectural,
sculptural, and painted components.

The crucifix tells us of Christ's redemptive Sacrifice

Another integral feature of the sanctuary is the crucifix, which Abbot

Suger called “the health-bringing banner of the eternal victory of our
Savior.”60 The most common of all Christian subjects depicted in art is the
crucifixion, which is described by all four evangelists.61 Since the Mass is
integrally bound up in the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, a crucifix is
inseparable from the Liturgy, from the altar, and from the church. Quite
simply, a crucifix is an object of meditation, contemplation, and veneration
in the shape of a cross, with a corpus of Christ that shows His five wounds
— in both hands, in both feet, and in His side. This simple artistic and
liturgical object recalls Jesus' death, Resurrection, and Ascension into glory;
it expresses the total and universal Paschal Mystery of Christ; and it invites
the pilgrim to take part in it with a lively and lived faith.
Our pilgrim meditates on the Incarnation, the Lord's act of wholly
assuming the form of a man; he contemplates the suffering Christ endured
on the Cross through His wounds and suffocation; he venerates the Cross as
a symbol of Christ's redemption of man through this Sacrifice to end all
sacrifices. The position of the crucifix hanging above and behind the altar
reminds our pilgrim that this redemptive sacrifice is what is being re-
presented through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by the hands of the
ordained priest.
Since the crucifix is the symbol par excellence for the Christian, its
appearance is of great importance in the church. It's large enough not only
to be seen by the faithful but to be contemplated as well, particularly during
the Eucharistic Prayer. Since at least the thirteenth century in the West,
Christ has been depicted as visibly suffering, His wounds visible. Such
graphic depictions help our pilgrim to understand that crucifixion was one
of the cru-elest, most humiliating forms of punishment in the ancient world.
The Jewish historian Josephus best described it following the siege of
Jerusalem by the Romans in the years 66 to 70 as “the most wretched of
deaths.” In this way, the crucifix is an icon to be contemplated. In fact, it's
the central icon of the Faith, an icon that invites our pilgrim to participate in
the Cross of Christ. As the apostle Paul says, “Far be it from me to glory,
except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The tabernacle reminds us that Christ is truly present here

The alpha and the omega — the beginning and the end — of all things is
Christ. This is, of course, particularly true of the church, the house of God.
The mandate to make Christ present and active in any one place begins in a
substantially real way with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which Jesus is
made present — Body, Blood, soul, and divinity — on the sacred altar.
Communion of the Holy Eucharist is food for our souls, but the Blessed
Sacrament remains in the church even after the last Mass of the day. Thus,
the Mass is extended by both reservation and exposition of the Host (the
Holy Sacrifice). Consequently the tabernacle, which reserves the Blessed
Sacrament all day, every day, is a necessary adjunct to the altar. Jesus is
always present; He is always available in this particularly real way. The
reserved Blessed Sacrament renders the tabernacle the beating heart of the
house of God, made possible by the altar and the ordained priest, both of
which represent Christ, but are not Christ in Body, Blood, soul, and divinity.

Since the Mass is integrally bound up in the Sacrifice of Christ on the

Cross, a crucifix is inseparable from the Liturgy, from the altar, and from
the church.

The presence of Christ in the tabernacle is truly what separates the

Catholic church building from all other buildings that have ever been built
since the beginning of time. It's a call to prayer and an opportunity for our
pilgrim to meet God in a unique way. Eucharistic adoration — kneeling and
praying before the Blessed Sacrament — offers our pilgrim a way to be
spiritually refreshed. The divine presence in the tabernacle satisfies his
longing to be near Christ in a real way. This is why, throughout the day,
pilgrims from far and near will come to the church to “pay a visit,” kneeling
for a time in silent prayer focusing on the eucharistic Christ. This “beating
heart” is what truly gives life to the church. Consequently, the architectural
setting for the reservation of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is of highest
importance. Thus, the tabernacle is prominently placed in relation to the
altar, directly behind, for instance, often a part of the altarpiece or reredos.
When our pilgrim first sets foot in the nave, perhaps even before he reaches
out to bless himself with holy water, his eye instinctively gravitates toward
the tabernacle and altar — inseparable — and immediately understands that
he's truly in the presence of God on earth. Above or beside the tabernacle he
sees the vigil lamp perpetually glowing in honor of Christ's presence and
recognizes the veil as a sign that Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is indeed
within.
The tabernacle veil, called a canopeum, hearkens back to the veil of the
Holy of Holies, where the presence of God abided in the Old Covenant. The
veil is split down the middle, recalling the veil of the Temple that was “torn
in two, from top to bottom” at the hour of Christ's death.64 In fact, the name
tabernacle derives from tabernaculum, meaning “little tent of the Lord,”
the movable structure used to house the Ark of the Covenant.
Through eucharistic adoration and prayers of thanksgiving, our pilgrim
prepares to “gird his loins,” to take leave of the house of God and dwell
again in the world, carrying both Christ's Cross and His grace out into his
lived vocation. His life as a Christian flows from the font of the Mass and is
fueled by the relationship of intimacy provided not only by the Blessed
Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle or exposed on the altar, but also
through the maternal sanctuary of the entire house of God whose
architectural and artistic elements work together to perpetually call our
pilgrim to return again and again.
The presence of Christ in the tabernacle is truly what separates the
Catholic church building from all other buildings that have ever been built
since the beginning of time.
Image
Chapter Three
 Our pilgrim goes into the worship space of the
people
(or, why you find it so hard to pray
in that modern church)
As our pilgrim makes his way to the modern church, he must carry a
detailed road map with him. He can't locate the modern church by means of
a steeple or by following the sound of pealing bells. Accordingly, he neither
sees an inviting spire nor hears a welcoming peal. Instead, he keeps alert for
road signs to direct him to the modern church, which is inconspicuous,like a
lamp hidden under a bushel.65
The modern church itself can't be seen from the boulevard, but a small
sign near the road informs our pilgrim that a Catholic church lies beyond,
off a wooded side street, but only after he has driven well past the drive. A
break in the boulevard half a mile ahead allows the pilgrim to make a U-
turn, and he drives back toward the church and beyond it to the next break
in the boulevard, where he makes another U-turn and heads back toward the
church, praying that he'll see the driveway entrance this time before he
passes it.
Our pilgrim turns off the main boulevard onto the wooded side street that
could be mistaken for a private driveway. Once past the parking lot of a
nearby shopping plaza, he beholds in the distance among the pines a
building resembling a conference center or maybe a school. It's hard to tell,
but the addresses of the buildings nearby indicate that the modern church
must be near. Soon a sign reading “Church Parking” instructs the pilgrim
that this structure, built most obviously in the 1970s (probably in 1978,
when the origami-style church was in fashion) is some kind of “house of
worship.” The road map confirms that this is the local modern Catholic
church.
Our pilgrim notices that the modern church is rarely conspicuous, not by
its form (there are no spires, domes, or cross-tipped bell towers), not by its
location, and not by its beauty. Some, however, are conspicuous by virtue of
their sheer ugliness or strangeness. In Oakland, for instance, the new
cathedral is conspicuous inasmuch as it's the only building within miles that
resembles a giant clamshell. The Cathedral in Rio de Janiero, a hulking
concrete mass uniquely resembling a Mayan ziggurat or Death Star
spacecraft right off the set of Star Wars, does little to remind our pilgrim of
a house of God or a gate of Heaven, but he can't help but miss this most
outrageous form rising from the flat landscape. Nor can he miss the huge
tepee-like structure that is Brazil's Maringa Cathedral, or the water-cooling
tower that is Brasilia's cathedral.

The modern church's façade doesn't

evangelize, teach, or catechize
Our pilgrim circles the parking lot, looking for an empty spot to park his
car. Because he arrived late and the Mass began ten minutes before, he has
some difficulty finding a spot. He walks quickly to the nearest entrance, up
the zig-zagging handicap access ramp that leads to a rear door nearest his
car. The parking lot and the entrance are no different from the outside
world. Our pilgrim, instead of being disposed by the architecture to prepare
himself for entrance into the house of God, remains distracted by the
frustration of finding the modern church.
Let us, however, assume that our pilgrim goes to the main entrance to the
modern church. Doing so, the building recedes into the background of the
landscape. There's nothing memorable here. Nothing inspiring. Nothing
particularly inviting. There's perhaps one unidentifiable statue, such as the
short-haired Virgin Mary of the Los Angeles Cathedral, if there's any
iconography at all. The landscaping, if done well with beautiful indigenous
flowers, is probably the most memorable feature.
The façade, that is, the “face” the modern church presents to the world is
“faceless.” It doesn't evangelize, teach, or catechize.

Our pilgrim finds that the façade, the “face” this church pre-sents to the
world, is “faceless.” It doesn't evangelize, teach, or catechize. It simply fits
in more or less with the other buildings on that street. No passersby would
be curious enough to go out of their way to explore this edifice; neither
skeptic nor pious pilgrim will be drawn to its portals, attracted to or even
intrigued by any inherent meaning. The faceless façade of the modern
church fails to communicate meaning to anyone, because the exterior of the
building is conceived of merely as a “skin for a liturgical action.”66 Its
agnostic aesthetic embraces no particular doctrine, and its form is reflective
neither of Catholic Tradition nor architectural history.
Designers and architects of the modern church are careful not to offend
anyone in the community by using particularly Catholic symbols such as
the crucifix or even the Latin cross. Following the modern church fashion
of the 1990s, a circular window, barely reminiscent of a Romanesque
oculus or a Gothic rose window, is divided into four panes to form a “Greek
cross.” Since the horizontal and vertical pieces of a Greek cross are equal in
length, the Christian symbolism is lost in the window, and therefore it's
doubtful that the frequent passerby will be offended by such inconspicuous
Christian symbolism. Neither will the pilgrim immediately (or perhaps
ever) perceive the Greek cross form. To everyone except the liturgist, the
round window is nothing more than a round window with four panes of
equal size.

Following the modern church fashion of the 1990s, a circular window is

divided into four panes to form a “Greek cross.” Since the horizontal and
vertical pieces of a Greek cross are equal in length, the Christian
symbolism is lost in the window.

An important element of the modern façade is the door (or doors) to the
modern church. Concurrent with nearly all modern church design fashions
is the concept of “welcoming doors.” These take the form of transparent
glass doors that resemble those you'd find in other public buildings and in
cheap restaurants. Sr. Sandra Schweitzer, who served as design consultant
for architect Edward Sövik on the renovation of SS. Peter and Paul
Cathedral in Indianapolis (1983-1986), explained, “With that project, we
replaced the heavy, thick metal doors with interior glass doors that say,
‘You're always welcome in here.’“67 Accordingly, most renovated churches
lost their often ornate, if heavy, doors because church renovators deemed
them “unwelcoming.” How glass doors are more welcoming than opaque
doors has never really been explained, but the use of these transparent
portals conveys a sense of ordinariness and cheapness; it contributes to the
feel that the building is not ecclesiastical, but secular; it fails to convey a
sense of permanence or durability.

Concurrent with nearly all modern church design fashions is the concept of
“welcoming doors.” These take the form of transparent glass doors that
resemble those you'd find in other public buildings.

The modern church's gathering space

doesn't draw us toward the sanctuary
The modern church is unwilling to entertain the dark vestibules of older
churches, but does provide a kind of secularized atrium, a transition room
between the parking lot and the worship space. As our pilgrim enters
through the welcoming doors, he finds himself in a vast empty space,
except for the Jacuzzi-style baptismal font that may be the focal point of the
room, depending on the fashion era of the church. This area, he quickly
discovers, is a place for parishioners to gather before and after Mass. It's
brightly lit and often quite barren. People are considered the furnishings
here. Effectively the gathering space is a lobby. If devotional items are to be
found here, they're inconspicuous, perhaps tucked away around the corner
in a hallway that leads to the drinking fountain, the bathrooms, and a pay
phone.

The “gathering space” is a place for parishioners to gather before and

after Mass. It's brightly lit and often quite barren. People are considered
the furnishings here.

Sometimes our pilgrim finds that there are many hallways and closed
doors that lead he knows not where. Sometimes offices are connected to the
gathering space. Sometimes there are various chapels off the gathering
space: the Blessed Sacrament chapel, the Reconciliation chapel, the day
chapel, the marriage chapel, the funeral chapel, and so forth. Instead of
bearing some significant relationship to the altar of the “worship space,”
these chapels are disconnected from the altar. If he arrives for a daily Mass,
our pilgrim may enter the main worship space, with its barren wood altar,
only to discover that he's in the wrong “room” of this sprawling complex.
He's assured, however, by literature available just inside the glass doors that
the layout of this modern church is “welcoming” and fulfills a mandate for
“hospitality. ”68
 In some renovated churches, our pilgrim finds that the former baptistery
has been converted into a “devotional chapel.” In this room, he finds a
gathering of the statues that once adorned the nave and the sanctuary of the
church in its pre-renovation days. In St. Lawrence Church in Cincinnati, for
instance, the saints all gather in the former baptistery as if convening to
discuss the reason for their removal from the main body of the church.

The modern church's baptismal font suggests

hot-tub parties, not entrance into the Church
Depending on the year in which the modern church was designed or
renovated, our pilgrim might find the baptismal font at the entrance to the
modern church worship space, either in the center of the gathering space or
at the back of the nave. In other words, the placement of the baptistery
depends on the liturgical theory of the day. Renovators of the 1990s seemed
willing to admit, for example, that their recommendations in the 1970s to
locate the font in the sanctuary next to the altar, wasn't the best solution.
Liturgical design consultant Christine Reinhard writes in her educational
handout on the baptistery, “Like many things since Vatican II, the baptistery
is still evolving” in shape, size, and location. “In its evolution since Vatican
II, the font has been all over the church. Being able to see the font during
the baptism was first thought [by liturgists] to be the critical issue. Now a
consensus is forming [among liturgists] that visibility, while important, is a
secondary issue. . . . You may have already guessed that the location of
choice is becoming the entrance of the worship space. . . . Initially, when
fonts were placed at the entrance, they were in the gathering space, or
narthex. This has two drawbacks. The first drawback is that it really breaks
up the flow of ritual when the entire body must move through doors to
another space. Second, the gathering space is the place for random
gathering, an important social experience. The nave, or main body of the
church, is the place for ritual gathering, for the sacraments. When the font is
placed up front, it says, ‘Look but don't touch.’ ”69
Our pilgrim wonders why the baptismal font keeps changing, not only in
placement but also in size and shape. Beginning sometime in the 1980s,
liturgists moved to “return” to Baptism by full immersion, even though the
Catholic Church never universally adopted such a practice, either in the
ancient past or in the present. Even when John was baptizing in the Jordan,
tradition holds that he poured water over the penitent's head rather than
plunging him under. Likewise, the baptismal font is depicted in early
Christian art as a shallow basin in which the baptized stood with feet
immersed, while water was poured on him from a vase or large shell held
by a priest.
Nevertheless, modern church designers and renovators produced a
prototype vessel that would accommodate full-immersion Baptism,
popularized by Baptist Protestants, who deny the validity of infant Baptism.
The form that the font took in the 1980s and ’90s is the bathtub, specifically
the hot tub, sometimes known by the brand name Jacuzzi. Liturgical design
consultant Fr. Andrew Ciferni, for instance, reminds Catholics that “the
Romans built huge public baths where people gathered to do business or
socialize while enjoying their own version of the hot tub.”70 This is the
precedent he and other liturgists use for the design of fonts for new modern
churches and for older churches remodeled into modern churches. Because
the sacrament of Baptism represents both birth and death, large bodies of
water are needed, he adds, because they bring to mind both life and death.
“We can drown in the river that irrigates the fields or in the sea that
provides fish for our tables.”71

Modern church designers and renovators favor a prototype font that

accommodates full-immersion Baptism, popularized by various Protestant
sects that deny the validity of infant Baptism. The form the font took in the
1980s and '90s is the bathtub, specifically the hot tub.

Our pilgrim, however, resents the size and shape of the baptismal font
because it recalls, not life or death, but the hot-tub parties he attended when
he was in college — something he would rather forget, or at least not be
reminded of on his way to Mass. At the last modern church he visited, our
pilgrim recalls, a bar of soap was floating in the Jacuzzi-like font, no doubt
tossed in there by some eighth-grade prankster on his way to the weekly
school Mass. No matter how much liturgists may want to imbue a certain
object with a specific meaning, Catholics are inclined to determine on their
own what they associate with any given form. If the associations are nearly
always profane, the form of the sacred object fails to convey the symbolism
that is intended.
Our pilgrim is also disturbed that the water in the baptismal font is
flowing, which, via modern plumbing techniques, is supposed to recall the
flowing waters of the Jordan. He knows from experience that this will be a
distraction if not a terrible annoyance to him throughout the entire Mass.
The sound of running water makes our pilgrim's bladder more active than
he thinks is desirable.
Alas, the modern church baptismal font speaks little of the sacrament it's
supposed to represent. There's no dove representing the Holy Spirit, no
iconography of John the Baptist or the parting of the Red Sea. There's no
sense of the struggle between good and evil, no artwork that conveys the
fact that the sacrament of Baptism is truly death conquered by the saving
power of Christ.

The modern church's worship space

doesn't lift the soul to God
Once through the doors leading into the modern church worship space,
often called the “main worship space,” our pilgrim realizes that there are no
holy-water fonts for him to dip his fingers into to bless himself. Fortunately
he recalls a priest at Mass in a new modern church once explaining to his
congregation that the water of the baptismal pool is to be used as holy water
“because that's what it is.” In the modern church, he added, “everyone must
dip into the same vessel as a sign of unity.” Our pilgrim returns, then, to
bless himself from the waters of the pool, wondering how the people
entering the side doors nearer the parking lot ever bless themselves with
holy water.
There's no focal point in the modern “worship space.” The altar is too low
to be visible, and the priest's chair, at the level of the congregation, is
inconspicuous to all but those sitting or standing in the first few rows.

The so-called main worship space doesn't seem different from the
gathering space. The noise of the gathering chatter spills over into this next
“space.” It's no less light in here. His eyes needn't adjust. As he looks up,
however, he's startled to see that he's nearly face-to-face with the altar. The
priest is sitting in his “presider's chair” with his back to our pilgrim, surely
not welcoming in the least.
Because our pilgrim is a few minutes late, the congregation can't help but
be distracted by his entrance (and the entrance of other latecomers,
somewhat chattier). He quickly moves off to the left, looking for a sign of
the Blessed Sacrament so that he can make a proper genuflection as a sign
of reverence to the Real Presence of Jesus.
Not finding any sign of the tabernacle, he takes a seat near the back of
the circle. The seating surrounds the altar on three sides. There are no
wooden pews, no kneelers — only cushioned seats that are so comfortable
and casual that many in the congregation sit with their legs crossed and one
arm stretched out over the back of the seat next to them. Others have their
feet resting on the backs of the seats in front of them. Our pilgrim is a bit
disconcerted by the casual posture — no doubt a result of the casual
atmosphere of the modern church. He's used to praying before the Blessed
Sacrament on his knees to prepare to celebrate the sacred mysteries, to be
put in the proper frame of mind, to place himself in the presence of God.
But his surroundings, least of all the chairs, he finds not at all conducive to
prayer or reverence. There is nothing to raise his heart, his mind, and his
soul to God.
He peers around at the bare walls. There's no sacred art save for some
unidentifiable polychrome reliefs possibly made of pewter that are too far
away for him to make out whether the images are of man or beast. There's
whispering and quiet chatting among the congregation; some of the faithful
are staring into the eyes of others who look back at them across the church.
Our pilgrim finds no natural focal point here. The altar is too low to be
visible. The priest sitting down at the level of the congregation is
inconspicuous as well, to all but the people sitting and standing in the first
few rows.
Someone is reading from the letter of Paul to the Corinthians. Our
pilgrim hears the voice from a nearby loudspeaker but can't find the pulpit
or ambo. The eyes of those surrounding him offer no clue. Some are
looking at the organ pipes, other at the choir members and the band who
seem most prominent in this arrangement. Others have caught the eyes of
relatives and friends. Raised eyebrows, nods of the head, and expressions of
familiarity indicate casual hellos.
Our pilgrim is neither awed nor humbled here in the worship space of the
people. He can sense, too, that no one else is awed or humbled. The
casualness in dress and demeanor at the modern church is striking, surely a
result of the casualness and informality of the modern church itself. Its
proportions, too, are different from those of other churches. The relatively
low ceilings give the worship space a horizontality you expect to find at
home or in a restaurant. There are no arched windows, no columns, none of
the familiar language elements that make up a church.
Perhaps most disconcerting for our pilgrim is that there's no sanctuary
distinct from the nave. The main worship space apparently encompasses
both areas of the traditional church. The body has been decapitated, the
head subsumed. The modern church evokes a modern non-hierarchy:
everything is equal. The worship space seems to dismiss Christ and the
hierarchy of His Catholic Church. There are theaters and lecture halls, our
pilgrim thinks, that give greater glory to God. In such a church, how many
in the congregation have their minds lifted to the eternal? In such a place,
how many manage to engage in true worship — in thanksgiving, adoration,
reparation, and supplication? This is no sacred place, he concludes. It's a
meeting space.

