Catholic Sensibility

The Camps of Sacred Architecture: there are more than you suspect About nine years ago, my parish was thickly engaged in planning a renovation for our 1945-built church. Some of the attraction of working there was the thought of finally getting a renovation right, instead of what I'd been stuck with in my last three parishes (namely poor lighting, a leaky roof or two, a sound system wired with domestic-grade stereo wiring, no pipe organs, mangled seating arrangements, to name a few). Under the tutelage of a wise pastor, I learned a lot from that process. I'd like to think I contributed a good bit and nudged the liturgical direction a bit more true. I'm still fascinated with the building and renovation process for a church. I'm hoping someday to work with one again. It occurred to me that those who paint the renovation scene in the Catholic Church today as being exclusively preservationist-traditionalists verses reformer-iconoclasts reveal their ignorance of architecture as much as their lack of a grasp of what goes on in the minds of the people of the average parish. I've found five main camps, and sometimes people aren't beyond pitching a tent in two or three. Stasis. These folks resist change at great cost. In my Iowa parish, for example, the imported Italian marble altar and altar rail was to be preserved at all costs. It didn't matter we discovered it was a 1/8 inch marble veneer glued to concrete cinder block. Ditto the gold grille work behind the altar ... which turned out to be a very cheap wood spray-painted shiny brown. The Stasis Camp, however, makes for a good corrective in a parish. Their instinct is that ritual sameness and tradition are important values to bring to the mix. Traditionalists yearn for the ideals of Tridentine worship, and the associated European architectural styles. I think they're on to something important: the atmosphere of reverence and mystery that good architectural form can bring to worship. These folks like to undo 60's and 70's renovations, many of which were poorly conceived. People-first folks bring the important sensibility that the human beings who worship God need more attention than the setting in which they worship. In the words of Bernard Huijbers, we're talking "walls and a roof shetering people." My friend Jean used to say that a church should look and feel empty and that the building itself is incomplete without the decoration of people in the pews. Some people in this camp are indeed iconoclasts of a sort, but I don't think they intend to be anti-Christian in doing so. Some people in this group are pragmatic and say that finery in buildings is better spent on the poor (or on the school, or even left in their pockets). Minimalists might be motivated by a monastic simplicity. They are less iconoclasts than seekers for God in a stripped down setting. The assumption is that the spiritual imagination of the people fill in the gaps. Maybe those ideals are too high for your average parish. Or maybe they can't afford ot choose not to afford finery. Artists seek the very best in quality and beauty. This camp will use a lot of natural wood and stone. They will probably avoid carpet and chintz. They will drive up the building budget, but you might often be glad they did. Artists have their own motivation for pipe organs and statuary which may not be traditional. I suspect that self-styled orthodox Catholics would place themselves in camps 2 and or 5, and perhaps 1 for those who might understand less of art and architecture. Reformers might align in camp 3 and in 4 or 5. Your average pew people might be in 1 and 4, perhaps 3, with a minority in 2 and 5. Any camp I've missed?