Figs from Thistles? What does our religious art say?
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| Saint Clare | 2022 |
The Catholic Church has always seen art as an integral part of its liturgical worship and recognized the power of Beauty to evangelize. The visual arts flow from the wellspring of the Sacred Liturgy, and both the Church and her artists flourish when this is understood and embraced. - The Catholic Art Guild/LAJ
You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? - St Matthew 7:16
(I)n your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence(.) - 1 Peter 3:15
Let us ask ourselves:
- Does our service give reason for the hope that is in us?
- Does the beauty we manifest give reason for the hope that is in us?
- Does our art (paintings, windows, music, architecture) given reason for the hope that possesses us in Christ?
Liturgical blandness, architectural flaccidity (yes, that is a word...) and sterile homiletics will do little to engage people seeking meaning and healing in an era clouded by serious challenges to human dignity and spiritual well being.
A Tisket A Tasket
We cannot continue to hide Christ under a bushel, under a basket. A basket? The Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, California, comes to mind. The building looks like an upside-down basket. It is a very expensive building complex - $190 million - that suffers from defects that merited a lawsuit by the Diocese of Oakland, a lawsuit the Diocese won, to fix structural problems. A building that cost that much bread to build has resulted in a questionable host for our daily bread.
Architecture can have negative effects on human behaviour, such as monotonous design features can lead to boredom or eventually depression; similarly, a complex design can create happiness. No one wants to live in a dead zone or where there is no vibe of joyfulness. - Psychology of Architecture: impact of spaces on our behavioral and emotional patterns (TDJ)
The editors of the above article are speaking about work and living spaces, but the idea - that architecture shapes experiences and relationships - is a valid one for religious architecture, too. Sanctuaries that look like a stage in a lecture hall or theatre are pretty much going to define worship as entertainment and as a man-centred closed-circle event.
The idea that a celebration facing the people must have been the primitive one, and that especially of the Last Supper, has no other foundation than a mistaken view of what a meal could be in antiquity, Christian or not. In no meal of the early Christian era, did the president of the banqueting assembly ever face the other participants. - Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy
The Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament, the Bread of Life, deserves a worthy home. The greatest Gift of God should not be permanently housed in a barn, a shopping mall or some other strange entity when parishioners are perfectly capable of supporting the construction of a structure that acknowledges the truth, goodness and beauty of God.
One hundred and ninety million dollars can and should buy a temple that trumpets the holiness and beauty of God in no uncertain terms. Too many Catholic structures are timid, as if to say "we might be Catholic". Is this triumphalism? Of course it is. The Cross triumphs over sin and death!
To revisit an earlier question: Does our art (paintings, windows, music, architecture) given reason for the hope in Christ that possesses us?
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| St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Franck & Lohsen Architects |
Build Bold Beautiful Buildings
Let's not waste a ton of money on buildings that say very little, or say a lot of things in a very bad way. A church should speak the Faith - the Catholic Faith - like the image above. The Dutch church below says something. Its first "word", however, is not "church".
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| Screenshot | St. Mary of the Angels Chapel, Rotterdam, Netherlands |
A church dedicated to the glory of God needs no advertising, save a plaque of some kind stating the name of the parish. Are information marquees even needed given that everyone has a cell phone and can readily access parish websites that offer service information?
Let's "waste" our money on glorious buildings that last centuries instead of mere decades and that show signs of shabby workmanship in mere years. There are many valid architectural dialects in the Catholic world that are still capable of bearing the mission of the Church: Neo-Gothic or Gothic Revival, Romanesque, etc., have much to offer and to guide us forward.
Class Struggles
Agendas that insist churches appear to be anything other than churches are still a problem for us. When confronted with requests for traditional architecture, the iconoclast might probably object, "What is a church supposed to look like?", or wail in protest when a structure exudes a traditional aura, "Do we actually reside in the Middle Ages? For crying out loud, it's the 21st century!" To which one might calmly and confidently reply, "What's so threatening about architects and communities looking back to former times for inspiration?
Zeitgeist architecture promotes:
Identity | Theory | Outcome(s) | Spiritual Consequences |
the socio-economic struggle | save the money and give it to the
poor | religion and people are commodified; the mall church | spirits
shrivel and charity wanes |
the trash of the titans | ego in concrete | go big and go ugly, neo-brutalism, Bauhausian angst e.g., Los Angeles Cathedral | communities, like the architecture,
lack real warmth |
egalitarianism | we're all the same | sitting in the round, staring at each
other; | disenchantment with
religion, shallow faith |
the mega-Catholic | religion turned into sport | stadiums; consumers of religion as entertainment | emotionalism; a hospitality of convenience |
God's temple should have a sense of timelessness, of permanence and depth of continuity and connection, attributes that contemporary thinkers too often unnecessarily and angrily avoid." Are we ashamed of the confident faith of our forefathers, of the saints?
Let's immerse ourselves in Catholic theology and culture, and manifest the confidence to break free of useless ideologies and fads that inhibit creativity and shun beauty. Let's move beyond class struggles and tentativity. Let's revisit Pugin and Comper, for starters. Let's learn from Stroik and Cram & Ferguson Architects. Let's dare to do something beyond our imagined means. Jesus beckons us to launch out into the deep. If we trust in Him, we'll again cast our nets out and they will return full of fish to the point of breaking. Souls need beauty, and goodness and truth!
Pugin - God's Own Architect
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