Chairs promote comfort, not prayer and adoration

Throughout the Liturgy, there's no kneeling, only sitting and standing.
Since there are no kneelers, local logic holds that kneeling is impossible.
No one assumes the distinct posture for Catholic prayer, in adoration and
humility. In this modern church, adoration is unheard of; humility is a thing
for pious grandmothers who still attend downtown churches. Rather, in the
modern church, our pilgrim assumes the “posture of celebration,” which
liturgists claim doesn't include kneeling.
Our pilgrim reflects that someone must misunderstand what celebration
means. The Liturgy is “celebrated,” but it isn't a celebration akin to a New
Year's Eve party. Celebrate has a number of meanings. Its primary meaning,
according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is “to perform (a ritual,
ceremony, etc.) publicly and formally; solemnize.” Its second sense is “to
commemorate with ceremony.” It's in these two senses that the celebration
of the Mass has its meaning. Jesus did say, “Do this in memory of me.”
Accordingly, celebration of the Liturgy includes many parts with different
aspects, e.g., praise, penance, adoration, etc. To ignore these aspects of the
celebration is summarily to dismiss them. The richness and meaning of the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is lost. Kneeling isn't a posture of celebration
only if we're speaking of celebration in the sense of a party or festivity,
which Holy Mass is not.
The portable stackable chairs used in the modern church are further
justified on grounds of flexibility. According to liturgical consultants, such
seating “allows the room and its furniture to serve the community rather
than the community finding itself a slave to the immobility of the seating.72
The various designs used to promote flexibility seem to be ways to redefine
the whole Catholic church building, on the model of a secular or profane
building, one that isn't set aside for sacred purposes.
Seating in the modern church is often made up of either portable cushioned
chairs or pews without kneelers, or a combination of both.

At Christ the King Church in Las Vegas, the worship space is

reconfigured every few months. Sometimes the altar is in the center of the
square building; at other times it's against one wall or another. Sometimes
the chairs are arranged encircling the altar; sometimes they're configured on
three sides in a fan shape or on two sides in an antiphonal configuration.
When parishioners arrive for Mass there, they don't know what to expect.
The sense of permanence that they have long come to expect from a church
has been injured. Whatever the configuration, however, the modern church
is never designed in a basilican arrangement with chairs all facing one
direction; that's considered too clerical, too hierarchical.

The modern church's lectern

competes with the altar
If our pilgrim visits an older renovated church, such as St. Francis Xavier
Church in Petoskey, Michigan, he might notice that the elevated pulpit,
sometimes with iconographic carvings, has been removed and replaced by a
lectern that the liturgists call an ambo, the terminology used in first-
millennium churches, despite the fact that these modern secular lecterns —
many of which look as if they belong in a college lecture hall or a banquet
room — bear little resemblance to the ancient stone ambos with steps
leading up both sides to accommodate the priest and his acolytes.
Just as the baptismal font has jumped around the church, so has the
lectern, our pilgrim finds. In churches designed in the late ’60s or ’70s, the
lectern was often placed side by side with the altar — neither was centered
in the sanctuary — to manifest the latest liturgical theory that equated in
importance and magnitude the Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the
Eucharist. In other modern churches, the lectern was placed directly in front
of the altar, and both were centered in the sanctuary. According to liturgists
and church designers, this was done humbly to admit Catholics’ “past
failure to balance the proclamation of God's Word with our traditional
emphasis on the celebration of the Sac-raments.”73 Often the lectern is
made of the same wood as the altar. It's often vested or covered with a linen
hanging just like the altar. Candles are sometimes placed near the lectern,
just as candles are required on or near the altar. As a result, our pilgrim
notices that the altar is diminished in its proper importance and actually has
to compete with the lectern to be the focal point of the sanctuary and
church.
In a 1980s or ’90s modern church, our pilgrim might find the lectern
anywhere. At some point in the ’80s, the monastic antiph-onal arrangement
was introduced as an innovation to parishes. The antiphonal modern church,
such as Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Newport News, Virginia, is configured
with an altar at one end of the building and the lectern at the other, both in a
central aisle. Seating is on two sides of the aisle, with seats facing the aisle
and each other. In the late ’90s, the lectern became a wild card. Now
anything goes.

The modern church's music ministry

competes with holy Mass
The modern church accommodates a cantor, a choir, and a band in a
prominent spot. A pianist, a drummer, a guitarist, a bass player, several
woodwind players, and the choir are situated conspicuously up front, facing
the congregation. Our pilgrim notices the “music ministry” more so than he
notices the altar or the lectern — both visibly and audibly. They seem to
him a performance group that doesn't lead the congregation in song as much
as it plays tunes for their edification. (The choir loft is a taboo in the
modern church. According to liturg ists, Catholics are “so accustomed to
choir lofts in the rear of the nave that we fail to reflect on the fact that God
could have turned our ears around if we were supposed to hear music from
behind!”74)

One of the fashions of recent decades is to place the lectern side by side
with the altar — neither one centered in the sanctuary — to manifest the
inaccurate liturgical theory that equates in importance and magnitude the
Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The songs that are hammered out by the band and choir, with the
exception of “On Eagle's Wings,” are unknown to our pilgrim and,
apparently, judging from their silence, to most others seated nearby. The
modern church, with its attributes of coziness and folksiness, demands
music that is cozy and folksy. When singing the Lord's Prayer, our pilgrim
reluctantly joins in with the congregation, holding hands with those seated
next to him, but because of the mustard-yellow carpeting, he hears only
himself singing, as if he's the only one present at the Liturgy, as if he's
holding his hands out to no one. The carpeting, an impermanent flooring to
be sure, absorbs the voices that ought to resound. The noise of the
instrumentalists also militates against hearing anything chanted or sung in
the modern church.
During the responsorial psalm, our pilgrim is taken aback when the
cantor stands in front of the altar and the lectern, with microphone in hand
to belt out a tune in her beautiful sing-the-Blues voice. He's so distracted by
the soloist in the white gown that he's unable to pray; he's unable to prepare
for hearing the Gospel preached, for witnessing the Holy Sacrifice, or for
receiving the Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Christ in full communion
with the universal Church. In other words, he finds it difficult to participate
actively in the Liturgy. In fact, he finds it difficult to participate in any
meaningful way — actively or passively. If this modern church weren't set
up in a theater-like arrangement, our pilgrim reflects, it wouldn't encourage
such theatricality in the Liturgy.

The modern church's images don't

teach the Faith or evangelize
When our pilgrim's eyes wander to settle on an inspiring mural or
devotional shrine, he's again frustrated with the modern church. Although
the sacred image or icon has always been an important part of the Catholic
church building, the modern church is typically not amenable to statues,
painted icons, frescoes, mosaics, or any other portrayal that would be
considered too overt a manifestation of the Christian Faith. Liturgists say
that in the modern church, sacred images of any sort can distract the pilgrim
from the liturgical actions and that, if they're permanent fixtures, the
worship space might be seen exclusively as a sacred space. Consequently,
there are no side-aisle shrines, no stained-glass windows, no crucifixes to
contemplate, no meaningful iconography whatsoever to lift man's mind
away from his everyday thoughts.
Still, our pilgrim does spot a few wall hangings that create a spark of
color on the otherwise barren walls. If the subjects are re-ligious in nature,
their presentation renders the subjects wholly unrecognizable.
Our pilgrim also sees that small bare crosses placed at different angles
throughout a section of this modern church serve as the Stations of the
Cross. One of the fads of the 1990s modern church was to include
temporary multicultural works of art and symbols, such as the yin-yang,
that are recognizable for their “universality.” The modern church avoids
conveying specifically Christian meaning to anyone; these universal
symbols and multicultural works don't speak much to the Christian West.
Some aren't properly multicultural or universal, in that they're simply
meaningless, like the curtain-like sculpture hanging above the altar in St.
John's Church in West Chester, Ohio, or the puffy clouds floating lifelessly
in the sanctuary of the renovated St. Vivian's Church in Cincinnati.
Another noteworthy 1990s trend was that of depicting in quasisacred
works of art “contemporary role models” or “baptismal witnesses” instead
of canonized saints. Since they're contemporary, these role models can be
changed with the times, just as the photos of sports stars on the wall of a
diner might change from decade to decade: Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio
in the 1950s to Tiger Woods and Sammy Sosa in the 1990s. These images
are ephemeral and based on the changing tastes of the people, unlike images
of the saints, which serve as timeless reminders of living the Christian life.
Here our pilgrim discovers that the wall hangings depict Martin Luther
King, Karl Rahner, Dr. Tom Dooley, and Sr. Thea Bowman.
Depicting contemporary role models — whether Catholic or non-
Catholic — undermines the artistic tradition and theology of the sacred
image by providing a “profane” icon. When the modern church designer or
renovator chooses to depict the profane, he aligns himself with the ancient
Iconoclasts, who broke with the authentic tradition of the Church by
forbidding representations of Christ and religious images in general. In fact,
Pope John Paul II addressed this issue in his 1987 apostolic letter
Duodecimum saeculum, and again in his 1999 “Letter to Artists,” when he
wrote that the Iconoclasts, “not without contradiction or ambiguity . . .
allowed profane images, in particular those of the emperor with the signs of
reverence that were attached to them.”
Thus, while, in furnishings such as a crucifix or the Stations of the Cross,
the modern church gives minimal traditional expression to the sacred, it
displays profane wall hangings as sacred icons, yet without traditional
content. The ancient theology of the icon is that a sacred image points
beyond itself to a spiritual reality (e.g., the Annunciation, the Incarnation,
the presentation of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) on
which the pilgrim meditates. It brings his mind into harmony with God.
Catholics do this properly through veneration. In the words of St. Thomas
Aquinas, “the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype,” and
“whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it.”75 Thus,
if the profane icon is venerated, the “role model” himself is venerated. As
such, the modern church presents a disordered understanding of the
Communion of the Saints. Most likely, however, the profane icon won't be
venerated any more than will a photo of Marilyn Monroe or Frank Sinatra
hanging on the wall of a diner. But unlike Marilyn and Frank, the role-
model reliefs or wall hangings will almost always require a plaque
identifying the person depicted.

A few wall hangings, such as these Stations of the Cross, create a spark of
color on the otherwise barren wall paneling.
 A renovation of St. Robert Bellarmine Church in Cincinnati replaced the
sanctuary crucifix with an “Icon of Seasons.” Designed by renowned artist
William J. Schickel, this tapestry holder displays what he calls “seasonal
works of art,” depicting a glowing sun, flying birds, and swaying wheat.
Although this piece of art is said to be a standing processional cross, it
takes the form of a framed rectangle. The structure is composed of two
intersecting pieces of wood, yet four multicolored square cloths obscure the
cruciform. To the pilgrim, it simply looks like a square four-paneled
painting. The cross is so obscured, so inconspicuous, that it isn't
recognizable as such.

Our pilgrim notices how bright it is in the modern church. Since the
worship space isn't glazed with stained glass, the external light isn't
transformed into multicolored patterns, but simply floods through the few
transparent windows, giving the worship space a warm, sunny feel.
Our pilgrim is fortunate, because some modern churches have no
windows at all. The flood of light in those churches comes only from
hanging or recessed fluorescent fixtures. Stained glass, especially depicting
narratives from Scripture or from the lives of the saints, are too
ecclesiastical, too “churchy” for the modern church.
While still in the bright worship space, our pilgrim can barely make out
an image of seven silhouetted figures on the wall who appear to be
ascending a mountain at sunset. The image hangs above and behind the
altar on a white projection screen throughout the pastor's homily. At the end
of his sermon, the lights dim and mechanical shades noisily descend over
the windows. The band begins to play some soft, soothing background
music as the hiking image becomes animated. The seven hikers climb easily
to the top of the hill, whereupon the sun sets and the sky is illumined only
by the rays of a crescent moon. This, our pilgrim concludes, is art in the
modern church: fleeting and uninspiring, devoid of any real meaning
beyond what is imputed to it by each of the faithful.
The lights are brightened, and the shades are lifted by unseen mechanical
pulleys.

The modern church has no crucifix

to remind us of Christ's redemptive Sacrifice
 During the Eucharistic Prayer, as the priest, with his arms outstretched,
pronounces the words of consecration, our pilgrim glances about a while
standing in the posture of celebration with the rest of the congregation —
hoping his eyes will come to rest on a crucifix. He's accustomed to
contemplating the Incarnation via the visible symbol of the Cross with the
corpus of Jesus. He's accustomed to meditating on the suffering that Christ
endured on the Cross by seeing His visible wounds; he's accustomed to
venerating the crucifix as a symbol of Christ's redemption of man through
this great Sacrifice. The crucifix reminds our pilgrim that it is this
redemptive sacrifice that's being re-presented through the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass by the hands of the ordained priest.
In this modern church, however, our pilgrim finds no crucifix with the
corpus of Jesus. While craning his neck, he spies only a bare plus sign set
on a metal pole that stands near the altar. Halfway through the prayer of
consecration, our pilgrim realizes that this plus sign is a representation of
the Greek cross. It's nothing to contemplate, he thinks; it doesn't exactly
help him participate in the Holy Sacrifice. This piece of “sacred art” is
another ephemeral symbol. At the beginning of Mass, the cross-bearer
carried in this processional cross; and during the recessional hymn, as the
band plays their grand finale, the cross-bearer will take up the cross and
store it in the sacristy, sight unseen, until the next Saturday afternoon.
The design of the modern processional cross isn't always as
straightforward as the simple Greek plus sign. It may have concentric
circles radiating from its intersection or a grillwork superimposed on it;
there may be a circular opening at its center or the image of a towel draped
over the horizontal bar.
 The crucifix in the modern church isn't always as straightforward and
simple as is the popular barren Greek plus sign.

The modern church's altar is only one

among many focal points of attention
The altar of the modern church is placed in the midst of the congregation,
raised on a one-step platform, not too high as not to make it too prominent a
furnishing. It's made of wood with four legs, much like a table. Since there's
no stone slab, there's no ref-erence to Christ the Cornerstone; there's no
reference to sacrifice. Since there are no relics interred in the wooden altar
(called a “holy table” in modern church parlance), there's no reference to
the sacrifice of the martyrs.
The holy table isn't a fixed furnishing. Often it moves with the season.
The doctrine of liturgical flexibility necessitates that the holy table, along
with the lectern, be portable, just like all other furnishings in the modern
church. In fact, the holy table can even be removed to the sacristy when it's
necessary for the modern church to be used for modern liturgical
performances or meetings.
The arrangement of the modern church makes it such that the holy table
isn't so much the focus of the worship space as much as it's one of the focal
points, the others being the presider's chair (where the priest sits or stands
during most of the Liturgy), the lectern, the choir and band, and even other
members of the congregation. (According to the liturgist, “the assembly
itself . . . is the primary symbol of Christ's presence . . . in our places of
worship.76 ) The holy table becomes the focal point of the modern church
only when the priest recites the Eucharistic Prayer, and even then our
pilgrim's attention is divided between altar and assembly.
Furthermore, our pilgrim notes, all traces of the sacrificial aspect of the
Mass are removed. First, there's no indication that the table is an altar: it
isn't made of stone; it resembles a dining table and often isn't vested in altar
linens. With the congregation gathered around the holy table, the Lord's
Supper, a banquet, is overly emphasized so as to overshadow any sacrificial
nature of the ritual. Second, there's no sacrificial iconography, not even a
crucifix.
Our pilgrim can barely see the altar or the priest. Standing at his seat in
the back of the circle of chairs, he finds it hard to think of sacrifice. Nor
does this church help him reflect on the Last Supper, at which Jesus
instituted the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharistic Prayer has become just
another prayer of the Mass.
In older renovated churches, a similar desacralizing has taken place. The
old stone altar along with its decorative baldacchino or reredos have been
dismantled and removed. A new holy table, made of wood, has been built to
resemble the lectern and the presider's chair and placed out in the midst of
the congregation, eliminating the sanctuary and any thoughts of sacrifice.
The altar now sits so low in the church building that few can see it from
their seat. Ultimately, the holy table is just one among many finely crafted
new furnishings, carefully matched by an interior designer.
The holy table overshadows the Sacrifice.
 The holy table is just one among many finely crafted new furnishings,
carefully matched by the interior designer.

At Communion time, numerous lay distributors approach the altar to

retrieve sacred Hosts. One by one, they peel away from altar and priest to
take up their assigned positions in the modern church. Since there's no
central aisle, our pilgrim is confused. Communion distributors stand in so
many spots that it's difficult for him to know whom he's supposed to
approach. The man on his left heads left toward one aisle. The woman on
his right moves to her right toward another aisle. There's little sense that
he's receiving Communion in unity with this particular congregation, let
alone in communio with the universal Church. Most of the congregation
don't receive the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus near the altar or even
within sight of the altar.
In other words, because of the arrangement of the modern church, Holy
Communion is carried out with little or no reference to the sacrificial altar.

The tabernacle is absent, as is Christ

from the modern church
When the Mass has ended and the cross-bearer carries the portable Greek
cross out of the worship space, processing with the priest, the assembly files
out of the rows after him, rushing toward the gathering area, chatting,
waving, hugging, and guffawing. In a few moments, our pilgrim is left
sitting alone in the empty modern church worship space, with bulletins left
behind on the seats and on the floor. There's a feeling of barrenness and
loneliness all around, as if he had attended a baseball game and stayed
behind in the stadium after the game, after all the players had left the field
and after the fans had filed out to the parking lot — a vast emptiness.
The worship space seems to our pilgrim a dead space, a place of no-place
— a result of the building's transgressions of the natural laws of church
architecture. So he, too, heads back toward the gathering space, determined
to find where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. Once through the doors,
he looks about to see hallways, doors to offices, drinking fountains, and
phones. Walking up to a coffee and doughnut stand that had apparently been
assembled in the gathering space while he was at Mass, he first asks a
middle-age man where he can find the tabernacle. The man shrugs, unable
to help. He next asks an older woman where the priest reserves the Blessed
Sacrament. “Hmm. That's a good question,” she responds cheerfully. “I
don't know.”
Thus, our pilgrim embarks by himself on a search for what the modern
church designer calls the “eucharistic chapel” or “eucharistic sector.” He
makes his way through the crowd of people who just a few moments before
were the assembly of the worship space. Now they have become the
primary furnishings of the gathering space. Down one of the hallways he
sees a sign on a closed door that reads, “Reconciliation Chapel. 4:00-4:30,
Saturdays.”
Curious, he pushes open the door.
A small but brightly lit room is beyond. There are a few abstract wall
hangings decorating one wall, two seats, and a couch. How many
parishioners who attend this modern church, our pilgrim wonders, even
know this “chapel” is here? Its inconspicu-ousness makes it a poor sign for
the sacrament of Penance. If our pilgrim had not seen the sign that read
“Reconciliation Chapel,” he never could have guessed the function of the
room.
 Inconspicuous doors in the wall lead to the Reconciliation chapel.

Further down the hallway is a set of locked glass doors. Looking in, our
pilgrim sees a small altar table set in the middle of a tiny office space. Ten
chairs are lined up in one row on either side of the altar, and a lectern stands
at the other end of the office. The sign on this door reads, “Day Chapel:
Daily worship, Monday-Friday, 11:00 a.m.”
As our pilgrim continues down the hallway, he passes the restrooms and
a large bulletin board with postings about what's happening in the parish
that month. At the end of the hallway is an open doorway. Here in the
center of a small square room the tabernacle sits on a thin column. Four
chairs, one facing each side of the tabernacle, are set up with kneeling
cushions placed in front. Although the din from the gathering space reaches
the eucharistic chapel, there's no one but our pilgrim here, who kneels to
give thanks in adoration for a few moments before returning to his car.
Set on its column, this tabernacle resembles a bird feeder more than
anything else, our pilgrim thinks. But this isn't always the case. Some
modern church tabernacles aren't set on pillars but appear as tall
rectangular, cylindrical, or conical structures known as “sacrament towers.”
The tower designed by James Postell at St. Charles Borromeo Church in
Kettering, Ohio, is made of glass and wood.77 It looks like a tall, slender
fish tank or aquarium. With the transparent glazing, a pilgrim there can see
hundreds of consecrated hosts piled up inside.

