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Revival Afoot: Traditional Sacred Architecture
Modernist's gripe laments growing influence of
tradition
(May/June 2000)
BY MICHAEL S. ROSE
LITURGICAL DESIGN
CONSULTANTS, despair now! A new breed of archi-liturgical
enthusiasts are making waves on the church architecture
scene. Led in the U.S. by Notre Dame professors Duncan
Stroik and Thomas Gordon Smith, they seem to be tweaking
their elder modernist brothers and sisters who have
dominated the profession since the mid-1960’s (and
have grown old doing so). As evidenced by a recent rant
in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), the
liturgical modernists who have had a death grip on both
the liturgy and the design of Catholic churches seem to
be distressed at the growing movement of young architects
who are embracing the rich history and patrimony of
church architecture and building traditions. Porticos,
bell towers, colonnades, vaulting, stained glass,
baldachinos, prominent tabernacles, wooden pews,
kneelers, statues, murals, crucifixes, and devotional
shrines are some of the common traditional elements used
in the design of their new churches.
Writing in the NCR,
Michael DeSanctis, associate professor of fine arts at
Erie’s Gannon University and traveling LDC, takes
Stroik and Smith to task for their desire to rid
Catholicism of the barren, uninspiring worship spaces of
recent decades. Calling them and their cohort
"blatant opportunists," "the stodgiest of
antiquarians" "recyclers of architectural
fashion," "paranoid and self-righteous
Pharisees," DeSanctis condemns the
neo-Classicists’ desire to build upon the rock of
history and eschew the modernism that has defaced our
Catholic architecture for more than three decades.
Indignant over the fact
that the young architects are gaining a following among
the laity, DeSanctis sums up their quest as follows:
"What [they] are proposing is not simply a
‘preservationist’ initiative concerned with
maintaining existing churches in the classical style.
Instead, they envision a generation of entirely new
places of Catholic worship built along classical lines
that will set the church again on a proper
liturgical-architectural path." As the LDC crowd
despairs over this, the pew Catholic rejoices.
DeSanctis laments too
their growing influence among the clergy—especially
the younger clergy—who have grown tired of the
endless failed experiments demanded by American
liturgists and LDCs. " By proposing to replace [the
modern churches] with an expanse of antiquated shrine
boxes, Stroik and Smith are bound to ingratiate
themselves to today’s tabernacle-obsessed bishops,
biretta-topped seminarians and a handful of cardboard
monsignori," he writes.
But the likes of Stroik
and Smith are simply asking the pertinent question: How
can we recover our sense of the sacred in Catholic church
buildings? Fortunately more architects are asking
themselves this question. Yet few can honestly set the
marvels of classical art against the drabness of
modernist production, and argue in favor of modernism as
does DeSanctis. Contrary to this LDC’s claim, there
is more than simply anecdotal evidence that pew Catholics
are saddened by—and sometimes disgusted
with—their modernist churches of the late 20th
century. Bishop Sean O’ Malley of Fall River, Mass.,
speaking to the American bishops at their national
conference last November, stated it well: "All of us
have heard the comments of our people frequently,
‘this place does not look like a church.’ One
of the comments that is made is that there’s a
certain suburbanization of the heavenly Jerusalem that
has taken place." Although the sentiments of the
faithful are well-known, liturgical design consultants,
mainly "certified" by reductionist and
modernist-oriented programs at the Catholic Theological
Union in Chicago, have long refused to hear the
complaints of the faithful. Instead, their cries are
dismissed as coming from people who are "resistant
to change," even though many of them (such as this
writer) are in their 20’s or 30’s.
A breath of fresh air
Now, after more than half
a century of riding the modernist bandwagon, professional
artists and architects are emerging with the critiques of
our secularized churches. And unlike the layman, they are
able to articulate the problem and define appropriate
solutions. In recent years some have been actively
probing tradition in order to develop the domus Dei
of the 21st century. One hopeful sign of the
revival of traditional architecture was an exhibition and
conference held last October in Rome. "Reconquering
Sacred Space" brought together more than forty
artists and architects from the U.S. and Europe to
showcase their traditional church designs, in hopes of
promoting sacred architecture that can properly carry the
weight of religious symbolism and provide a suitable and
noble place in which to worship God. The work is now
presented in a 150-page color folio of the exhibition.
