Lex Edificandi: Dr. McNamara on Architectural Theology

Our Lady of Walsingham Cathedral
photo by Gilbert

An excerpt of an interview between Nicholas LaBanca (Catholic World Report) and Dr. Denis McNamara, associate professor and academic director at the Liturgical Institute, University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/08/01/every-architectural-decision-in-church-is-a-theological-decision-as-well/

CWR: Throughout many of your lectures, which are available online, you’ve often mentioned the concept of “architectural theology,” and made the point that churches themselves are “sacramental buildings.” What do you mean by such terms?

(Dr.) McNamara: I was trying to rescue church architecture from the idea that a church is merely a theologically neutral thing, a “skin for liturgical action” as people frequently said in the 80s and 90s. We would say today that the texts at Mass are composed of theological words – they’re to God, they’re from God, they’re about God. They reveal God to you. Similarly, the liturgical actions you make are the theology in ritual form. Then you can talk about the lex orandi, the law of prayer, and the lex credendi, the law of belief. But you can also talk about the law of building, what I call the lex edificandi. So if you believe that God is revealing Himself to you through sign and symbol – and a primary way that is done visually is through the sacred image, the icon – then there’s a law of theology for making icons. And Eastern Christianity has this very theology firmly developed over many centuries. It also extended out to the church building itself.

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This blogger would argue the point that Dr. McNamara makes in another passage that,

In the West, we tended to have either a Romantic or a functionalist mentality. We liked churches that “looked like” churches in the 19th century, so we imitated styles from previous centuries. But we didn’t really have a deep theology of architecture as many Eastern Christians did. Then in the 60s and 70s we treated churches as functional buildings which weren’t tied to past centuries, but we still didn’t have an operative sacramental theology of sacred architecture. So I wanted to develop a Western theology of architecture that was based on more than nostalgia or practicality.

It is difficult to look at a Pugin or Comper church and believe that there is not a sacramental theology in operation. Furthermore, the Church has always "looked back" to earlier times for inspiration, in order to move forward in continuity, for what was once holy remains so. What Pope Benedict XVI said in Summorum Pontificum regarding the Old Mass and contemporary perspectives could easily apply to church architecture.

In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.

Our Lady of Walsingham Cathedral, pictured above, the seat of the Bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, manifests an operative sacramental theology. Though it is of a Gothic Revival or Neo-Gothic design, it cannot be confined to a "Romantic (n)or a functionalist mentality". One or two steps inside its doors invites you to take another, and another, into another realm beyond the mundane. It is a building that clearly and unapologetically proclaims the presence of God. True to what a cathedral should be, it "incarnates" the mysteries of the Christian Faith in a coherent manner. It's verticality leads the worshipper "up", out of himself. It envelopes the worshipper with the arms of the Cross, the shape in which it is designed, and leads the worshipper toward God, ad orientem, as a church should. Its floor plan moves the worshipper to approach the Holy of Holies following a progression that appropriately recalls the Jerusalem Temple.