Sometimes directions are posted so that worshipers can find Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament.
 A tabernacle resembling a bird feeder is set on a pillar (left). The modern
“sacrament tower” can resemble a tall, slender fish tank (right).

The eucharistic chapel is set apart from the rest of the church.

Once finished with his prayer of thanksgiving, our pilgrim retreats down
the hall, through the gathering space, and out into the sea of cars in the
parking lot, many of which are still struggling to get away from this modern
church until next Saturday afternoon.
A rear entrance to this church leads to the obscure eucharistic chapel.
 Chapter Four

Why modern architects secularized our churches

(or, bad theology has done
more damage than bad taste)
If the modern church building is the source of so much frustration,
confusion, and consternation for our pious pilgrim, how and why did it
come into being? Since the common man — Catholic or not — experiences
the modern church as banal and uninspiring, why do parishes continue to
build such edifices?
Creators of these banal structures often justify their work by appealing to
the Second Vatican Council, a meeting of the world’s bishops to discuss the
current state of the Church at that time and to recommend a pastoral course
to follow in the twenty-first century.
When the bishops met in Rome from 1962 to 1965, the Church’s
patrimony of sacred architecture was rich. The universal Church was
blessed with beautiful churches that gave glory to God and were conducive
to public worship and private devotion. Catholic churches, even the most
modest of structures, could be readily identified for what they were. Most
lay Catholics had at least a passing familiarity with the churches of past
decades and centuries. They appreciated the other-worldly feel of their
interiors, the familiar signs of the spire and bell tower, statues and stained
glass, pews and crucifix, high altar and tabernacle, pulpit and confessional.
When they walked past one of these houses of God, they knew well that
inside they would find sanctuary from the busy outside world, respite from
the profane, and a quiet and prayerful atmosphere in which they could meet
God in a unique way: through Holy Mass, adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament, and various devotions. These churches were understood as
sacred places where you could stand with the angels and saints, adoring
Christ and honoring His Blessed Mother.
Such sacred places still made visible the Church there amid the world. Its
spire or dome surmounted by the cross contrasted with the varying forms of
secular buildings in most places, and its bell tower was a welcome sign to
pilgrims and tourists, locals and merchants. Its bells resounding through the
city square or the neighboring farmland served as both a timepiece and a
call to prayer. In short, the church was a recognizable structure, its function
well known. It was a sacred place conducive to worship, to intercessory
prayer, a place where you could repent, confess, and reconcile. This was the
common understanding of a church building as the council fathers gathered
to discuss Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
the first document of the Council, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1963.
Although most Catholics in the pews wouldn’t even know of the
existence of Sacrosanctum Concilium until years or even decades later, this
document was used to justify the reform of Catholic church architecture in
the years immediately following the council. It’s an understatement to say
that Sacrosanctum Concilium was falsely used as the catalyst for such a
reformation.
Even well before the council, churches of previous centuries had been
deemed “irrelevant” by certain Church liturgists who were more interested
in the innovative architectural theories that produced much of the twentieth
century’s stark, minimalist public architecture. Traditional architectural
elements and furnishings were disparaged, and a new model was born,
based on architectural Modernism with its divorce from traditional models,
its cold, hard lines, and its overemphasis on utility.
The postwar building boom saw the construction of numerous Catholic
churches as parishes grew and the Church greatly increased in numbers
throughout North America. The churches built in this brief era were diverse
in design, but some were obviously disconnected with the tradition of
Catholic architecture, reflecting a Protestant or secular influence. Some of
these new churches built before the council were designed as hulking
masses in the shape of seashells, sailboats, arks, and other nautical themes;
rocket ships, beehives, tepees, lunar landing pods, and various shapes of
origami — forms that would become more common and no less ugly in
later decades.
 Designers of these ugly churches capitalized on the spirit of change that
swept through Western society during the tumultuous ’60s. They claimed
the spirit of Vatican II as their justification for the reformation of church
architecture. No longer were they limited to constructing new experimental
churches in the few places where they were welcomed; they found that they
could even successfully invoke the council to advocate the structural reform
of existing churches. It made selling both their renovation and new building
design ideas much easier. In other words, they used the council to legitimize
the experimental church designs that the common people had consistently
rejected.
At a time when the council documents were rarely consulted and not
readily available, the laity were willing to put their trust in these authorities,
whom they expected to have the best interests of the Church at heart. If a
pastor, a bishop, or a priest-liturgist explained to parishioners that their
church building had to change or that a new stark, uninspiring church was
required, the laity accepted it — begrudgingly perhaps — because such
plans were said to be predicated on directives from the council fathers.
Proponents of this new architecture took great liberties with the council
documents, and little was called into question.
 The postwar building boom saw the construction of
numerous Catholic churches as parishes grew and the Church
greatly increased in numbers throughout North America.
The churches built in this brief era were diverse in design, but some
were obviously disconnected with the tradition of Catholic architecture.
 New churches being built in Europe similarly
broke with Catholic architectural tradition.

Many of the changes in church architecture, for instance, were said to be

predicated on Sacrosanctum Concilium’s idea of promoting “active
participation” in the Liturgy. In fact, many beautiful churches were
destroyed in the name of active participation; many uninspiring and ugly
edifices were erected under the same pretense. In older churches, under the
pretense of fostering active participation, the altars were often moved into
the midst of the people, causing the disfigurement of their former
sanctuaries. In the name of active participation, statues, tabernacle, high
altars with beautiful reredos structures, communion rails, baldacchinos, and
aisle shrines were removed; murals and mosaics were whitewashed or
covered with paneling — all because these things were said to distract
people from active participation in the Mass. This line of reasoning reached
the height of absurdity when, a few years later, pews were ripped out. They,
too, were a kind of distraction, and all that kneeling was said to be
misplaced and impeded active participation — the ideal supposedly set
forth by the Second Vatican Council. Active participation, however, was
simply an abused concept.78 It was used to justify some of the radical
theories that are still being promoted widely at the dawn of the twenty-first
century.
Commenting on this abuse, Abbot Boniface Luykx, one of the council
fathers who helped draft Sacrosanctum Concilium, explained that
renovators “destroyed many good churches — beautiful churches — in the
name of [active participation of] the people. When they threw the altar in
the midst of the church, they destroyed beautiful altar rails and structures of
the church that were oriented towards the altar and the apse. So they
destroyed the inner logic and dynamics of many churches because of a
misunderstood principle.”79
Vatican II called for preservation of our churches

Sacrosanctum Concilium was the only document that addressed the

question of art in our churches. Nevertheless, this document didn’t use the
word architecture even once. That’s because the council had precious little
to say about the reform of Catholic church architecture. The changes that
were promoted in parishes couldn’t have been based on council mandates.
Rather, the new church designs were justified by subjective opinions rooted
in current architectural theories and innovative liturgical ideas that had
never been officially adopted by the Catholic Church.
Far from advocating the reform of church architecture, Sacrosanctum
Concilium actually called for the preservation of sacred art and furnishings
in the Church’s sacred places. One of the most significant statements of the
section dealing with this issue came in paragraph 123: “In the course of the
centuries [the Church] has brought into being a treasury of art which must
be carefully preserved.” Bishops were warned that they “must be very
careful to see that sacred furnishings and works of value are not disposed of
or allowed to deteriorate; or they are the house of God.”80
Yet the rearrangement and denuding of traditional churches in the late
1960s and early ’70s proves that these statements were little heeded in
Christendom. The blatant disregard for these mandates became so common
that in 1971 the Vatican reiterated its warning to the bishops in a short
document on the care and preservation of the Church’s historical and artistic
patrimony, Opera Artis:

In the name of “active participation,” high altars were

removed from churches by brute force and jackhammers.

Disregarding the warnings and legislation of the Holy See, many

people have made unwarranted changes in places of worship under the
pretext of carrying out the reform of the Liturgy and thus have caused
the disfigurement or loss of priceless works of art. Mindful of the
legislation of Vatican Council II and of the directives in the documents
of the Holy See, bishops are to exercise unfailing vigilance to ensure
that the remodeling of places of worship by reason of the reform of the
Liturgy is carried out with utmost caution.81
 Nevertheless, church renovators of the 1970s and thereafter steered their
own course and continued to do so falsely in the name of the Second
Vatican Council and the reformed Liturgy (with which a great many
liberties were being taken as well).
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Archbishop Rembert Weakland
of Milwaukee oversaw the denuding of his cathedral church even after
receiving in writing a warning directed to him personally by Vatican
officials. The primary artistic element of the old Milwaukee cathedral was
an ornate forty-foot-high baldacchino, a marble canopy built over the high
altar, which was dismissed by the archbishop as having “no artistic or
historic value.”82 Archbishop Weakland had the baldacchino dismantled
and removed.

Milwaukee’s Archbishop Rembert Weakland oversaw the denuding of his

cathedral even after receiving in writing a warning directed to him by
Vatican officials. The primary artistic element of the old cathedral was this
ornate forty-foot-high marble dome baldacchino, which Weakland
dismissed as having “no artistic or historic value.” He had it dismantled
and removed.
 Fashion has always threatened church architecture
If today Catholics can so easily see — albeit with hindsight of four
decades or so — that the council did nothing to promote modern
architectural changes but actually required the preservation of the Church’s
sacred patrimony, why did the church designers and renovators press on
with their illicit activities?
The fact is that ever since Christians have established holy places for
sacred worship, there have been those who sought either to destroy these
houses of God or to convert them for pagan or secular purposes.
Throughout the centuries and for a multitude of reasons, churches have
been prime targets for barbarians, reformers, and revolutionaries. Beginning
with the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and continuing to present-
day China, where the Communist government has promoted church
destruction, various anti-Christian factions have sought to eliminate the
Church by destroying her architectural patrimony, the centers of Catholic
worship and the heart of Christian communities.
During the era of the Protestant Reformation especially, the patrimony of
the Church, i.e., her buildings, furnishings, sacred vestments and vessels,
and works of sacred art, suffered dearly as a result of ideological,
theological, and political disputes. The fracturing of the Catholic Church
produced a wave of violence that wreaked not only indiscriminate damage,
but also sacrilegious destruction. When, for instance, King Henry VIII
severed ties with the Pope and created the Church of England, 376 English
monasteries were confiscated, looted, and then sacked by the politician
Thomas Cromwell and his men. All of the sacred furnishings were ripped
out. These works of sacred art no longer gave glory to God but condemned
their thieves for sacrilege. Most of the monasteries were then demolished
with gunpowder. The English landscape became disfigured and looked as
though it had been ravaged by barbarians.
 A group of Catholics holding a prayer vigil in front of the Cathedral
Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky, because it was slated
for renovation. In recent years, many lay Catholics have come to fear news
that their churches will be remodeled and have joined together in growing
numbers to oppose renovations that violate the natural laws of church
architecture.

At the same time, the Calvinist movement was spreading throughout

rural France, Holland, and Belgium. Supported by European princes eager
to throw off the moral constraints of Catholicism, the Calvinists were
intensely militant, sacking Catholic churches and monasteries wherever the
movement settled.
Two hundred years later, a new anti-Catholic crusade gripped France.
The French Revolution was ignited in 1789 by anti-monarchical
intellectuals who upheld the principles of Liberalism: the beliefs that man is
responsible to no authority, that man owes nothing to God, and that the
mind and will of man is supreme. Imagine, then, how they must have
regarded sacred places of worship.
 When King Henry VIII severed ties with the Pope and
created the Church of England, 376 monasteries were
confiscated, looted, and sacked. The English landscape became
disfigured and looked as if it had been ravaged by barbarians.

The exclusive use of consecrated buildings for religious services was

prohibited by the anticlerical government. By 1791, Notre Dame was being
used not only for ecclesiastical functions, but for civic functions as well.
When German troops threatened France, the churches’ religious goods were
confiscated to aid the military cause. Sacred vessels, church bells, choir
grilles, bronze tombs, and monuments were all carted away to be melted
down into cannonballs. Even one of Notre Dame’s enormous bells was
taken in this wave of plundering.
When Robespierre assumed the dictatorship of France and established
what is now known as the Reign of Terror, one of his first acts was to
outlaw all worship of the true God. In 1793, he established a new religion
emanating from his own Deistic83 convictions. This short-lived cult
centered on a “Supreme Being” and was intended to add a spiritual
component to the otherwise godless principles of the French Revolution.
The new religion necessitated that Catholic churches be pruned of all
Christian imagery. The buildings were converted into temples honoring the
Supreme Being (the goddess Reason) or into museums or other buildings
used for secular purposes.
Thousands of religious statues throughout France were indiscriminately
destroyed. At Notre Dame, every statue on the Western façade, for instance,
was plucked from its niche and smashed in the streets or thrown into the
Seine.
Just decades later, in 1831, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was
published in France. One remarkable claim that the young writer made
during his elaborate description of the architecture of the cathedral is that
despite the grave damage that Notre Dame suffered at the hands of these
revolutionaries, “fashion” had wrought the greater destruction. He drew up
a list of his criticisms: the colored stained-glass windows had been
removed, the interior was whitewashed, the tower over the central part of
the cathedral was ripped off, the shape of the central entrance to the
cathedral was deformed, and the chapels were filled with ugly decorations.
 Hugo said that the ruin of Notre Dame was precipitated by three major
forces:

·Time, which “has gradually made deficiencies here and there, and has
gnawed over its whole surface”;

· “Violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures — these are the works of

revolutions.” This is the type of destruction, wrote Hugo, wrought by
indiscriminate revolutionary violence;

·Fashion, which, Hugo claimed, has done more mischief than revolutions:
“It has cut to the quick — it has attacked the very bone and framework of
the art.”

Hugo expressed his sorrow and indignation at the “numberless

degradations and mutilations” that the hand of man had inflicted upon the
venerable monument in the name of fashion, not revolution. “Upon the face
of this old queen of the French cathedrals beside each wrinkle we
constantly find a scar,” wrote Hugo. “Tempus edax, homo edacior. Which
we would willingly render thus: Time is blind, but man is stupid.”84
Hugo observed that time and revolution devastated the edifice “with
impartiality and grandeur.” Yet fashion was perpetrated by “school-trained
architects, licensed, privileged, and patented, degrading with all the
discernment and selection of bad taste.”85 Thus, Hugo claimed that the
worst destruction was perpetrated not by the atheistic Iconoclasts of the
bloody French Revolution, as many historians would have it, but by these
school-trained architects, slaves to bad taste. Hugo accused these men who
assume the character of the architect of willful destruction, perversion, and
re-creation, all in the name of fashion.
Considering all the damage wreaked by barbarians, reformers, and
revolutionaries throughout the centuries, it’s astounding to consider that
slaves to fashion could bear more responsibility for the destruction of God’s
houses throughout Christendom. Without a doubt, Hugo’s hypothesis bears
out in the latter half of the twentieth century. The church designers and
renovators of our time are submissive not only to fashions of art and
architecture, but even more so to those of theology and ideology that
underpin the fashions of liturgical architecture.
The modern equivalent to Hugo’s “school-trained architects” appears in
the character of a relatively new church professional known as the
“liturgical design consultant” (LDC). Despite the fact that the Church has
built beautiful edifices to the greater glory of God in every age without the
aid of such consultants, these professionals are now commonly hired and, in
many places, required!
These consultants have not only reordered traditional churches to reflect
the latest liturgical and theological fashions, but they have also given the
world Catholic churches that are, as we say in the colloquial, ugly as sin, as
well as those that just don’t look like churches.

Protestant theology has tainted

modern Catholic church architecture
Aiding the new LDCs was a controversial document entitled
Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (EACW). A document of little
authority but of massive application, EACW was released in 1978 as a
provisional draft statement by the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Liturgy
(BCL) under the leadership of San Francisco’s Archbishop John Quinn. Yet
the bishops’ committee improperly issued EACW in the name of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops, implying the tacit approval of the
Holy See.
“It would have been very helpful for all sorts of parishioners and
countless parish committees over the past two decades to know that EACW
had no juridically binding or obligatory force,” wrote Msgr. William Smith
in 1998, twenty years after the release of the document which quickly
became the LDC’s design and renovation manifesto.86 Yet only in the late
1990s did the man in the pew come to understand that EACW is not a set of
specific directives ratified by the U.S. bishops to be used when churches are
designed or renovated.
Notre Dame professor and architect Duncan Stroik described EACW as
“a document of architectural reductionism that reflects a liturgical
reductionism. It’s fearful of symbols, complexity, history, art, and even
architecture.”87 Canonist Duane L. C. M. Galles outlined the extent of its
usage to justify objectionable changes during the renovation process:
 Since 1978 not a few dioceses adopted EACW’s recommendations as a
set of “directives” to be employed during the renovation of existing
churches as well as in the design and construction of new ones. EACW
is cited as the authority for the sometimes drastic changes such as
destruction of communion rails, ripping out of high altars and
replacing them with “tables” in the center of the church building,
moving the reserved Blessed Sacrament out of the sanctuary, etc. . . .

The following assertion made by the administrator of a parish in the

Archdiocese of Cincinnati is typical: “Many who object to the design
do not realize that the Church has given rather specific directives for
Catholic worship space. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops
has published ‘Environment and Art in Catholic Worship.’ If major
repair work is to be done, this authoritative teaching from the Bishops
has to be a guide. Please do not interpret this as an endorsement of the
proposed redesign. But the design of worship space is not simply a
matter of taste; all must come to terms with the directives from the
Bishops.”88

Aiding the modern church designers was a controversial document released

by a subcommittee of bishops in 1978. Environment and Art in Catholic
Worship was described by Notre Dame architect Duncan Stroik as “a
document of architectural reductionism that reflects a liturgical
reductionism. It is fearful of symbols, complexity, history, art, and even
architecture.”
 Just as the Second Vatican Council was first used to justify modern
church architecture, EACW was later appealed to as the authoritative
source. Yet whereas the council stated the opposite of what LDCs were
doing in practice, EACW ratified what they had been doing all along. It was
a manifesto made to order.
The practical recommendations of EACW were clearly based on
architecture models and progressive liturgical theories popular in the 1960s.
Edward Sövik, an Evangelical Lutheran architect from Minnesota, is
representative of the leading theorists and practitioners of that time. His
published articles began to appear in the late 1950s but most of them were
published from 1960 to 1973. In 1973, Sövik published Architecture for
Worship, a summary of his liturgical architecture ideas up to that time.
Since then his treatise has been long used as a handbook by designers and
renovators of Catholic and Protestant churches. In fact, Sövik himself has
designed more than four hundred church-related projects in his career, both
Catholic and Protestant.89
Sövik’s book, along with Church Architecture and Liturgical Reform
(1968), by Sövik’s fellow architect Theodor Filthaut, effectively
summarizes the archi-liturgical theories developed apart from but at the
time of the Second Vatican Council. Architecture for Worship not only
articulates the ideology behind Sövik’s practical recommendations but it
also forthrightly discloses his motivation and his desired results: to continue
where the reformation Protestants left off four hundred years ago. An
understanding of Sövik’s 1973 ideology, which has been adopted by
countless Catholic church design professionals, will help us understand the
impetus driving church renovations and new churches designed and built
since the ’60s.
Sövik states his thesis thus:
The history of the church building through the Middle Ages is a record
of a more explicit expression of a theology, a liturgy, and a piety that
contradicted in important ways the essential message of Jesus. And
when the Protestant and Catholic reformations of the sixteenth century
came, the architectural forms that resulted were only partially
corrective. The destruction of images and relics and the rearrangement
of furniture in the existing buildings, and the sharp contrasts of form
that appeared in some of the few new places of worship built in those
 times, did not effectively bring the minds of churchmen back into
harmony with the minds of the early church.90

In 1973, Lutheran architect Edward Sövik published Architecture for

Worship, a summary of his liturgical architecture ideas up to that time.
Since then, his treatise, reflected in EACW five years later, has been used as
a handbook by designers and renovators of Catholic churches.