Published in English and Italian, Reconquering Sacred
Space presents inspiring drawings and plans of
theoretical projects as well as completed buildings.
Stroik and Smith are
joined by American architects such as Steven Schloeder
(author of Architecture in Communion) and Michael
Imber, as well as notable European counterparts,
including Javier Cotelo, Anthony Delarue, and Santiago
Hernandez. The frescoes, murals, and sculptures of
artists David Mayernik, Hamilton Reed Armstrong, and
Frederick Hart give us hope that sacred art is undergoing
a renaissance as well.
Ten essays on the
tradition of Classical architecture, the importance of
symbolism and iconography, the limitations of abstract
modernism, and new directions in sacred architecture
complement the visual projects. In Stroik’s
contribution, the Indiana architect articulates the ideal
genius loci of the Catholic church building:
"People should see and feel that they are entering
into a place out of the ordinary, a place in which the
concerns of life can be seen in relation to
eternity." A certain sense of mystery or strangeness
ought to characterize our places of worship, he suggests.
"A sacred place should not be convenient to enter
like a department store, comfortable like a café, or
predictable like a lecture hall," writes Stroik.
"Rather as a place whose reason for existence is to
foster the encounter with the divine, it must be designed
in a way helping us to focus on the Divinity."
Although some of the more
fashionable gewgaws of the day (immersion-style fonts,
for example) have made their way into some of the
featured projects, the majority are fully conceived and
executed against the grain of modernism, and all projects
are recognizable as church buildings, a point that should
not be undervalued. One of the central themes running
through the selected projects, in fact, is the emphasis
on the "iconic" nature of building form. In
layman’s terms that means the form of the church
building has meaning beyond itself; it refers to God, His
Sacraments, His Church.
We see bas-reliefs of the
Eucharist, personification of the virtues, urban piazzas,
and triumphal arches, all imbued with layers of religious
meaning and significance—churches that are worth a
pilgrim’s attention, and are able to care for a
parish community for more than a generation. The same
careful treatment is given the interior sacred places.
Architectural elements articulate the sanctuary, altar,
tabernacle, confessional, altar rail and shrines within.
The architects consciously give honor to the sacraments
through the placement and treatment of these physical
manifestations of our faith. Furthermore, coherence and
unity are apparent in these buildings which are designed
using the patrimony of Classical or Medieval
architectural languages.
Another noteworthy element
of the exhibition and essays is the relation of the
church building to the city. In Gabriele
Tagliaventi’s essay on the role of the church in
building western cities, he reminds us of the physical
role of the Gothic church standing above the medieval
cityscape, organizing the village. Speaking of the great
Cathedral of St. Etienne in Metz, Germany, he notes that
"all the main activities are gathered around the
Cathedral: City Hall, the marketplace, leaving the
religious building the task of symbolizing the spiritual
unity of the community." He and others are promoting
the revival of piazzas, the age-old element of mediation
between the Church and the city, and other elements of
Renaissance urbanism. God willing, more people will come
to understand the church building as more than just its
four walls, but as the heart of the city or neighborhood,
the lungs of the community.
In short, the book gives
those of us who are unable to attend such wonderful
gatherings in Rome each year an opportunity to understand
the possibilities of new Catholic church architecture
based on the traditional language of the Church. What a
wonderful counter to the banal and uninspiring designs
promoted throughout the Catholic world at the turn of the
century. The final word is hope, and the casual reader
can appreciate this important virtue on every page of the
book.
The exhibition was
jointly organized by Stroik’s Institute of Sacred
Architecture and the Agenzia per la Citta of Rome.
Reconquering Sacred Spaces is available from New Hope
Publications for $34.95 (including postage and handling),
3050 Gap Knob Rd., New Hope, Ky. 40052.
[ St. Catherine Review ]
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