Sövik correctly states that architecture is more influential in the life of

society than most people suppose. “The incompleteness of the Reformation
in terms of architecture was no doubt the result of the longevity of
architecture,” he explains. He laments that these medieval edifices aren’t
easily removed or changed, primarily because they were built as vertical
and permanent structures to serve the Church until the end of time. To wit,
even after the destructive iconoclasm of the Reformation, writes Sövik,
“The ‘houses of God’ from medieval times continued to stand, continued to
assert themselves as ‘houses of God’ because of their strong ecclesial
character, and continued to teach the people around them that there ought to
be such a place as a ‘house of God.’ “91
 He dismisses the enduring fact that churches built over a millennia have
“evolved” organically according to a desire to make visible Christ’s
presence in the world; he merely opines that neither Jesus nor the Fathers of
the Church wanted any such edifice, and we should work toward the
elimination of such a “misguided medieval pattern.” Sövik is further
distressed that most of the churches built within the last four hundred years
— both Catholic and Protestant — have continued to establish “holy
places” more or less on what he mistakenly calls a medieval pattern.
To move beyond this pattern, Sövik argues for the return of the “non-
church,” or “house of the people,” which he defines as a structure that
shouldn’t be a church but simply a place through which the people of the
church can minister.
He writes, “Down through the centuries church buildings have not been
consistently seen as exclusively places of worship. Church buildings have
been multipurpose buildings, houses for people, used for a variety of public
and secular activities that nourish the human and ‘secular’ life.”92 Sövik
states this as the ideal for a liturgical worship space, and he devotes his
entire book to providing practical suggestions to accomplish this through
architecture.
He believes that in the United States, the Puritans and the Methodists
once did this well: “The Puritans built meetinghouses, quite secular in form
and detail, and used them for any public assembly. The early Methodists
had their places of worship in any convenient barn or loft, and when they
built, their architecture was consciously non-ecclesiastical.”93
Like the early Methodist’s prototype, Sövik’s non-church should not be
divided into a sanctuary and a nave. It shouldn’t even be referred to using
traditional terms of church architecture, lest, he worries, there be confusion.
“It is a meeting place for people,” he writes. “It will be so different a thing
from the usual ‘church’ that any of these terms which carry the sense of
special purpose liturgical centers is inappropriate.”94 Sövik proposes instead
to use the word centrum. A centrum, he explains, “is a place for more than
one purpose, and must be seen so, and so used. If it is not, if for one reason
or another it is reserved for the Liturgy, it will sooner or later be thought of
as the ‘house of God’; and then it will be thought of as a holy place; and
then other places will be seen as profane or secular.”95
Sövik advocates a “throwaway” interior for his centrum. “For the space
itself must be simple, allowing for many configurations of use. And the
furnishings and symbolic devices will be portable, so they may be varied,
replaced, augmented, or abandoned as the parishioners of future times
desire.”96
How, then, should one properly design the throwaway interior of a
centrum that won’t be mistaken by anyone to be a holy place or a house of
God?
Sövik proposes the following in his book:

· Avoid the use of pews, and use only portable chairs;

· Set up a separate room to reserve the eucharistic species (if necessary);

· Avoid using any artwork that might be construed as strictly religious in

content, e.g., paintings, murals, religious statues, or icons;

· Avoid giving the impression of a sanctuary that is distinct from the nave
by setting up a table in the midst of the congregation and arranging the
chairs around that table;

· Avoid the use of crucifixes and Latin crosses in favor of portable Greek
crosses (“plus signs”) that would be used only in processions and during the
Liturgy. Outside of liturgical times, no cross should be present in the
worship space.

Many will recognize Sövik’s recommendations as the same basic scheme

that has been used repeatedly in the design or renovation of Catholic
churches; it’s the same practical advice offered in EACW.97 Sövik didn’t in
fact intend his book only for his Protestant co-religionists, but marketed it
as a handbook for Catholic and Protestant congregations: “[E]specially
useful for church leaders, clergy, and building committees of Protestant and
Roman Catholic churches, it offers practical, economical advice on both the
remodeling of existing structures and the construction of new ones.”98 In
other words, here was a Protestant architect with a decidedly Protestant
viewpoint advocating the reform of Catholic church architecture to conform
with his Protestant theology and ecclesiology.

Modern church designers recommend that neither

a crucifix nor a Latin cross be used. Following Sövik’s practical
principles from the 1970s, they prefer the use of the Greek cross,
which is shaped like a plus sign. Sövik wrote that this form is
obscure enough not to be identified with the sacrificial Cross of Jesus.

The theory on which Sövik’s proposal is predicated is both interesting

and revealing. He begins by making some observations on what he
considers to be “good liturgical space”: It should be one space, he suggests;
its horizontal proportions should not be too elongated so as not to give the
impression of a traditional rectangular church arrangement, which he sees
as problematic. “The design tradition we have inherited from the
Renaissance,” he writes, “has led us to assume that every large room should
be organized symmetrically, and we tend to look for some dominating
feature about which the room comes to focus. If we declare that people are
really the focus of what happens in the Liturgy, then any very strong
architectural focus can subvert our intentions.”99 Accordingly Sövik argues
against the tabernacle, the crucifix, and the altar, each of which tends to
become a focal point in what he calls “liturgical space.”
Instead of using Renaissance or medieval church plans as precedents for
the design of his non-church centrum, Sövik proposes that designers look
for prototypes in the vernacular architecture of the Japanese tea house100
and in the dining room/living room combos that became popular in post-
World War II houses. His practical recommendations are consistent with
these prototypes, which, according to Sövik, provide “a place for people to
gather and share their lives with one another.”
 Sövik’s ideology boils down to a secularization of the sacred in church
architecture. Accordingly, he advocated “non-churches” that are “quite
secular in form and detail.”

Sövik’s recommendations were echoed by EACW five years later.

On the issue of pews or chairs, Sövik writes, “Nothing gives the
conventional church building its ecclesiastical character more than do pews,
and nothing inhibits flexibility more than pews. Chairs have the advantages
of flexibility.”101 Discard the pews, then, he recommends, and replace them
with portable stackable chairs that you might find in a school, restaurant, or
conference hall. Again, Sövik doesn’t want anyone to mistake his centrum
for a church.

EACW in a similar fashion recommends, “When multifunction use

of the space is indicated by the needs of either the faith community or
of the surrounding city, town, or rural area which the faith community
services, a certain flexibility or movability should be considered even
for the essential furnishings.”102 Since pews offer neither flexibility
nor movability, the church renovator argues that portable stackable
chairs are ideal. Even when multifunction use of the space isn’t
indicated, the non-church designer will still often advocate the chair
over the pew; it’s the fashion of the day.

On the elimination of the sanctuary, Sövik writes, “It should be

recognized that the intent of a dais or platform is not to accent a sanctuary
as separate from the congregation space. It is simply to provide enough
elevation so that certain liturgical functions which need visibility can get
it.”103 The non-church should be all sanctuary or all nave.
 EACW addresses the topic in a more nuanced manner, yet arrives at
the same result: “Special attention must be given to the unity of the
entire liturgical space. Before considering the distinction of roles
within the Liturgy, the space should communicate integrity (a sense of
oneness, of wholeness) and a sense of being the gathering place of the
initiated community.”104

Writing about the “eucharistic table,” Sövik states, “The eu-charistic

table is usually called an altar, but ought to be distinguished from the
sacrificial altars of other religions. Its genus is the dining room table. It is
the table at which the ritual meal is served, and its symbolic value is like
that of the dining table in the home. The eucharistic table ought to be
located where it can be sensed as belonging to the whole gathered
community.”105

In its section on the altar, EACW recommends that the “holy table”
be designed for the “action of the community.” It should therefore “not
be elongated, but square or slightly rectangular . . . [and] central in any
eucharistic celebra-tion.”106 LDCs are fond of interpreting this section
of EACW as a ringing endorsement of throwing the altar “into the
midst of the people.” The important sacrificial aspect of the Mass is
dismissed.

Sövik also argues for the elimination of kneeling to receive Communion

because, he claims, “a celebration ought to be joyful, but kneeling is not the
posture of joy; in a communion one ought to be particularly conscious of
the community; . . . but kneeling is not a posture in which we can properly
commune.”107

EACW offers no advice on accommodating the traditional posture

of kneeling during the Liturgy; it only exhorts designers to strive for “a
seating pattern and furniture that do not constrict people, but
encourage them to move about when it is appropriate.”108 Although
one wonders how often it’s “appropriate” to move about during the
Mass, the church renovator interprets that exhortation as justification
for seating without kneelers, since kneelers tend to “constrict”
people.109
 On the issue of visual projections, Sövik argues that in new buildings and
remodeled churches, technology for visual projection and moving pictures
must be accommodated. “If a church can provide a good place for cinema,
it has an additional way of serving a community and making a building
more useful.”110

Five years later, EACW makes the same recommendation in

paragraph 104: “It is safe to say that a new church building or
renovation project should make provision for screens and/or walls
which will make the projection of films, slides, and filmstrips visible
to the entire assembly.”

Sövik also demands that never are recognizable crucifixes to be used:

“The iconoclastic reformers removed the corpus and left the Protestants
with a symbol which is the image of an instrument of torture. We have
become used to this curiosity so that we most often forget what it is, or
suppose the absence of a corpus is an adequate symbol for resurrection.
Would an electric chair symbolize resurrection? Or would we accept the
electric chair as a proper symbol of the Christian Faith if Jesus had been
executed in this century?”111 Thus, Sövik recommends that neither the
crucifix nor the traditional Latin cross be used. He argues for use of the so-
called Greek cross, which appears in the shape of a plus sign. He believes
that this form is obscure enough not to be identified with the sacrificial
cross, the “instrument of torture.” Sövik, also opposed to large crosses,
argues for a single, “small” processional cross (“one doesn’t need to
suppose that there must be a gigantic symbol somewhere, as if making a
cross big demonstrates superior piety,” he writes), one that is “among the
people” during the Liturgy and whisked away at its completion.

So, too, EACW recommends, instead of a large fixed cross or

crucifix, “a processional cross with a floor standard, in contrast to one
that is permanently hung or affixed to a wall.”112 And although the
Greek cross isn’t specifically called for by EACW, the church
renovator consistently advocates the use of the “plus-sign-shaped
cross.”
 Sövik concludes his treatise by illustrating his ideal of the throwaway
non-church centrum. He cites the work of St. Kather-ine’s parish in
Baltimore, Maryland (remember, this is back in 1973):
Here Fr. Joseph Connolly, a priest whose sense of liturgy and human
concern belong together, is leading the parish to immerse themselves
in providing for the welfare of the people in the area. He now calls his
church building a ‘community service center.’ The nave has been
cleared of pews and other hindrances. It has become the meeting place
for any kind of assembly that needs a place, and movable screens can
separate different kinds of activities that occur simultaneously.
Children swarm. Rock music, dances, clinics, educational enterprises,
eating and drinking, even a homosexual group have been given shelter.
For if Jesus didn’t reject the company of publicans and prostitutes,
why should the church be less hospitable?113
Catholic LDCs have been viscerally affected by Sövik and his ideological
allies such as Filthaut, J. G. Davies (author of The Secular Use of Church
Buildings, 1968), and Frederic Dubyst (author of Modern Architecture and
Christian Celebration) for the past four decades at least. Sövik has enjoyed
guru status among the Catholic design consultants, his architectural work is
held up as exemplary, and he’s regarded by many LDCs as a mentor.
Indeed, his archi-liturgical ideology of secularizing the sacred was en vogue
among liturgists during the mid-1970s as it still is at the turn of the century.
Sövik and kindred spirits were caught up with the liturgical experimentation
of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Their penultimate goal, clearly enunciated
in their written works, was the elimination of the sacred from church
architecture; their ultimate goal, the elimination of the church building in
favor of a secular meeting house to be used on occasion for religious
purposes.
EACW doesn’t discuss its goals. Nevertheless, in the opinion of Notre
Dame architect Duncan Stroik, “it seems that the BCL produced a
document worthy of the ‘non church’ promoted by Protestant architect
Sövik.”114 Indeed, the practical recommendations offered by Sövik in 1973
to create his ideal throwaway, non-church centrum are the same practical
recommendations offered by the Bishops’ Committee on Liturgy in their
controversial 1978 document.
 Architects have deliberately
secularized our Catholic churches
The ultimate purpose of effecting a paradigm shift in Catholic church
architecture is radically to remake Catholicism by striking at the outward
manifestations of the Catholic Faith. The old paradigm of nearly fifteen
hundred years that Sövik rejects is one of “familiarity” and “mystery,” a
holy building set in a place that gave the community a sense of continuity
and security. Fr. Richard Vosko, a Catholic priest and probably the most
renowned LDC, elaborates on this idea:
The architectural style and furnishings in the [American]
neighborhood churches were similar in many ways to those in
European homelands. The quiet ambience, the ubiquitous smell of
incense, the flicker of candles dancing in the darkness, the almost eerie
presence of innumerable images, laser-like beams streaming through
stained-glass windows, immense high altars, and the surreptitious
presentation of the Mass contributed to the familiar and mysterious
milieu. My boyhood church was the church of immigrants clinging to
the past for continuity and identity. It sustained what people believed
to be expressions of mystery. It was where God dwelled.115
In contrast, the new paradigm reflects the ideology and practical
recommendations of Sövik’s parish centrum. Fr. Vosko, who at the time of
this writing is employed by seven U.S. cathedrals116 as an LDC, echoes
Sövik when he describes his ideal “church of tomorrow” as one that’s
primarily secular: “similar to the other familiar public spaces, buildings that
are well designed and constructed to accommodate large numbers of people
in comfortable and pleasant ways.”117
He writes hopefully that the church of tomorrow:118

· will “tell the ‘faith stories’ of this age”;

· will “be mysterious not because of any architectural or artistic sleight of

hand but because of the respectful and gracious way people conduct
themselves”;
· will “become, once again, a house for the church” (rather than a “house of
God”);

· will use “sophisticated building materials and technologies, not the natural
and more expensive materials used in the churches of the past”;

· will “focus on the assembly gathered about the font and table”;

· will “stimulate the senses through the incorporation of mobile art,

holography, and computerized projections”;

· will incorporate natural scents to “trigger the full sensual capacity of the
community causing interactive, conscious, and subliminal participation in
the celebration of word and sacrament”;

· will more fully integrate music, singing, drama, and body movement into
the worship action;

· will include “other sectors” devoted to bible study, prayer sessions,

counseling, and support groups;

· will have a database of biographies so that the community may be able “to
interact with holographic images of religious folk heroes”;

· will feature sculptures, weavings, and paintings of “saintly personalities”

in its “inner and outer gardens and pathways”;

· will house the “eucharistic bread” in “its own chapel sector.”

 Fr. Richard Vosko, probably the most well known of Catholic liturgical
design consultants, echoed Sövik’s ideals when he described his ideal
“church of tomorrow” as one that is primarily secular: “similar
to other familiar public spaces.” (Yes, this is such a church.)

Fr. Vosko’s most prominent project, the new Our Lady of the Angels
Cathedral in Los Angeles, reflects this new paradigm in a grand way and
violates the natural laws of church architecture. First, the new cathedral
bears no resemblance in form or substance to cathedral churches of past
centuries. (It has been described by critics in L.A. as a “yellow
armadillo.”119) Christian iconography on the façades is minimal, and the
symbolism that is used is said to be more “inclusive” and “universally
appealing” than specifically Catholic. One Archdiocese of Los Angeles
official explained that “you don’t need St. Peter and St. Paul over the
entrance.” Rather, he admitted, the new Our Lady of the Angels cathedral
“avoids assigning meaning,” although in the same breath he begrudgingly
conceded that the L.A. cathedral “obviously will have a certain amount o
rhetoric brought into it because it has a certain use.”120
Defending his transgression of the natural law of permanence, Fr. Vosko
explained that the church doesn’t even pretend to be transcendent of time or
culture. “This cathedral,” he remarked to the press, is of its own time, of its
own liturgy, of its own people.”121 Fr. Vosko added that he wasn’t interested
in establishing a sacred place like the European cathedrals of past centuries.
Rather, he explained, it isn’t even possible to accomplish such a thing. All
one can do is to create an “architectural form that would house the ritual
forms of a particular religion, whether it’s Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, or
whatnot.”122 With this dim view, the faceless façade is appropriate for the
modern non-church centrum. It’s an accurate prelude to the worship space
within, one that is no less inspiring or sacred than its antecedent.

Modern church designs violate

the natural laws of church architecture
It’s quite obvious that the “non-church,” the new paradigm in church
architecture, doesn’t reflect a desire to make Christ visibly present in a
particular locale or to manifest the Catholic Faith through built form. Few
churches of this new paradigm truly serve as epicenters or souls of their
communities, to say the least. No one will ever write a “biography” of the
renovated St. John’s Cathedral in Milwaukee. No one will write a novel
about St. Mary’s Cathedral in Gaylord, Michigan, about Corpus Christi
Church in Toledo, or about the Millennium Church in Rome, designed by
Richard Meier. Few will make pilgrimages to cathedrals in Las Vegas,
Oakland, or Los Angeles. These are buildings that leave doubts in the mind
of the pilgrim about whether they’re Catholic churches; they’re places,
judging from all appearances, where you must search out the tabernacle as
if it were the lost Ark of the Covenant.
These non-churches — and thousands like them built since 1960 — are
buildings that don’t speak of God, don’t turn man’s mind, heart, and soul to
things eternal. They’re merely “skins for liturgical action,” lifeless, banal,
and uninspiring, often ugly. What pilgrim could gaze on St. John’s Abbey in
Collegeville, Minnesota, and conclude that it’s a beautiful edifice raised to
the greater glory of God? What passerby could look at Oakland’s cathedral
and think of anything but a giant clam?
Inasmuch as the new paradigm worship spaces adhere to Sövik’s non-
church formula, they can’t rightly be regarded as houses of God — Sövik
will be happy — but simply as spaces in which people meet from time to
time to participate in the Mass, which the building’s architecture has
reduced to a nearly meaningless ritual. The sacrificial aspects of the Holy
Sacrifice are hidden from the senses — no crucifix, no prominent altar, no
religious imagery. The architectural language used to design the non-church
dismisses the great works of the past to embrace the liturgical fashion of the
day, one that can and will be discarded in years to come to make way for
newer trends, fads, and fashions. The pilgrim will find no colonnades,
arched windows, impressive domes, or wooden pews.
 Because the non-church lacks verticality, the pilgrim isn’t likely to be
inspired to the other worldly. Without permanence, the new paradigm
church is ephemeral — here today, gone tomorrow. Devoid of any
iconography that speaks of God and eternity, the non-church fails to inspire,
to evangelize, to teach, or to attract. In fact, it may do the opposite. The new
paradigm edifice may actually repel people, may drive them further from
the truth of the Faith, and may convey a message that says Christ and His
Church really aren’t that important.
At best, the new paradigm church is mere human folly, an expensive
experiment, a failed architecture. It can’t transcend time and culture. It’s
merely a product of its own time, a consumer item that will be quickly
expended and will offer little or nothing to future generations. In the new
paradigm, meaning isn’t conveyed through built form or religious art;
meaning is the enemy. Verti-cality, permanence, and iconography give way
to the horizontal, ephemeral, and iconoclastic. Goodness, beauty, and truth
become evil, ugliness, and deceit.

Modern church designs threaten the faith of Catholics

The built environment has always shaped human behavior. In fact, this is
why architects such as Edward Sövik and liturgical consultants such as Fr.
Richard Vosko are so dedicated to promoting their designs. They know well
that the built environment influences how Catholics worship. They also
know that how Catholics worship affects what they believe, because
worship is really a reflection of belief (lex orandi, lex credendi). It’s
difficult, if not impossible to separate theology and ecclesiology from the
environment for worship, whether it’s a traditional church or a modern non-
church centrum. If a Catholic church building doesn’t reflect Catholic
theology and ecclesiology, it’s hard for the pilgrim to accept that building as
a proper place for Catholic worship, whether public liturgy or private
devotions. If he does accept it as a proper place of worship, he risks
accepting a faith that’s foreign to Catholicism.
The modern non-church, to be sure, doesn’t reflect Catholic theology or
ecclesiology. Rather, it reflects the desires, hopes, aspirations, and
philosophies of architects like Sövik, who by his own admission doesn’t
accept the Catholic creed, the Catholic form of worship, or Catholic
ecclesiology. For instance, he doesn’t believe in the Catholic doctrine of the
Real Presence. His modern church worship spaces reflect his disavowal of
this important Catholic belief. Nor does he accept that the Catholic Mass is
a holy sacrifice, a re-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary. This
disavowal of the sacrifice is also reflected in the design of his modern
churches as well as articulated in his influential writings, which have
affected Catholic liturgists and designers for four decades.
In fact, the modern non-church promoted by Sövik is a repudiation of
Catholic theology, ecclesiology, worship, belief, and tradition. Contrary to
what we learn in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the non-church is
predicated on the idea that the universal Church should not establish “holy
places.” It denies the vertical, because the non-church is built, not to the
greater glory of God, but for a gathering of the people. It can’t admit the
possibility of a church that’s both functional for people and gives glory to
God through its beauty and majesty. It denies permanency by breaking with
historical models and through its emphasis on the “flexibility doctrine,”
which purports that a worship space must not be created specifically for
liturgical and devotional purposes with fixed furnishings. It denies that a
sacred place can teach, evangelize, catechize, and inspire. In a word, it’s
iconoclastic.
Few will contest that many modern non-churches are aesthetically
unsettling. Nonetheless, the notion of “ugly” as used in the title of this book
(Ugly as Sin) refers not just to that which is aesthetically offensive, but also
to that which is theologically inappropriate: the modern non-church
engenders responses in worshipers that are wrong, leading them away from
the goodness, beauty, and truth of the Faith to a false notion of God and of
themselves in the face of God.
Because the modern non-church implies a false theology, it’s
theologically ugly — literally, ugly as sin.
 Chapter Five

How we can make our churches Catholic again

(or, what the Vatican wants you to do to help restore the Faith in our day)
With hindsight, many are waking up to the fact that the experimental church
architecture designed and built in the latter half of the twentieth century has
miserably failed the Catholic people. The innovative forms used by church
architects in the '60s and '70s look not only outdated at the dawn of the new
century; they look ugly. The non-churches of the '80s and '90s that can pass
for libraries, post offices, or nursing homes are so uninspiring and banal that
they fail to attract, to evangelize, or to raise the hearts and minds of man to
God. They fail to acknowledge that Christ was made flesh and dwelt among
us. They fail to serve the Catholic community, and they fail to make Christ's
presence known in any particular place. Similarly, the insensitive
renovation of traditional churches that stripped these sacred edifices of their
Catholic trappings, not only denuded a physical place, but also altered the
worship and beliefs of the people.
Fortunately, however, the growing realization and acknowledgment of
this failure — on the part of laity, priests, bishops, and architects alike — is
the first step that will lead to the renewal of our sacred places. Designer
Francis X. Gibbons, for instance, now speaks of his 1968 renovation of St.
Mary, Star of the Sea Church in Baltimore as a “raping” of that church.123
Helen Marikle Passano, the primary patron for the restoration of the 1869
chapel at Notre Dame College in Baltimore, remembers loving the
“modernization” of the chapel when she was a student there. “We thought
we were moving forward with a contemporary space. But guess what?
We're moving back,” she told the Baltimore Sun in early 2001. “It's time to
bring [the chapel] back to its original glory.” To this end, she donated $1.5
million to peel away the 1960s alterations, “including a flat ceiling and
metal ducts that obscured the vaulted spaces above, wood paneling that
covered plaster walls, and carpeting that smothered the handsome pine
floor.”124 Even the Vatican finally addressed the renovation problem in
2001, when Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, prefect for the Congregation
for Divine Worship, informed Archbishop Rembert Weakland of
Milwaukee that his proposed cathedral renovation didn't conform to Church
norms or liturgical law and was doing a disservice to Milwaukee
Catholics.125
This realization period should lead to four distinct ways to improve the
architecture of Catholic churches, transforming these edifices from meeting
spaces into sacred places:

• Restore traditional Catholic churches. That is, architects and pastors must
work together to return to their former glory the older, traditionally oriented
buildings that were renovated over the past three or four decades.

In 2001, Notre Dame College in Baltimore embarked on a project (above)

to restore its chapel to its original beauty. The project will peel away the
1960s alterations (below left) to the 1869 church (below right).
• Salvage and renovate the modernist churches built in the latter half of the
twentieth century by reorienting them and endowing them with verticality,
iconography, and permanency. Many of the buildings erected during the
'60s and '70s, although irregular in form, can be transformed into beautiful
transcendent places within.

• Transform ugly, modernist churches into parish halls or school buildings,

and build replacement churches that will serve as genuine sacred places,
designed in continuity with the Church's tradition and adhering to the
natural laws of church architecture.

• Build beautiful churches anew when parishes are established.

We must restore churches that were marred by fashionable renovations

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a new trend is emerging: some of

the churches that were drastically altered decades ago are now being
restored to their former beauty.
For example, when Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan returned to Worcester,
Massachusetts, after the Second Vatican Council,one of the first ways he
sought to implement the “spirit of Vatican II” was by remodeling his
cathedral church. No doubt influenced by the spirit of change that swept
through Western society during the tumultuous '60s, he oversaw the
removal of the sacred furnishings that had come to be universally identified
with the Catholic sanctuary. In place of the reredos and high altar, a
concrete block wall was erected, and a simple freestanding wooden altar
table was introduced. The walls were whitewashed, mustard-yellow
carpeting was installed, the communion rail was removed, and a new,
unadorned tabernacle that could be mistaken for a mailbox was set on a
pillar in a side alcove.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a new trend is emerging: some of the
churches that were drastically altered decades ago are now being restored
to their former beauty. St. Mary's Church in downtown Rockford,Illinois,
was restored by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.

Three decades later, shortly after Daniel P. Reilly was made Bishop of
Worcester in 1994, he announced an interior restoration project that would
restore the cathedral's sanctuary. The concrete block wall was removed, and
an ornate hand-carved wood reredos and a noble cathedra were erected in
its place. Statues of Sts. Peter and Paul were moved back into the sanctuary.
The tabernacle was given proper prominence and ornamentation, and a
shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe was fashioned from the leftover wood of
the sanctuary project. The mustard-yellow carpeting was removed, and the
walls and ceiling of the church's interior were repainted to match the
original multicolor scheme. The church's interior, thanks to Bishop Reilly
and architect Rolf Rohn, now no longer looks dated from 1968. The
restoration carried out in 1996 was in keeping with the building's original
design.
Numerous churches, from small rural parishes to urban cathedrals, have
been undergoing similar restorations. St. Patrick's Church in Forest City,
Missouri, for instance, underwent a restoration to bring it more in line with
its original look. Following Vatican II, this church, built in 1906, was
“modernized” by way of a drop ceiling and wood-paneled walls. The
Stations of the Cross, the old altar, several statues, and other sacred
furnishings were removed from the church. In 1999, however, the new
pastor, Father Joseph Hughes, initiated a restoration. Fortunately, some
parishioners had saved items that were removed from the church during the
previous renovation thirty years before. A sanctuary lamp, the old
tabernacle, and candlesticks were refurbished and incorporated into the new
design. Just as at St. Paul's Cathedral in Worcester, a new reredos is the
highlight of the sanctuary renovation at St. Patrick's. Patterned after the
church's old altar, it sits behind the new altar and holds the altar crucifix and
statuary.
These examples provide models for what can be done to reorient a
renovated church. The first step must always be to restore the hierarchical
form. The sanctuary must be made distinct again from the nave, where the
congregation sits. In many cases, this will mean that altars that have been
moved into the midst of the congregation must be returned to a proper
sanctuary. The altar platform — usually consisting of one or two steps —
that sits out in the nave with chairs gathered around isn't a sufficiently
defined sanctuary by any means. Most, if not all, traditional churches are
designed in the basilican cruciform plan. That means that there already
exists a proper location for the sanctuary: at the elevated “head” of the
building. The nave serves as the body.
In 1996, architect Rolf Rohn restored the Cathedral of St. Paul in Worcester,
Massachusetts, returning the church's interior to much of its original
splendor. (Top: before the 1968 renovation; bottom left: after the 1968
renovation; bottom right: after the 1996 renovation.)

In other renovated churches, the sanctuary has been moved to one of the
nave's side walls and the entire building reoriented so that when you enter
the church building, there's no natural progression down an aisle toward the
altar of sacrifice. This type of renovation is really just a disorientation.
Here, the sanctuary needs to be restored to its proper position at the head of
the building and the nave reoriented to lead once again toward the restored
altar.
The sanctuary should also be redefined, that is, if the raised platform of
the sanctuary has been removed, it must be restored. If the communion
railing has been eliminated, the restoration of such a device will provide a
distinct boundary for the sanctuary, and it will also be functional if
Communion is distributed to communicants kneeling at the restored railing.
The design of a restored railing should match the architecture of the church
and the altar especially.
 But in many cases, the altar in renovated churches is itself inadequate.
The poorly designed table altars that replaced high altars of past centuries
can be deficient in several respects. First, they're often crafted of wood
alone. To focus again on its sacrificial nature, the altar ought to include an
altar stone, a plain horizontal slab on which the priest places the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. The restored altar should also be a permanent fixture,
built of durable materials. A simple table that could be used for a
thanksgiving dinner in our homes is insufficient.

There's no reason why dignified altars can't be designed and built anew,
complemented by either a beautiful reredos or baldacchino. The altar and
baldacchino of the Warwick House Chapel in Pittsburgh were designed by
Henry Hardinge Menzies in 1992.

In some renovated churches, the high altar fortunately still remains,

although it has often served only to hold flowers or candlesticks since a
freestanding altar was introduced after Vatican II. In these fortunate
churches, the most obvious solution is to eliminate the inadequate
freestanding altar and revert to using the high altar, which is often already
the natural focal point of the church, accented by either a reredos or
baldacchino.
 In many other churches, however, the high altar and reredos or
baldacchino have been summarily removed. Although this is a most
unfortunate situation, for those parishes that are committed to restoration it
can be an opportunity to design and build something even more worthy and
beautiful than the original. Such is the case with St. Paul's Cathedral in
Worcester, already mentioned. It's also the case with several traditional
churches that were restored in the diocese of Victoria, Texas. This diocese is
noted for its preservation of the famous “painted churches” in the
Schulenburg area. Some of these churches had lost many of their sanctuary
furnishings shortly after the Second Vatican Council. A generation later,
however, nine parishes in the Victoria diocese tried to recapture what they
had lost. The ornate high altar and reredos at St. Joseph's Church in
Moulton, Texas, for instance, was completely reconstructed from scratch by
local carpenters in 1994.
There really is no reason why dignified altars can't be made anew,
complemented either by a beautiful reredos or baldacchino, depending on
the style and design of the church. These elements will not only bring the
focus back to the altar, but they will also ennoble it.
We must return the tabernacle to its place behind the altar

Another important — perhaps the most important — aspect of a

sanctuary restoration is moving the tabernacle back to its original position
in the center of the sanctuary, behind the altar. In 1997 Fr. Richard Simon of
St. Thomas of Canterbury Church in Chicago blazed a trail in this regard.
He announced to his parish that he planned to make such a liturgical move
because he felt that the experiment of removing the tabernacle from the
sanctuary had failed. In his June 24, 1997 letter to his parishioners, he
wrote:
I believe that much of the liturgical experimentation that began thirty
years ago has failed. We are not holier, nor more Christ-centered now
than we were then. In fact, we are facing a generation of young people
who are largely lost to the Church because we have not given them the
precious gift that is at the heart of Catholicism, that is, the Real
Presence of Jesus. Mass has become simply a drama, a vehicle for
whatever agenda is currently popular. The church building is no longer
a place of encounter with the Lord but a sort of a social center, not a
place of prayer, rather a place of chatter.

In many churches, including our own, the tabernacle was moved

from the center of the church to add emphasis to Mass and the
presence of the Lord in the reception of Holy Communion. That
experiment, however, has failed. We have lost the sense of the sacred
that formerly was the hallmark of Catholic worship. The behavior of
many in the church is outrageous. When Mass is over it is impossible
to spend time in prayer. The noise level reaches the pitch that one
would expect at a sporting event. The kiss of peace seems like New
Year's Eve. Christ is forgotten on the altar. You may counter that He is
present in the gathering of the Church, and though this is true, it should
not detract from the Lord present on the altar. If the Lord is truly
recognized in the congregation, it should serve to enhance the sacred-
ness of the moment. This is simply not happening. . . .

Therefore, I have decided to restore the tabernacle to its former

place in the middle of the sanctuary and to begin a campaign of re-
education as to the sacredness of worship and the meaning of the Real
Presence. This means that I will nag and nag until a sense of the sacred
is restored. I will be reminding you that a respectful quiet will have to
be maintained in church. Food and toys and socializing are welcome
elsewhere, but the church is the place of an encounter with the Living
God. It will not be a popular policy, but this is unimportant.

I can hear one objection already. Where will the priest sit? I will sit
where the priest has traditionally sat, over on the side of the sanctuary.
Here as in many churches the “presider's” chair was placed where the
tabernacle had been. I am sick of sitting on the throne that should
belong to my Lord. The dethronement of the Blessed Sacrament has
resulted in the enthronement of the clergy, and I for one am sick of it.
The Mass has become priest-centered. The celebrant is everything. I
am a sinner saved by grace as you are and not the center of the
Eucharist. Let me resume my rightful place before the Lord rather than
 instead of the Lord. I am ordained to the priesthood of Christ in the
order of presbyter, and as such I do have a special and humbling role. I
am elder brother in the Lord and with you I seek to follow Him and to
worship. Please, please let me return Christ to the center of our life
together where He belongs.

Once Fr. Simon returned the tabernacle to its former location at the center
of the sanctuary behind the altar, he was surprised, he said, at the response.
It was overwhelmingly positive and effective. A sense of reverence was
indeed restored at Mass in his church. On September 16, 1997, he reported
the results of the move:
You cannot imagine the response I got to the letter I addressed to my
parishioners on June 24. I have received so many calls and letters that I
am reduced to saying thank you in a form letter. Still, I simply have to
write to say thank you for your support and prayers. So many people
thought I was brave to do what I did. Brave? I simply read the
Catechism and moved a few pieces of furniture. The response has been
overwhelmingly positive. In the parish, some people even wept for joy
when they saw the change. I am still kicking myself and asking why I
didn't do this years ago. The response has been so supportive. Many
wrote and expressed their sense of loneliness in the battle for Catholic
orthodoxy. Well, you are not alone, neither among the laity nor the
clergy.

Perhaps you have heard the definition of a neo-conservative. He is a

liberal who has been mugged by reality. That certainly describes me. I
was in college in the late Sixties and went the whole route: beard,
sandals, protest, leafleting for feminism, and all the rest. . . . [I]f a
parish like this and a person like me can be turned from foolish
liturgical experimentation, it can happen anywhere to anyone. Don't
give up! For instance, if they have taken the kneelers out of your
church, go to the front and kneel on the hard floor. You'll be amazed
how many will join you. That's what's happened here.

Inspired by this well-publicized move by Fr. Simon, many pastors have

restored the tabernacle to prominence in their churches. This, as he attests,
was simply “moving furniture,” but it restored the kind of prayerful
reverence in his church that he and many others desired. With the tabernacle
directly behind the altar on the building's main axis, the two elements work
together as one: the tabernacle was returned to an extension of the altar,
which is the focal point of the church, just as the Blessed Sacrament is an
extension of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Since the reserved Sacrament
is an extension of the Mass, it logically follows that, architecturally
speaking, the tabernacle ought to be situated in direct relationship to the
altar, whether on the altar or behind it. This arrangement has ramifications
far beyond interior design. Ultimately, it is a matter of devotion and
worship.
According to Pope John Paul II, proper devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament will inevitably lead to a fuller participation in the eucharistic
celebration. In his letter on the 750th anniversary of the Feast of Corpus
Christi, he wrote, “Outside the eucharistic celebration, the Church is careful
to venerate the Blessed Sacrament, which must be reserved . . . as the
spiritual center of the religious and parish community. Contemplation
prolongs Communion and enables one to meet Christ, true God and true
man, in a lasting way. . . . Prayer of adoration in the presence of the Blessed
Sacrament unites the faithful with the paschal mystery; it enables them to
share in Christ's sacrifice, of which the Eucharist is the permanent
sacrament.”126
Tied in to this theology of the Eucharist is the crucifix, the figural
representation of Christ's Sacrifice on Calvary, that which is re-presented in
an unbloody manner by the hands of the ordained priest at the altar. As
mentioned before, the crucifix — the corpus of Christ on the Cross — was
removed from many churches during renovations and replaced by either
symbolic processional crosses or other figures, such as the risen Christ or
paintings of wheat, sun, and birds. As beneficial as these new symbols may
be to some, the restoration of the crucifix is integral to a proper restoration
of the sanctuary. It is the crucifix that directly symbolizes the whole
meaning of the Mass.
 Another important — perhaps the most important — aspect of sanctuary
restoration is moving the tabernacle to the center of the sanctuary, behind
the altar. The restoration of the sanctuary at St. Aloysius Church in New
Canaan, Connecticut,included positioning the tabernacle behind the altar
as the centerpiece of the glass reredos. The restoration of the crucifix,
which symbolizes the meaning of the Mass, is also integral to a proper
sanctuary restoration.

We must restore the sacred art

that was stripped from our churches

Another element especially significant to the restoration of the sanctuary

is the restoration of sacred art. Many unfortunate churches were
whitewashed thirty years ago in an iconoclastic attempt to remove so-called
distractions from the house of God en route to reducing the church to a non-
church. Others had their statues summarily removed for the same reason.
Fortunately, these misguided purges have begun to wane, yet plenty of
churches have been left barren and stripped because some pastor, liturgist,
or designer was a slave to fashion, bad taste, or wrongheaded theology. This
is what church designer Francis X. Gibbons called “rape.”
 But not all is lost. With the newest methods of art preservation and
restoration, murals and frescoes can be recovered, whitewashed statues can
be returned to their original colors, and deteriorated works of sacred art can
be restored. Such advances in the art of preservation ought to give hope to
many a pastor who desires to bring the sacred back into his church building.
Furthermore, there are, contrary to public understanding, talented artists
who can be commissioned to execute beautiful new murals or mosaics in
churches that are unable to recover their artistic patrimony.
With regard to statues, icons, and other pieces of “movable” art, there
exists a treasury of old sacred art available at architectural antique shops
around the United States and beyond. A few calls can put a pastor or
restorationist in touch with groups that have salvaged these often priceless
works of art from Catholic parishes that have been closed and their
churches razed.
The same goes for architectural furnishings such as old wooden
confessionals, sacred vessels, crucifixes, Stations of the Cross, pews, and
communion rails. Some of the more well-known Internet auction web sites,
for instance, offer a steady supply of these beautiful works of art.
Unfortunately, these items more often wind up being used for secular
purposes rather than in new or restored churches. We've all heard of
confessionals being used as telephone booths in restaurants or ornate hand-
carved pews being used for seats in pubs.
We must restore the nave to its former beauty

The same steps apply to the restoring of the nave. Side shrines and
Stations of the Cross that have disappeared over the decades can be
fashioned anew or purchased from antique dealers and architectural salvage
companies. Yet sometimes the destruction of church interiors goes far
beyond what was removed. In many cases, it's also what has been added.
Wood paneling, drop ceilings with acoustical tiles, and wall-to-wall
carpeting are the biggest offenders. Fortunately such materials date the
project to the late '60s and '70s, when homeowners were renovating their
houses in much the same fashion. The use of these cheap materials has
dropped out of fashion, Deo gratias. The removal of such “homey” items
will offend few.
Because these materials are so flimsy and impermanent, they're easily
removed. With any luck, they'll have preserved what they were once hiding.
The removal of ceiling tiles may reveal vaulting, clerestories, or ceiling
murals intact and in good condition. Carpet removal can reveal terrazzo
flooring or beautiful hardwood floorboards, and the removal of wood
paneling can give way to beautiful plaster walls, sometimes decorated with
beautiful stenciling or even mosaics.
More difficult to deal with, however, are the modern furnishings that
replaced the traditional ones and are often at odds with the original design
and style of the building. Victor Hugo dubbed these innovative furnishings
the “wretched gewgaws of the day.” Referring to elements of the
eighteenth-century renovation of Notre Dame Cathedral, he asked, “Who
has substituted for the old Gothic altar, splendidly loaded with shrines and
reliquaries, that heavy sarcophagus of marble, with angels' heads and
clouds, which looks like an unmatched specimen from the Val-de-Grâce or
Les Invalides!”127
In the late 1980s, historical St. Francis Xavier Church in Cincinnati was
renovated: fashion audaciously fitted into the wounds of its Neo-Gothic
architecture the wretched gewgaws of our own day: the interior of this
immense church was painted a dark shade of blue to effect the look of
marble, and the contemporary furnishings (altar, ambo, font, light fixtures,
etc.) look as though they were transplanted from a mod-style library or a
three-star hotel lobby. The contrast between the Gothic architectural forms
(barrel vaults, pointed arches, and soaring columns) and the sharp, hard
lines of the new fixtures creates an awkward visual dissonance that's
disturbing even to the casual observer.
Seating is another major restoration item. First, in those churches that had
the kneelers removed from the pews: install new kneel-ers! In those
churches that have skewed or turned their side-aisle pews supposedly to
allow people better to focus on the altar: turn them back facing forward.
And in those churches that discarded the old pews in favor of cheap (or
expensive) portable chairs, it would be ideal if new wooden pews with
kneelers were eventually to be restored to the church. The fad of homey
cushioned chairs will soon pass.
All in all, when restoring a historical church, the parish needs to hire
competent restorationists with a proven track record of accomplishments.
They must be sensitive to the original architecture of the church, but need
not necessarily re-create exactly what existed some time in the past. Any
new furnishings or artwork introduced into the church, however, should be
in keeping with the architectural scheme rather than looking like foreign
invaders. The restorationist should be concerned with:

• reordering the church into a properly defined narthex,nave, and sanctuary

in keeping with the original design;

• re-establishing an iconographic program of sacred art and furnishings;

• recovering any verticality that has been lost; and

• establishing a unified whole so that the church will be re stored to a sacred

place with transcendent qualities.

We must build a sense of hierarchy

into poorly designed churches

Some may say, “We're stuck with this ugly building that looks like a
gymnasium. What can we do to improve on the modern design?”
Fortunately, in some cases there's an easy answer.
In Edward Sövik's theory of the non-church, he expressed his desire for a
building that has a “throwaway interior,” that is, an interior that can be
easily altered to suit the needs of the people at any time. Accordingly, the
interiors of many of the non-churches built in the latter half of the twentieth
century can be easily altered. Their throwaway interiors can simply be
thrown away and new furnishings, and works of sacred art can be
commissioned.
Of course, the new architect or designer has no obligation to subscribe to
the modernist theory of the throwaway interior. On the contrary, he has the
obligation of transforming the building into a beautiful church. It can be
done, but not by designing another interior that can just be thrown away.
The architect has the opportunity to reconnect with tradition to create a
sacred place that will transcend generations and possibly cultures, too.
 Some may say, “We're stuck with this ugly building that looks like a
gymnasium. What can we do to improve on the modern design?” In the
salvaging renovation of St. Aloysius Church (1960s) in New Canaan,
Connecticut, architect Henry Hardinge Menzies took the opportunity to
reconnect with tradition to create a sacred place that will transcend
generations and possibly cultures, too. (Above — top: interior before
renovation; bottom: interior after renovation. Facing page — top:exterior
before renovation; bottom: exterior after renovation.)

Image
Image
Just as with the restoration project of a traditional church building, the
first task in restoring a modern church is properly to reorient the interior
spaces into a hierarchy of sanctuary and nave. This is more difficult to do
with the modern edifice than with the traditional church building, because
the floor plan may be somewhat irregular. Churches in-the-round, fan-
shaped theater-style churches, and asymmetrical layouts are three popular
arrangements that ought to be corrected.
In this regard, the altar needs to be established at the “head” of the
building, in a distinct sanctuary that's elevated above the nave and set off
from the congregational seating. Most likely the altar in the modern church
to be renovated is unworthy to be used in the renovated church. The
opportunity now exists to design a new altar that will not only establish
itself as the focal point of the church, but will also set the tone for the new
interior. Every other element of the renovation will lead to the altar in some
way.
A new baldacchino or reredos can give the altar the nobility and
prominence it deserves, and the close relationship of the tabernacle with the
altar is just as important in the renovation of a modern edifice as it is in the
restoration of a historical church. The same goes for other elements and
furnishings — pews, sacred art, pulpit, and communion rail. There's no
reason why the traditional trappings of a Catholic church can't be
introduced into the modern building to create a sense of the transcendent
and the eternal.
We must abandon churches that can't
be made to reflect the Faith

Of course, if it's possible, it's better to begin anew designing a church that
can serve as a “city on a hill,” one that through its traditional form and
exterior elements has the capacity to carry meaning, to inspire, to educate,
and to attract Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Since many or even most
modern church edifices don't appear as permanent structures, their buildings
can be adapted to another use, one that would serve the parish in another
way — for instance, as a school building, food pantry, theater, gymnasium,
or parish meeting hall.
Image
If it's possible, it's better to begin anew designing a church that can serve as
a “city on a hill,” one that through its traditional form and exterior
elements has the capacity to carry meaning, to inspire, to educate, and to
attract Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The new Immaculate Conception
Church in Clinton, New Jersey, designed by Allan Greenberg, replaces the
existing parish church. The design includes a prominent campanile, a
colonnaded atrium, and other familiar church elements.

Many of the modern churches, because of their layout and arrangement,

lend themselves easily to such a transformation. Not a few people have
entered one of these new churches or non-churches and exclaimed, “My,
this looks more like a gymnasium [or a theater, etc.]!” If it looks like a gym
or a theater, chances are it can easily be converted into a gym or theater
while a new church, designed in continuity with the Catholic tradition of
church architecture, rises nearby. These are properly called “replacement
churches.”
In fact, a pastor or bishop can easily save face by telling a parish that the
current modern facility they're using as a church was serving only as a
temporary solution until a time came when parishioners could help build a
permanent house of God that would speak equally to generations of
Catholics to come.
Finally, the greatest opportunity comes perhaps when a new parish is
established. The pastor, architect, and parish can start at ground zero, so to
speak. The parish has the great advantage of hindsight. It can look back
over fifty years of ugly, uninspiring church designs to avoid building a fad
that will pass away even before the current generation has died out. There's
a unique opportunity to connect with the tradition of creating transcendent
vessels of meaning that will not only look like churches but will be
churches in their essence.
We must hire architects whose designs reflect the Faith

For more than fifteen hundred years, the Church built splendid houses of
God without the aid of so-called “experts” known as liturgical design
consultants. Unfortunately, this new church professional, introduced in the
twentieth century, has been the font of the failed experimentation. Such
professionals, usually not trained in architecture and often not trained
properly in the Liturgy, are simply the transmitters of the day's theological
and liturgical fads. It's the LDC who insists that the baptismal font should
be here or there, that the tabernacle can't possibly be near the altar, or that
Catholics shouldn't kneel when they come to church.
Image
When St. Agnes Church, near Grand Central Station in New York City,
incurred extensive fire damage in the early 1990s, the church was rebuilt
using classical forms. The tabernacle is built as part of an altarpiece that's
directly behind the new altar. A communion rail, a raised pulpit, and side
aisle shrines are other features of the new church.
It's also the LDC who has usurped the duties of the architect, without
having the expertise of a trained architect. In many projects, the consultant
forcibly presents his agenda and informs the architect how things will be
done. The architect, in turn, is reduced to a pencil pusher who pushes the
pencil the way the LDC says to push it. It's humiliating really! What if
Borromini or Michelangelo were bossed around by an LDC? Their talents
would have been suppressed, and they probably never would have
continued to work on church projects. That's what has happened to many
architects during the past forty years. Those who were not a part of the
modern liturgical movement were summarily dismissed by self-appointed
experts who wanted nothing more than to preach their own faddish
philosophies, theologies, and design solutions.
The one sure way to perpetuate the crisis of ugly and dysfunctional
Catholic church architecture is to ensure that LDCs continue to be placed in
charge of such projects.
Yet not just any architect will do. The architect hired to design and
oversee the construction of a Catholic church should be someone who
understands the history and tradition of Catholic church architecture, not
someone who wants to incorporate his own idiosyncratic theology in the
design of a new church.
Unfortunately this has happened during recent years in some rather high-
profile projects. Sometime in the '90s it became popular to spend an
enormous amount of Church dollars to generate publicity regarding the
construction of a new church or cathedral. Often a competition between
name-brand architects was carried out. Yet these name brands had nothing
to show in the way of previous accomplishments in building beautiful and
useful church structures.
The first of these well-known competitions was for the “prototype”
Millennium Church in Rome. Competitors included decon-structivist
architects such as New York's Peter Eisenman, whose work often resembles
train wrecks, and L.A.'s Richard Meier, who has never designed a building
that wasn't white. Eisenman's design suggests that he knew little or nothing
about the Catholic Church or her Liturgy, customs, and history. His
submission depicted a sanctuary that was disconnected from the nave; in
fact, the proposal appeared to place the nave and sanctuary in different
buildings. Meier's winning scheme was a modernist monstrosity of glass
and white “stuff.” Instead of a tabernacle behind the altar, his scheme
placed a giant television screen.
In a more high-profile project in the United States, name-brand architects
vied for the commission to design the new Los Angeles Cathedral. Spanish
architect Raphael Moneo won that heavily publicized competition, but the
resultant building was far from a beautiful edifice despite its price tag of
$163 million, which could have facilitated the design of several beautiful
cathedrals. Many of the same architects competed for the commission to
design the Oakland Cathedral. Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava, the
winner in Oakland, produced a giant clamshell and told the international
press that his design was based on the idea of creating something “totally
independent of the Catholic Church.”128
From the publicity generated by such competitions and experimental
designs, you might think there's no architect today capable of designing a
beautiful church that gives glory to God and can speak to ages beyond the
present. This, however, simply isn't true. In fact, there's plenty of talent out
there that has gone unused for the past half century.
One striking example comes from Thomas Michael Marano, when he
was merely a student of architecture at the University of Notre Dame. In
1996 Marano produced designs for the Los Angeles cathedral competition.
Comparisons of his traditional design with Moneo's built project is
revealing. Marano's entry, with its beautiful iconographic façade,
recognizable form, dome, rose window, and baldacchino, puts to shame
Moneo's concrete monstrosity, which is not only unidentifiable as a
Catholic cathedral but is by objective standards an ugly building.
Marano is one of many young architects who has graduated from Notre
Dame's classical architecture program, the only such program offered by a
Catholic college or university in the United States. In fact, it's one of the
few classical programs offered at any school since the latter half of the
twentieth century.
Under the guidance of architect Thomas Gordon Smith, who was hired
by the university in 1989 to revamp its architecture program, students are
exposed to the architectural theories and methods of ancient Greece and
Rome, medieval Europe, and the Renaissance in order to understand the
classical principles of architecture, principles that have long been dismissed
or undermined by the architects of modernism and deconstruction. Such
study of historical methods has produced a whirlwind of new interest in
traditional church design. In turn, Notre Dame's program has proven that it
can train architects who can responsibly design church buildings for the
twenty-first century and beyond. Few if any of those graduating from Notre
Dame are interested in creating church buildings that are “independent of
the Catholic Church” let alone creating fads in the manner of the “non-
church” promoted by Sövik and others of like mind. They're more
interested in creating churches that are transcendent, well-built, elegant,
enduring structures that can be understood by future generations of lay
Catholics as well as by architects who will look to these designs to inform
their own work.
One of Notre Dame's architecture professors, Duncan Stroik, established
the Institute of Sacred Architecture to promote traditional church
architecture beyond the walls of the university and the profession. The
institute publishes a well-read journal called Sacred Architecture and has
organized several exhibits in Rome of current work in the field of
traditionally oriented church architecture. Interest in the Notre Dame
program and the institute's offerings reflects renewed appreciation for
understanding the works of the past in order to create new sacred
architecture for the centuries to come. Even many Protestant architects are
now interested in transforming uninspiring Protestant churches into more
glorious structures that raise man's mind to God and to things eternal.
Image
Image
Design submitted in the Los Angeles Cathedral design competition. With its
beautiful iconographic façade, recognizable form, dome baldacchino, and
rose window, this design puts to shame the cathedral now under
construction in Los Angeles, a concrete monstrosity that's not only
unidentifiable as a Catholic church but is also by objective standards,
simply an ugly building.

We must confidently build churches that are truly Catholic

Despite common sense and evidence to the contrary, public opinion still
holds that we can't build beautiful, timeless churches today. The reasons
vary: there aren't talented architects and artists; Vatican II says our new
churches must be modern and ugly; we can't afford to build enduring
edifices as Christians of centuries past have always done; or there are better
things to spend our money on, like feeding the poor and educating the
young.
These reasons are simply popular misconceptions. In reality, the exact
opposite holds true. First, we've just seen that there's an abundance of
talented architects and artists today. Second, as explained in an earlier
chapter, the Second Vatican Council didn't mandate or even suggest
reforming Catholic church architecture. In fact, the council ratified the
treasury of sacred art and architecture by calling for its proper preservation
and maintenance. Unfortunately, because the ugly and dysfunctional
churches as well as denuded ones seemed to crop up after the council, many
people have mistakenly drawn the conclusion that the council somehow
called for them. As the documents of Vatican II are being more widely read,
more and more people, however, are discovering that many changes in the
Church — including those in architecture, art, and Liturgy — don't have
their origins or inspiration from the council, but, rather, that such changes
were implemented by those who elected to follow their own agendas over
what the council fathers envisioned and called for.
Second, stewardship of our Father's House falls equally to bishop, priest,
and laity. Each has his own particular role and responsibility. If we were to
think back a century or so and reflect on the splendid church edifices that
were raised in God's honor, we would be ashamed. In the U.S. and Canada,
for instance, cathedrals and parish churches of that era were built with the
dimes of the Catholic working class, poor immigrants who often owned
neither car nor house. There were few major patrons, such as in the days of
Constantine, Charlemagne, or Justinian, and the fledgling Catholic Church
in North America wasn't rich, as it is overwhelmingly today.
Just as Bezalel and Oholiab contributed their God-given talents to
building the tabernacle in the wilderness,129 artists, craftsmen, tradesmen,
and even farmers contributed their time, talent, money, and natural
resources to the building of a parish church. Farmers transported building
materials to the site. Timber, sand, and gravel were donated and brought to
town. Parishioners carted bricks to the construction site by their horses and
wagons. And courageous men constructed tall church spires, often swinging
in the breeze 100 or 150 feet above the church steps below until they
successfully erected the cross atop the spire.
In the twenty-first century, at least in Europe and North America, we're
blessed with an unprecedented abundance of resources. We're blessed with
natural resources, and current technology assists in mining those resources
in responsible, efficient ways. We're blessed with a talented, creative laity,
albeit many lay members of the Church need to set their priorities straight
and give glory to God rather than to themselves and to others.
Image
 Right: Michael Imber's design proposal for the chapel at Thomas Aquinas
College in Ojai, California.

Below: Our Lady of the Angels Monastery Chapel in Hanceville, Alabama.

Image
From the publicity generated by such competitions and experimental
designs, you might think there's no architect today capable of designing a
beautiful church that gives glory to God and can speak to ages beyond the
present. This, however, simply isn't true. In fact, there's plenty of talent out
there that has gone unused.

Image
Left: Design for Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity in southern California.

Below: Thomas Gordon Smith's design for Our Lady of Guadalupe

Seminary in Denton, Nebraska.

Image
We're also blessed with abundant financial resources. Never before in the
history of the world have there been such prosperous nations. In fact, the
surplus wealth among lay Catholics is so great that the stewardship of
material patrimony will in no way detract from stewardship in other areas
of Catholic life, such as feeding the poor, educating priests, forming
religious, and performing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in a
most generous way.
The Vatican wants us to do this

Bishops and priests, who are charged with the duty to protect the
Church's material patrimony, bear a unique responsibility. In addition to
establishing sacred places, their responsibility entails preserving the house
of God and its sacred furnishings — art, vessels, linens, and vestments. It's
worth reiterating that, according to Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II's
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, “. . . in the course of the centuries [the
Church] has brought into being a treasury of art which must be carefully
preserved.” As mentioned in an earlier chapter, bishops are warned that they
“must be very careful to see that sacred furnishings and works of value are
not disposed of or allowed to deteriorate; for they are the house of God.”130
A few years later, the Vatican reiterated the importance of this
pronouncement in a short document on the care and preservation of the
Church's historical and artistic patrimony, Opera Artis:
Disregarding the warnings and legislation of the Holy See, many
people have made unwarranted changes in places of worship under the
pretext of carrying out the reform of the Liturgy and thus have caused
the disfigurement or loss of priceless works of art. Mindful of the
legislation of Vatican Council II and of the directives in the documents
of the Holy See, bishops are to exercise unfailing vigilance to ensure
that the remodeling of places of worship by reason of the reform of the
Liturgy is carried out with utmost caution.
The Vatican here makes explicit that unnecessary and unwanted
renovations of Catholic churches and cathedrals aren't proper stewardship
of God's house.
Bishops, priests, and the laity must work together to maintain the sacred
places that our ancestors in the Faith have built, and we must continue to
establish new churches that are equally or surpassingly beautiful and sacred
edifices. We are all called to be responsible stewards of our Father's house.
It takes only six simple steps

Just as the alcoholic's first step to recovery is admitting that he has a

problem, the first step toward a renewal of sacred architecture is the
willingness to admit that the ugly and dysfunctional churches of the post-
Vatican II years are just that: ugly and dysfunctional, banal and uninspiring.
The second step is to identify the source of the problem: those with
theological agendas who wish to change the face of Catholicism, how
people worship, and ultimately what they believe.
The third step is to remove the cancer: the modern church professional
known as the liturgical design consultant needs to be eliminated from the
host of characters required to renovate or build a church.
The fourth step is to identify and employ properly trained architects who
are capable of fulfilling the task to build houses of God that will raise man's
heart and mind to God and to things eternal, architects and artists who are
willing to employ the natural laws of church architecture and to look to the
past to inform their own designs, which will in turn inspire the work of
future church builders.
 The fifth step is for bishops, priests, and laity to commit themselves to a
plan of stewardship that will allow the architects and designers to establish
and preserve these sacred places using the finest materials reasonably
available.
The final step should be the ongoing education of seminarians, priests,
and laity about the meaning and significance of the church building and its
intimate relationship to the Catholic Faith.
We can bring about a renaissance of sacred architecture

Let us return to Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame. Inspired by

Hugo's novel, which criticized what Parisians of the eighteenth century had
done to the great cathedral in the name of fashion, architect Eugène
Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc drew up a plan to restore the cathedral to its
former splendor. He created stained-glass windows by copying stained glass
from the cathedrals in other French cities that had escaped the fashion-
driven, school-trained architects and the indiscriminate destruction wrought
by the Revolution.
He also replaced all the sculptures; he researched the pictorial records of
other French Gothic cathedrals, and by doing so, he was able to re-create
the works of the medieval sculptors. He designed a new flêche to top off the
crossing of the cathedral as it had once been. He also restored the great
doors of the cathedral and the gargoyles on the rooftop. Finally, he had the
interior scoured of the old whitewash and treated the exterior with a
chemical that would preserve the stone from the industrial pollution that
was already becoming a problem in the nineteenth century.
Thus, Viollet-le-Duc took on one of the greatest projects in the history of
restoration and was successful in returning Notre Dame Cathedral to its
original beauty and charm. Similarly, in the twenty-first century, if
Catholics are willing to admit that the experiments of the twentieth century
are failures, and if they're motivated to correct the situation, a renaissance
of sacred architecture will take hold whereby we'll see the great treasures of
the past returned to their original splendor and the establishment of new
houses of God that are transcendent, enduring, and serve as vessels of
meaning for generations of Christians to come.
Appendix
 References and resources
for further research
The following is a bibliography of authoritative Church documents that
address in some way matters of church architecture, design, or renovation.
Useful for parishioners, pastors, building-committee members, and
architects, these documents present the Church’s teaching on church art and
architecture.

Divini Cultus, Apostolic Constitution on Divine Worship, Pope Pius

XI, 1928.

Mediator Dei, Encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Pius XII, 1947.

Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred

Liturgy, 1963.

Sacram Liturgiam, Motu Proprio on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Paul VI,
1964.

Inter Oecumenici, Instruction on the Proper Implementation of the

Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, approved by Pope Paul VI,
1964.

Tres Abhinc Annos, Second Instruction on the Proper Implementation

of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, approved by Pope Paul
VI, 1967.

Eucharisticum Mysterium, Instruction on the Worship of the

Eucharistic Mystery, Pope Paul VI, 1967.

Liturgicae Instaurationes, Third Instruction on the Correct

Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Paul
VI, 1970.
Opera Artis, Circular Letter on the Care of the Church’s Historical and
Artistic Heritage, Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, approved by
Pope Paul VI, 1971.

Eucharistiae Sacramentum, On Holy Communion and the Worship of

the Eucharist Outside of Mass, Pope Paul VI, 1973.

Dedication of a Church and an Altar, Sacred Congregation for Divine

Worship, 1977.

Dominicae Cenae, On the Mystery and Worship of the Eucharist, Pope

John Paul II, 1980.

Inaestimabile Donum, Instruction on Certain Norms Concerning the

Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, Sacred Congregation for
Divine Worship, approved by Pope John Paul II, 1980.

Code of Canon Law, approved by Pope John Paul II, 1983.

Duodecimum Saeculum, On representations and imagery, Pope John

Paul II, 1987.

Love Your Mass, Apostolic Letter on the 25th anniversary of

Sacrosanctum Concilium, Pope John Paul II, 1988.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, approved by Pope John Paul II,

1994.

Ecclesiae de Mysterio, On certain questions regarding the

collaboration of the non-ordained faithful in the sacred ministry of
priests, approved by Pope John Paul II, 1997.

Apostolos Suos, On the limitations of national episcopal conferences,

Pope John Paul II, 1998.

Letter to Artists, Pope John Paul II, 1999.

Resources on church architecture

The following journals, articles, books, and websites pertain to church
architecture. The church architecture of the present and future ought to, in
the words of Sacrosanctum Concilium, “grow organically from forms
already existing.” The resources included in this section serve as visual and
textual sources for church architecture. Few of them require special
education or technical knowledge to make them useful for new church
design or renovation. Many of the books listed here provide an excellent
array of images that explain the various traditional arrangements of
churches. Others provide a sampling of beautiful twentieth-century
churches that can be used for inspiring church designs of the twenty-first
century.

Recommended Journals

Sacred Architecture, P.O. Box 556, Notre Dame, IN 46556; (219) 631-
5762; Editor: Duncan Stroik; e-mail: [email protected].

Adoremus Bulletin, P.O. Box 3286, St. Louis, MO 63130; (314) 863-
8385; Editor: Helen Hull Hitchcock; www.adoremus.org.

Christifidelis, Newsletter for the St. Joseph Foundation, 11107

Wurzbach, #601B, San Antonio, TX 78230-2553; 210-697-0717;
Director: Charles M. Wilson; www.st-joseph-foundation.org.

Internet Resources

The Catholic Liturgical Library: www.catholicliturgy.com; Editor: Ian

Rutherford; e-mail: [email protected].

Domus Dei — The House of God: www.domus-dei.org; e-mail:

[email protected].

Salvage Companies — Church Art and Furnishings

Architectural Antiques and Salvage, 31 South Richmond St., Porto-

bello Bridge, Dublin 2, Ireland; phone: (01) 478 4245; fax: (01) 475
8708; e-mail: [email protected].
Church Connection, 216 Cumer Road, McDonald, PA 15057; phone:
(866) 873-3735; e-mail: [email protected];
www.usedchurchitems.com.

Chancellor’s Church Furnishings, Rivernook Farm, Sunnyside,

Walton-on-Thames, England; phone: +44 (0) 1932 252736; e-mail:
[email protected]; www.churchantiques.com.

Church Furnishings Clearinghouse, Kenneth T. Pribanic: phone: (202)

723-7452; fax: (202) 723-7453; www.churchclearinghouse.com.

Neville Griffiths Antiques and Interiors, 5 New St., Lower Weedon,

Northamptonshire, NN7 4QS, England; e-mail:
[email protected]; www.nevillegriffiths.com.

Books

Adams, Henry. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. Cambridge, MA: The

Riverside Press, 1904.

Anson, Peter. Churches, Their Plan and Furnishing. Milwaukee:

Bruce Publishing Co., 1948.

Aubert, Marcel. French Cathedral Windows. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1947.

Borromeo, St. Charles. Instructions on Ecclesiastical Buildings.

Evelyn Carol Voelker, trans. Dissertation, Syracuse University,
1979.

Brannach, Frank. Church Architecture: Building for a Living Faith,

1932.

Collins, Msgr. Harold E. The Church Edifice and Its Appointments,

1925.

Comes, John T. Catholic Art and Architecture: A Lecture to

Seminarists, 1920.
 Conant, Kenneth John. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture
800-1200. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959.

Cram, Ralph Adams. Church Building. Boston: Marshall Jones Co.,

1924.

Cram, Ralph Adams. The Ministry of Art, 1914.

Cram, Ralph Adams. American Church Building of Today, 1929.

Didron, Alphonse Napoleon. Christian Iconography: The History of

Christian Art in the Middle Ages (2 volumes). New York: Fredrick
Ungar Publishing Co., 1965.
Elliot, Msgr. Peter J. Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.

Elliot, Msgr. Peter J. Liturgical Question Box. San Francisco: Ignatius

Press, 1998.

Fletcher, Sir Banister. A History of Architecture on the Comparative

Method. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1896.

Frankl, Paul. Gothic Architecture. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967.

Gill, Eric. Beauty Looks After Herself. London: Sheed and Ward, 1933.

Grabar, Andre. Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Grodecki, Louis. Gothic Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1976.

Hammett, Ralph Warner. The Romanesque Architecture of Western

Europe. New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1927.

Jones, E. Michael. Living Machines. San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

1995.

Kraus, Henry. The Living Theatre of Medieval Art. Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press, 1967.
Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture.
Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965.

Kubach, Hans Erich. Romanesque Architecture. New York: Abrams,

1972.

Kubler, George, and Soria, Martin. Art and Architecture in Spain and
Portugal 1500-1800. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959.

Lee, Lawrence; Seldon, George; and Stephens, Francis. Stained Glass.

New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976.

Lowrie, Walter. Art in the Early Church. New York: Pantheon Books,
1947.

Mango, Cyril. Byzantine Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1974.

Martindale, Andrew. Gothic Art from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Century.

New York: Fredrick A. Praeger, Inc. Publishers, 1967.

Mitchel, Ann. Cathedrals of Europe. Norwich, UK: Hanlyn Publishing

Group Limited, 1968.

Murray, Peter. Renaissance Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1971.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Late Baroque and Rococo Architecture.

New York: Abrams, 1971.

Portoghesi, Paolo. The Rome of Borromini: Architecture as Language.

New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1967.

Rose, Michael S. The Renovation Manipulation: The Church Counter-

Renovation Handbook. Cincinnati: Aquinas Publishing Ltd., 2000.

Rosponi, Christiano. Reconquering Sacred Space: Rediscovering

Tradition in Twentieth-Century Liturgical Architecture. Rome: Il
Bosco E La Nave, 1999.
Rosponi, Christiano. Reconquering Sacred Space 2000: The Church in
the City of the Third Millennium. Rome: Il Bosco E La Nave, 2000.

Schloeder, Steven J. Architecture in Communion. San Francisco:

Ignatius Press, 1998.

Short, Ernest, ed. Post War Church Building: A Practical Handbook.

London: Hollis and Carter, 1947.

Smith, Thomas Gordon. Classical Architecture: Rule and Invention.

Layton, UT: G.M. Smith, 1988.

Stoddard, Whitney S. The West Portals of Saint-Denis and Chartres.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952.

Suger, Abbot. The Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures. E.
Panofsky, trans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Tapie, Victor-L. The Age of Grandeur: Baroque Art and Architecture.

New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1957.

Temko, Allan. Notre-Dame of Paris: The Biography of a Cathedral.

New York: The Viking Press, 1955.

Volbach, W. F. Early Christian Art. New York: Abrams (no date).

Von Simson, Otto. The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic

Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order. New York: Harper
and Row, 1964.

Webb, Geoffrey. Architecture in Britain: The Middle Ages. Baltimore:

Penguin Books, Inc., 1956.

Weber, Edward J. Catholic Church Buildings: Their Planning and

Furnishing, 1927.

Wilson, Christopher. The Gothic Cathedral: The Architecture of the

Great Church 1130-1530. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1990.
Wittkower, Rudolf. Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750.
Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1958.
 Recommended architects and artists
Following is a list of some architects and artists who understand the
Church’s architectural patrimony and are committed to traditional Catholic
church architecture as outlined in the present work. This ought to be an
excellent resource for dioceses and parish building committees when it
comes time to find an architect. North American, European, and Asian
architects are included.

North America

Angelo Alberto, 3801 Kennett Pike, D , Wilmington, DE 19807;

phone: (302) 376-6450; fax: (302) 376-6460; e-mail:
[email protected].

H. Reed Armstrong, 13 Sussex Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20910; phone:

(301) 585-4456; fax: (301) 608-0532.

John Blatteau, 1930 Chestnut St., #5, Philadelphia, PA 19103; phone:

(215) 751-9779; fax: (215) 751-0734; e-mail:
[email protected].

John Burgee, Architect, 1592 E. Mountain Dr., Montecito, CA 93108;

phone/fax: (805) 969-5239.

Lio Casas and Michael Mesko, Curtis and Windham, 3701 Travis St.,
Houston, TX 77002.

Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, DPZ Architects, 1023 SW

25th Ave., Miami, FL 33135; phone: (305) 644-1023; fax: (305)
644-102.

Robert Goodall, 1300 Spring St., Silver Spring, MD 20910; phone:

(301) 588-4800.
William Heyer and Selena Heyer, 125 West Marion St., #116, South
Bend, IN 46601; (219) 251-0649; (219) 287-0821.

Carter Hord, 80 Monroe, #102, Memphis, TN 38103; phones: (901)

527-9085; (703) 739-3845; fax: (703) 739-3846.

Michael Imber, 111 W. El Prado, San Antonio, TX 78212; phone:

(210) 824-7703.

Dennis H. Keefe, Keefe Associates, Inc., 162 Boylston St., Boston,

MA 02116; phone: (617) 482-5859; fax: (617) 482-7321.

James Langley, Department of Fine Arts, Franciscan University, 100

Franciscan Way, Steubenville, OH 43952; phone: (614) 282-3904;
fax: (614) 283-6401.

Jonathan Lee, 311½ Howard St., Petoskey, MI 49770; phone: (231)

487-0089; fax: (231) 487-9911.

Dino Marcantonio, 110 Bond Hall, School of Architecture, University

of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; phone: (219) 631-4451.

Henry Hardinge, Menzies, Architect, 99 Overlook Cir., New Rochelle,

NY 10804; phone: (914) 235-0198; fax: (914) 235-7805; e-mail:
[email protected].

James McCrery, 625 E. Capitol St., N.E., Washington, DC 20003;

phone: (205) 588-0700.

Duncan McRoberts, 150 Lake St. South, Ste. 208, Kirkland, WA

98033.

Paul Milana, Cooper Robertson Partners, 311 West 43 St., New York,
NY 10036; phone: (212) 247-1717; fax: (212) 245-0361.

Stefan Molina, Turner Boaz Stocker, 301 N. Market St., Ste. 200,
Dallas, TX 75206; phone: (214) 761-9465.

Edward Mudd, 23 Park Pl., New Canaan, CT 06840.

Kevin Roche, 20 Davis St., Hamden, CT 06517; phone: (203) 777-
7251; fax: (203) 776-2299.

Rolf Rohn, Architect, 5075 Clairton Blvd., Ste. 301, Pittsburgh, PA

15236; phone: (412) 561-1228.

Steven Schloeder, Liturgical Environs, 2510 Le Conte, #105, Berkeley,

CA 94709; phone/fax: (510) 666-9120; e-mail: [email protected].

Steven Semes, Cooper Robertson Partners, 311 West 43 St., New York,
NY 10036; phone: (212) 247-1717; fax: (212) 245-0361.

Thomas Gordon Smith, 2025 Edison Rd., South Bend, IN 46637;

office phone: (219) 287-1498; school phone: (219) 631-6137; office
fax: (219) 287-0821; school fax: (219) 631-8486.

Duncan G. Stroik, University of Notre Dame, School of Architecture,

110 Bond Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556; office phone: (219) 271-
0522; school phone: (219) 631-5762; fax: (219) 631-8486; e-mail:
[email protected].

John Tittmann, 58 Winter St., Boston, MA 02108; phone: (617) 451-

5740; fax: (617) 451-2309; e-mail: [email protected].

David Vatter, Architect, 603 Olympia Rd., Pittsburgh, PA 15211;

phone/fax: (412) 431-4245.

Stephen Wiseman, 311½ Howard St., Petoskey, MI 49770; phone:

(231) 487-0089; fax: (231) 487-9911.
Europe and Asia

Pier Carlo Bontempi, Studio Bontempi Strada Nazionale 96C, 43030

Gaiano di Collecchio, Italy; phone: (011) 390-521-80-9900.

Piotr Choynowski, B. Farmanns GT. MB, 0271 Oslo, Norway; phones:

(011) 47-22-55-2114; (011) 47-22-566-9777; fax: (011) 47-22-552-
114.
José Cornelio da Silva, Colares 2710 Sintra, Portugal; phone: (011)
3511-888-2657.

Anthony Delarue Associates, 22 Lonsdale Square, London N1 1EN,

Great Britain; phone: (011) 0171-700-0241; fax: (011) 0171-700-
0242.

Michael Fuchs, A-3400 Klosterneuberg, Hermannstrasse 12, Austria;

phone: (011) 43-2243-253-82; e-mail: M.Fuchs@michael-fuchs.

Jan Maciag, Maple Tree Cottage, New Road, Orton

Waterville, Peterborough PE2 5EJ, Great Britain; phones: (011) 440-

1733-230816; (011) 440-1733-391661; e-mail:
[email protected].

David Mayernik, Roma, Italy; phone: (011) 39-06-689-2626; e-mail:

[email protected].

José Narciso, Asian Architects, Room 202 SEDCCO Bldg., 120 Rada
St., Legaspi Vill., Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines.

Helmut Peuker, Ainmillerstrasse 25, 80801 München, Germany.

Cristiano Rosponi, Via Muzio Attendolo 65, 00176 Roma, Italy;

phone: (011) 39-06-214-8050; e-mail: [email protected].
 Glossary of church architecture terms
apse: a semicircular extension of a church building; a central apse
would serve as the back of the sanctuary.

altarpiece: a painted or carved image or images depicting the

dedication of a church, e.g., St. Sebastian, the Annunciation, the
Sacred Heart; this is either hung on the wall behind the altar or
attached to the back of the altar itself.

altar rail: a low wall, usually balustraded, which distinguishes the

sanctuary from the nave; also known as a “communion rail”; here
communicants kneel to receive the Eucharist.

altar stone: a flat, solid piece of natural stone on which the priest
places the Host and chalice during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass;
it’s consecrated by the bishop and marked with five crosses,
symbolizing the five wounds of Christ; the altar stone is placed on
the surface of the altar.

ambo: an elevated lectern used for reading the Scriptures during

liturgical ceremonies; traditionally the ambo has a flight of steps on
both sides rising to a platform large enough to accommodate the
reader and the candle-bearers.

arcade: a row of arches supported on columns, piers, or pilasters and

usually roofed; used in church architecture since the early Christian
basilicas.

atrium: an exterior forecourt to a church usually surrounded by a

cloister.

baldacchino, baldachin: a permanent ornamental canopy constructed

of wood, stone, or metal that’s placed over the main altar in a
church; it’s typically supported by columns and has a dome- or
crown-like top.
balustrade: a row of upright supports, usually vase-shaped posts or
columns, topped by a rail.

basilica: a church that has a long, rectangular nave that leads to a

circular apse containing the altar at the head of the structure; the
basilica is often extended by transepts that project from the nave on
either side.

bas-relief: a sculptural relief that projects very little from the flat
background; in church it’s usually hung on a wall or a column.

buttress, flying: a projecting arched structure used in Gothic churches

such as Notre Dame de Paris to transfer the weight of the ceiling to
the ground; this allows for the walls to be pierced with large areas of
glazing.

campanile: a freestanding bell tower made popular by Italian church

architecture; campaniles are typically square in plan, although some,
such as the famous tower of Pisa, are circular towers.

cathedra: a bishop’s throne in his cathedral church.

chancel: the area of the sanctuary reserved to the clergy and servers
who are assisting the officiating priest or bishop; usually the front
part of the sanctuary nearest the nave.

clerestory: (pronounced “clear-story”) the upper part of the nave walls

that usually contains small windows that admit light but no view
because of their high placement.

cloister: a covered passageway, usually colonnaded, that encloses a

space such as an atrium.

colonnade: a series of regularly spaced columns usually supporting

the base of a roof.

cornice: a horizontal, molded projection that completes a building or a

wall.
crossing: the space where the nave crosses the transepts; often
articulated with a dome.

cruciform plan: a floor plan laid out in the form of a cross; the arms
of the cross are formed by projecting transepts.

crypt: an underground burial place of a saint, typically beneath the

altar or the nave of a church.

cupola: a small dome surmounting a roof; or the underside of a dome,

the ceiling of a dome.

façade: the main face of a church, decorated with religious imagery.

flêche: a spire placed over the crossing of a church.

fresco: a wall painting that is executed on freshly spread plaster with

water-soluble pigments.

gallery: a rear balcony that projects out over the nave.

lantern: a small tower, usually the uppermost part of a cupola or

dome, that’s used for ornamentation or projecting light; its form
resembles that of a handheld lantern.

lintel: the horizontal beam over the head of a doorway or lintel; in

church architecture, the lintel is often used as a decorative surface.

martyrium, martyrion: a small chapel or church built to

commemorate the place where a martyr was killed or buried.

mosaic: a wall decoration made by fitting together small pieces of

colored tiles.

narthex: the interior front entrance of a church that serves as a

transition from the profane world outside to the sacred of the church
interior.
nave: the main space of a church, which accommodates the
congregation and extends from the front entrance to the sanctuary.

oculus: a round eye-like window or other opening; often found in a

central location on the façade above the main doors of a church.

piazza: an open-air plaza of which the church façade serves as a

backdrop; the area is used for civic, mercantile, and religious
purposes.

pier: a vertical support at either end of an arch.

pilaster: a column, usually rectangular, that projects from a wall.

pillar: a freestanding column that serves as a building support.

pinnacle: a small spire on top of a buttress.

portal: a door opening into a church, or, more specifically, the

decorative areas that surround the doors, especially above.

portico: a covered porch or walkway, usually supported by columns,

that leads to the main entrance of the church.

pulpit: an elevated decorative stand in which one preaches; it typically

has low walls on all sides except for the entrance from the stairwell.

reredos: an ornamental screen of painted panels or carved

statues, placed behind and above the main altar in a church; the reredos
often contains niches for statues.

retablo, retable: a shelf behind an altar used for supporting decorative

works of sacred art, the altar crucifix, and liturgical candles.

rose window: large circular windows in church façades; it’s typically

made up of different sections of stained glass that resemble the
petals of a flower.
spire: a tapering tower that crowns a steeple or surmounts the church.

transept: arm-like extensions of the interior of a cruciform church on

either side of the nave near the sanctuary.

triumphal arch: the portion of the wall over the arch that divides the
nave from the sanctuary.

tympanum: the area above the lintel of a doorway that’s enclosed in

an arch; often used for decorative portal sculpture.
Ugly as Sin
 Photo credits
Chapter One

Page 5: Notre Dame, Paris (back view from Seine): Art Today

Page 6: Façade, Notre Dame, Paris: Art Today

Page 9: Portal sculpture, Notre Dame, Paris: Art Today

Page 10: Transept, Notre Dame, Paris: Art Today

Page 13: Interior, Notre Dame, Paris: Art Today

Page 14: Mission Dolores, San Francisco, California: Art Today

Page 18: St. Patrick, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 19: Coffered ceiling, Pisa Cathedral (top); St. Nicholas, Prague
(bottom left); St. Peter, Rome (bottom right): Art Today

Page 22: Dome, Florence Cathedral: Art Today

Page 24: St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome (top left): Corbis Façade,
Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi (top right): Art Today Façade,
San Marco, Venice (bottom left): Art Today Barcelona
Cathedral (bottom right): Art Today
Page 25: Spirito Santo, Venice (top left): Art Today Theatiner Church,
Munich (top right): Art Today Ponce Cathedral (bottom left):
Art Today St. Patrick, New York (bottom right): Art Today

Chapter Two

Page 34: City Hill, Florence: Art Today

Page 36: Campanile, San Giorgio, Venice: Art Today

Page 37: Domes, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice: Art Today

Page 38: Dome interior, St. Charles, Vienna: Art Today

Page 40: Piazza, San Marco Square, Venice: Art Today

Page 41: Atrium, St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome: Art Today

Page 42: Piazza, St. Peter, Rome: Art Today

Page 45: Exterior statuary, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption,

Covington, Kentucky: Michael S. Rose

Page 47: Portal, St. Coleman, Cork: Art Today

Page 48: Portal sculpture, Chartres Cathedral: Art Today

Page 49: Rose window, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption,

Covington, Kentucky: Michael S. Rose
Page 55: Nave, Old St. Mary’s, Cincinnati: Michael S. Rose

Page 57: Nave, St. Matthias, Budapest: Art Today

Page 61: Confessional, Old St. Mary’s, Cincinnati: Michael S. Rose

Page 63: Nave, St. Joseph, Ottawa: Art Today

Page 66: Pulpit, St. Patrick, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 69: Choir loft, Sacred Heart, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 71: Apsidal mural, Holy Family, Dayton, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 73: Pietà side shrine, St. Patrick, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 76: Stained glass, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption,

Covington, Kentucky: Michael S. Rose

Page 79: Sanctuary, St. Joseph, Dayton, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 81: Communion rail, St. John Neumann, New York: Michael S.
Rose

Page 83: Arch, Old St. Mary’s, Cincinnati: Michael S. Rose

Page 85: Altar, Holy Family, Dayton, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 89: Baldacchino, St. Paul, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 90: Reredos, St. Francis, Petoskey, Michigan: Troy Frantz

Page 93: Crucifix with St. John and Mary: Art Today

Page 95: Tabernacle, Sacred Heart, New York: Michael S. Rose

Chapter Three

Page 99: Façade, St. John, West Chester, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 101: Entrance, St. Charles Borromeo, Kettering, Ohio: Michael

S. Rose

Page 102: Entrance, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati (upper left);

entrance, St. Ignatius, Cincinnati (lower right): Michael S.
Rose

Page 104: Gathering space, St. Antoninus, Cincinnati: Michael S. Rose

Page 107: Font, St. John, West Chester, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 109: Interior, St. John, West Chester, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 113: Seating, St. John, West Chester, Ohio (top); nave, Our Lady
of Lourdes, Cincinnati (bottom): Michael S. Rose

Page 116: Sanctuary, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati: Michael S.

Rose
Page 120: Stations, St. Charles Borromeo, Kettering, Ohio: Michael S.
Rose

Page 121: Crucifix, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati: Michael S.

Rose

Page 124: Crucifix, St. Joseph, Trenton, Michigan: Jay McNally

Page 126: Sanctuary, St. Cyprian, Riverview, Michigan: Jay McNally

Page 127: Sanctuary, St. Charles Borromeo, Kettering, Ohio: Michael

S. Rose

Page 129: Confessionals, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati: Michael

S. Rose

Page 130: Sign, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati: Michael S. Rose

Page 131: Tabernacle, St. John, West Chester, Ohio (left); tabernacle,
St. Charles Borromeo, Kettering, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 132: Tabernacle chapel, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati:

Michael S. Rose

Page 133: Tabernacle chapel, St. Robert Bellarmine, Cincinnati:

Michael S. Rose

Chapter Four
Page 138: Interior, San Francisco Cathedral (top); exterior, St.
Aloysius, Cincinnati (bottom): Michael S. Rose

Page 139: Exterior, St. Ignatius, Cincinnati (top); exterior, St. Robert
Bellarmine, Cincinnati (bottom): Michael S. Rose

Page 140: Holy Trinity, Copenhagen (top): Art Today Holy Trinity,
Vienna (bottom): Michael S. Rose

Page 143: Jackhammers, St. Ambrose, Rochester, New York: Michael

McBride

Page 145: Baldacchino, St John Cathedral, Milwaukee: Michael S.

Rose

Page 147: Protest, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington,

Kentucky: Michael S. Rose

Page 148: English abbey ruins: Art Today

Page 153: Environment and Art in Catholic Worship pages: Michael S.

Rose

Page 155: Architecture for Worship cover: Michael S. Rose

Page 159: Nave, St. Cyprian, Riverview, Michigan: Jay McNally

Page 161: Exterior, Ascension, Kettering, Ohio: Michael S. Rose

Page 169: Exterior, St. Charles Borromeo, Kettering, Ohio: Michael S.
Rose

Chapter Five

Page 177: Notre Dame College chapel, Baltimore: Notre Dame

College

Page 179: St. Mary, Rockford, Illinois: Institute of Christ the King
Sovereign Priest

Page 181: St. Paul, Worcester, Massachusetts (top): Worcester

Telegram and Gazette
St. Paul, Worcester, Massachusetts (bottom): Rohn Design
Group

Page 183: Warwick House Chapel, Pittsburgh: Jon Beckett

Page 189: Sanctuary, St. Aloysius, New Canaan, Connecticut: Fred

George

Page 194: Renovations, St. Aloysius, New Canaan, Connecticut: Fred

George

Page 195: Renovations, St. Aloysius, New Canaan, Connecticut: Fred

George

Page 197: Birdseye view, Immaculate Conception, Clinton, New

Jersey: Duncan Stroik

Page 199: St. Agnes, New York: Michael S. Rose

Page 203: Thomas Michael Marano’s Los Angeles Cathedral design:
Duncan Stroik

Page 206: Michael Imber’s design for Thomas Aquinas College

chapel, Ojai, California (top); Our Lady of the Angels
Monastery Chapel, Hanceville, Alabama (bottom): Duncan
Stroik

Page 207: Design for Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity in southern
California (top): Duncan Stroik Design for Our Lady of
Guadalupe Seminary, Denton, Nebraska (bottom): Thomas
Gordon Smith
Biographical Note
 Michael S. Rose
Michael Rose is uniquely qualified to lead the movement for the restoration
of the Church’s grand heritage of sacred architecture. Thoroughly trained in
both architecture and the fine arts, he has an impressive command of the
Church’s liturgical tradition and a detailed awareness of how physical
surroundings determine the nature of worship.
Rose holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of
Cincinnati and a master’s degree in fine arts from Brown University.
As editor of St. Joseph Messenger and St. Catherine Review, and as a
speaker, Rose indefatigably leads the fight for Catholic beauty and truth in
architecture. The author of the book The Renovation Manipulation, he
writes frequently and compellingly on sacred architecture; his articles have
appeared in many periodicals, including Envoy, New Oxford Review,
National Catholic Register, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Adoremus
Bulletin, Lay Witness, Sacred Architecture, The Wanderer, and Culture
Wars.
With his thorough knowledge of art and architecture and his great
devotion to the Catholic Faith, Rose shows readers why proper liturgical art
and architecture is essential in Catholic churches: it raises man’s soul to
God and his mind to the things of Heaven.

Sophia Institute Press®

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1E. A. Sövik, Architecture for Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing
House, 1973), 19.
2Allan Temko, Notre-Dame of Paris: The Biography of a Cathedral (New
York: Viking Press, 1955), 136.
3 Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), 183.
4 Temko, Notre-Dame of Paris, 189.
5 John 1:14.
6 Gen. 28:17.
7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1180.
8 “The Church . . . has welcomed those changes in materials, style, or
ornamentation which the progress of the technical arts has brought with the
passage of time. . . . The Church has not adopted any particular style of art
as her very own”: Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican II's Constitution on the
Sacred Liturgy, 1963), no. 122, 123.
9 The natural laws of verticality, permanence, and iconography are a loose
translation — that is, specifically in reference to the architecture of the
church edifice — of the ancient architect Vitruvius's three requirements for
building: utilitas, firmitas, and venustas — “utility, strength, and beauty,”
or, translated by the architects of the Renaissance, “commodity, firmness,
and delight.” Commodity refers to the utility or usefulness of a building. In
terms of sacred architecture, the utility (bringing the heavenly Jerusalem
down to us) is represented by the verticality of the structure. In other words,
the structure itself is a vertical sign pointing toward God. Permanence
fulfills Vitruvius's requirement of firmitas, or “firmness,” while “delight”
(beauty) is accomplished in church architecture through the iconography,
encompassing both form and artistic expression, of the structure.
10 Rev. 21:2-4.
11 Heb. 13:8.
12 Gulielmus Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. Durandus's
treatise is regarded as the standard source on Liturgy in the thirteenth
century.
13Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, “Construction,” Dictionary of French
Architecture, 1854-68.
14St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Dominican philosopher, theologian,
and Doctor of the Church.
15 St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuit Order.
16 It's universally understood that true art is that which evokes an
experience that will be aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual, reflecting the
three transcendentals of goodness, beauty, and truth. It's universally
understood that religious art not only points to something greater than itself,
but effects meditation and contemplation of that something, which will
most likely be some religious truth, e.g., the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity,
or the cardinal virtues.
17 Ralph Adams Cram, Church Building (Boston: Marshall Jones Co.,
1899), 9.
18 Such as the triangle that symbolizes the Holy Trinity or the four
interlocking circles that represent the four evangelists.
19Such as the lion that represents St. Mark or the lily that symbolizes the
Immaculate Conception.
20 St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), Archbishop of Milan.
21 Pope John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, no. 8.
22 “Jesus' road does not end on the hill called Golgotha. The earthly
pilgrimage of Christ crosses the boundary of death, into the infinite and in
the mystery of God, beyond death. On the mount of the Ascension, the final
step of His pilgrimage takes place. As He promises to come back, the risen
Lord rises to Heaven and goes to His Father's house to prepare a place for
us, so that where He is, we may be with Him, too. In fact, this is how He
summarizes His mission: ‘I came from the Father and have come into the
world and now I leave the world to go to the Father. . . . Father, I want those
You have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may always see
the glory You have given me' “: “The Pilgrimage in the Great Jubilee,”
paragraph 10, Pontifical Council for the Care of Migrants and Itinerant
People, 1999.
23 Eph. 2:19.
24 Another expression of pilgrimage is the liturgical procession, e.g., the
Corpus Christi procession, the procession of palms on Palm Sunday, or the
veneration of the Cross on Good Friday. Our churches are sacred places that
accommodate and encourage the pilgrimage in its many forms.
25 Cf. Matt. 5:14.
26 In his manifesto that inspired the architecture of Counter Reformation
churches, especially in Italy, St. Charles Borro-meo recommended that
wherever there is space, and funds permit, an atrium should be built in front
of the church, surrounded by cloisters with columns.
27 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Baroque Architecture (New York: Rizzoli
International Publications, 1986), 27.
28 Portal is derived from the medieval Latin word for “city gate.”
29 “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by
baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4).
30 A person preparing tobe received into the Catholic Church.
31 Rom. 7:4.
32 The baptismal font is depicted in early Christian art as a shallow basin in
which the baptized stood with feet immersed, while water was poured over
him from a vase held by a priest. Consequently, the early fonts, enshrined in
the large baptistery buildings, were designed as shallow basins, recessed in
the floor to receive the standing neophyte. Later, however, when infant
Baptism became the norm, fonts were placed on pedestals over which the
infant was held.
33 Matt. 3:16.
34Asperges is Latin for “you will sprinkle,” taken from Psalm 51: “You will
sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed: You will wash me, and I
will be made whiter than snow.”
35 Cf. Mark 4:36-40.
36 In some large pilgrimage churches, pews are either movable or they're
not used. In St. Peter's Basilica, for instance, chairs are used or else no seats
are provided. This arrangement, how ever, is certainly not the norm in
Catholic worship, but rather an exception precipitated by space necessities,
since very large congregations often attend Masses and other ceremonies at
St. Peter's.
37 Kneeling is also a central posture of prayer in Scripture: “And a leper
came to Him beseeching Him, and kneeling said to Him, ‘If You will, You
can make me clean' “ (Mark 1:40). “And when Jesus came to the place He
said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.' And He
withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed”
(Luke 22:40-41). “And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.' And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice,
‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them' “ (Acts 7:59-60). “Peter put them
all outside and knelt down and prayed; then turning to the body he said,
‘Tabitha, rise' “ (Acts 9:40). It's also a posture of prayer in the Old
Testament: “[King Solomon] knelt upon his knees in the presence of all the
assembly of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven” (2 Chron.
6:13). “I rose from my fasting, with my garments and my mantle rent, and
fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God” (Ezra
9:5). “[Daniel] got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and
gave thanks before his God” (Dan. 6:10).
38 From the May 1 reading in the old Roman Breviary.
39 De Orat, 31.
40 Dominicae cenae (February 24, 1980), no. 7.
41 Cram, Church Building, 53.
42 Temko, Notre-Dame of Paris, 144.
43 Prior to the Council of Trent, the general state of music in the Liturgy
was seen as deteriorating. The sacred music, because it began to imitate
popular forms of music, was robbed of all spiritual meaning. When the
council convened in 1545 to consider various matters affecting the Church,
the relationship of music to the Liturgy was among the many subjects
discussed. In fact, much of the council's final year was devoted to studying
sacred forms of music. As a result, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who
was known as the greatest composer of sacred music during the
Renaissance, was commissioned to revise the Gregorian chants. His new
versions provided the music that popes heard every day for centuries.
44 Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 122.
45 Cf. Gen. 22.
46George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1954), xi.
47 Matt. 3:16. Matt.
48 16:18-19.
49 Cf. Heb. 9:3 ff.
50 Luke 1:8-9.
51That is, the members of the Church on earth. The members in Heaven are
known as the Church Triumphant and the members in Purgatory as the
Church Suffering.
52Ad limina address to the Bishops of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska,
October 9, 1998.
53 General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 258.
54 Although in some places the practice of kneeling at the altar rail to
receive Communion has fallen by the wayside, it's still a normative method
of reception. In Eucharisticum Mysterium (Instruction on the Worship of
the Eucharistic Mystery, 1967) Pope Paul VI wrote, “When the faithful
communicate kneeling, no other sign of reverence toward the Blessed
Sacrament is required, since kneeling is itself a sign of adoration” (no. 34).
55 Cram, Church Building, 151.
56 Pope Paul VI, Eucharisticum Mysterium, no. 24.
57 Ps. 118:22-23; Matt. 21:42.
58 Quoted in the Church's Dedication of a Church and an Altar.
59A portable baldacchino made out of textile is carried over the exposed
Blessed Sacrament during eucharistic processions, such as during Forty
Hours celebrations and on Corpus Christi.
60Abbot Suger, The Book of Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, “Of the Golden
Crucifix,” sect. XXXII, paragraph 1.
61 Matt. 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19.
64 Cf. Matt. 27:51.
65 Cf. Matt. 5:14.
66 “The norm for designing liturgical space is the assembly and its liturgies.
The building or cover enclosing the architectural space is a shelter or ‘skin’
for a liturgical action. It does not have to ‘look like’ anything else, past or
present”: Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (Bishops’ Committee
on the Liturgy, 1978).
67 Michael S. Rose, “Can Modern Churches Be Beautiful?” National
Catholic Register (June 13-19, 1999).
68 “[L]iturgy flourishes in a climate of hospitality: a situation in which
people are comfortable with one another, either knowing or being
introduced to one another; a space in which people are seated together, with
mobility, in view of one another as well as the focal points of the rite”:
Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, no. 11.
69ChristineReinhard, “The Baptismal Font,” handout to parishioners of St.
Francis Xavier Church in Petoskey, Michigan, 1999.
70Andrew D. Ciferni, “Environment for Catholic Worship: The Baptistery”
(Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 1988).
71 Ibid.
72Andrew D. Ciferni, “Environment for Catholic Worship: Assembly
Seating and the Presider's Chair” (Federation of Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions, 1988).
73Andrew D. Ciferni, “Environment for Catholic Worship: The Ambo”
(Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 1988).
74 Andrew D. Ciferni, “Environment for Catholic Worship: Musical
Instruments” (Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 1988).
75Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2132.
76Andrew D. Ciferni, “Environment for Catholic Worship: The Altar”
(Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 1988).
77 According to the Code of Canon Law, “The tabernacle into which the
Eucharist is regularly reserved is to be immovable, made of solid and
opaque material, and locked so that the danger of profanation may be
entirely avoided” (can. 938.3).
78 The term active participation is still widely misunderstood to this day.
The official Latin version uses the term actuosa participatio. The term
actuosa incorporates both the contemplative (internal) and active (external)
aspects of participation. Activa, which also means “active,” normally
excludes the contemplative aspect. The choice of actuosa instead of activa
is significant.
79Abbot Boniface Luykx, “Liturgical Architecture: Domus Dei or Domus
Ecclesiae?” Catholic Dossier (May-June 1997).
80 Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 126.
81Opera Artis, Circular Letter on the Care of the Church’s Historical and
Artistic Heritage, Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, approved by Pope
Paul VI, 1971.
82Letter from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland to priests, deacons, and
parish administrators in the Archdiocese of Mil waukee, July 5, 2001.
83Deism is the belief in the existence of a God on purely rational grounds
while denying revelation and authority. Its defining doctrine is that this
God, or Supreme Being, created the world and its natural laws only to
abandon them.
84Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 133.
85Ibid.

86Msgr. William Smith, “The Place of a Tabernacle,” Homiletic and

Pastoral Review (December 1998).
87Duncan Stroik, “Environment and Art in Catholic Worship: A Critique,”
Sacred Architecture (Summer 1999).
88Duane L. C. M. Galles, J.C.D., “EACW: What Force Does It Have?”
Christifidelis (September 8, 1993).
89Bette Hammel, “A New Architecture for Postwar America: Ed Sövik,”
Architecture Minnesota (November/December 1992).
90E. A. Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 18.
91Ibid., 19.
92Ibid.

93Ibid., 21.
94Ibid., 68.
95Ibid., 70.
96Ibid., 71.
97EACW is generally accepted as primarily the work of one man: Fr. Robert
Hovda. The late Fr. Hovda wrote the foreword to the 1968 book Church
Architecture and Liturgical Reform, written by one of Sövik’s architecture
associates, Theodor Filthaut. EACW was never approved by the body of
U.S. bishops and was eventually replaced by the U.S. bishops’ pastoral on
church art and architecture, Built of Living Stones, approved in 2000.
98Sövik, Architecture for Worship, back cover.
99 Ibid., 76.
100“The [Japanese] tea house is usually related to a garden, which provides
a pathway to it, and one never loses his relationship to the exterior world.
Even when the paper windows are closed and the door is shut so that one
cannot see the world outside, the forthright use of building materials and
structural systems keeps one aware that this is an earthly place. It is
conventional, for instance, that a tea house never has a ceiling; the structure
supporting the bark or thatch roof is exposed. And the tan plaster is not
painted. It is a humbly built shelter without the slightest attempt at grandeur
or impressiveness, but its design is very sensitive and the craftsmanship
extremely careful. It is in no sense a monument and does not have an
autonomous existence like a shrine. It is a building built for use, and has an
apparent sense of emptiness when it is unoccupied”: Edward A. Sövik,
“Images of the Church,”Worship (March 1967).
101 Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 77.
102 EACW, no. 65.
103 Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 81.
104 EACW, no. 53.
105 Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 83.
106 EACW, no. 72.
107 Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 87.
108 EACW, no. 68.
109Prominent church renovator Fr. Richard Vosko is fond of saying, “When
we get to the pearly gates, God isn’t going to ask us whether we had
kneelers, but God will ask us if we fed the hungry”: Ethel M. Gintoff,
“Cathedral renovation: Enhance liturgy, don’t destroy, says design
consultant,” Catholic Herald (June 24, 1999): 1.
110 Sövik, Architecture for Worship, 91.
111 Ibid., 109.
112 EACW, no. 88.
113 S, Architecture for Worship, 118-119.
114 Duncan Stroik, “Environment and Art in Catholic Worship: A Critique.”
115Fr. Richard S. Vosko, “The future space of worship spaces: in between
no more and not yet,” The Catholic World (March-April 1994).
116In mid-2001, Fr. Vosko was contracted by cathedrals in Los Angeles,
California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Superior, Wis consin; San Antonio,
Texas; St. Petersburg, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Rochester,
New York.
117 Vosko, “The future space of worship spaces.”
118 Ibid.
119 Jill Stewart, “Yellow Armadillo,” New Times L.A. (July 28, 2001).
120Reed Johnson, “A Modern Sense of the Sacred,” Los Angeles Times
(May 22, 2001).
121 Vosko, “The future space of worship spaces.”
122 Ibid.
123“‘I've often said after I did that job,’ said Francis X. Gibbons, the man
who designed the renovation, ‘that I raped St. Mary, Star of the Sea’ “: John
Rivers, “Churches try to retrieve grand trappings of past,” Baltimore Sun
(May 21, 2001).
124Edward Gunts, “Happy undoing of a modernist makeover,” Baltimore
Sun (March 4, 2001).
125Letter from Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez to Archbishop Rembert
Weakland, July 2, 2001.
126John Paul II, “Letter on the 750th Anniversary of the Feast of Corpus
Christi,” no. 3.
127 Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 135.
128Zahid Sardar, “Cathedral Dreams,” San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
(February 18, 2001).
129 Cf. Exod. 31.
130 Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 123.