The Very Stones Would Cry Out

In his 1998 work, Architecture in Communion, architect Steven Schloeder offers for consideration a twofold problem: first, the problem of how to design for contemporary, post-Vatican II liturgy, and second, what, if anything, should a Catholic church building look like?¹ In the cultural storm of 1965, Étienne Gilson quipped that wide latitude is (and ought to be) granted to the architects of churches as church architecture is a “free” form; saying, “Perhaps it is the freest of all forms of architecture. A temple, or a church, or a chapel can assume any conceivable form, provided only that it includes an altar and a pulpit, covered with a roof and isolated by walls.”² Without dismissing Gilson, Schloeder argues that the hurdle of contemporary church design is that architecture is a particularly symbol-laden medium and this is not a reality which can simply be dismissed out-of-hand.³

Modern attempts (whether philosophical or practical) to divorce the design of contemporary church forms from the precedents established in the historical designs are not only difficult but also highly suspect. The practical reality is that various architectural styles have become associated with church-structures; these forms of building, in the Western mind, are layered in symbolism and meaning in an almost Platonic sense. Any attempt to ignore or replace these forms runs the risk of either losing the symbol and meaning of the church building or offering symbolism that is often unintended, thereby creating conflicting messages in the community.⁴ The need for contemporary church architecture to relate to those forms which have an established symbolism within the tradition of Western Catholicism is reiterated in Sacrosanctum concilium:

In order that sound tradition be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress, a careful investigation — theological, historical, and pastoral — should always be made . . . and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.⁵

Therefore, it becomes essential to understand the ways in which the role and purpose of the church building is far beyond Gilson’s altar, pulpit, roof and walls — the basic “functional requirements” of a space for liturgy.⁶ Rather, the local parish building acts as an important symbol in the community setting, expressing to the community the theology it espouses. Is it a “secular building surmounted by a cross” or a “sacred building: a place set aside for God and his people”?

Because of the building’s role as a physical theological symbol, a role which might be described as passive evangelization, the architecture must be rooted in the historical and symbolic language of the Church; otherwise it runs the risk of becoming the voice of an unintelligible theology.⁷

As a public symbol the church building is tasked with simultaneously representing and creating a rupture in the fabric of secular life. The church building is in the city, but not of the city — both open to the world and yet standing at a metaphysical distance. The late Roger Scruton insists that the role of sacred architecture, “symbolized in its structure and form,”⁸ is to both reveal and conceal God, as the architectural form and details are “haunted by an invisible presence.”⁹ For this reason, the church building has a civic obligation to stand as a sign and symbol of the transcendent, eternal reality to which it points, even as it remains a static construction in a specific temporal cultural space. When placed in the context of the symbol-laden architecture of the Western Catholic church, his statement becomes glaringly obvious when comparing Schloeder’s acerbic description of a “secular building with a cross” versus a sacred building. For Scruton, the truly sacred building has the capacity to convey, through its beauty, an encounter with the infinite even to those who would enter as unbelievers.¹⁰

Herein lies the issue at hand: architecture which seeks to move with the Zeitgeist is, by definition, an attempt to capture a current style or movement — it is contemporary; representational of a specific time, place, and spirit. However, contemporary is only contemporary until it is not, at which point it becomes dated (imagine, particularly, houses built in the 70s and 80s). This is the anthesis to architecture that is timeless. Architecture which takes as its foundation the spirit of the contemporary age will quickly find itself in opposition to the eternal qualities of the of the Church. To construct a church in a style and aesthetic completely divorced from the symbol-laden historical precedents is akin to an attempt at constructing an entirely new language or iconography ex nihilo and lament that it is not understood.¹¹

An anecdotal example of this is found in American film and television depictions of churches. A small, white clapboard church is immediately recognized as a rural, mainline Protestant church. A garish, amphitheater-style worship space is representative of the evangelical megachurch. A Catholic church is almost always depicted in Gothic revival style with an interior that is solemn and soaring with a richly appointed altar and a visible crucifix. The filmmakers have only a few seconds to convey, through imagery alone, that this is a Catholic church. Where the Protestant churches are often depicted as bright and full of people, the Catholic church is most often depicted as relatively empty and the lighting is usually dim, coming through stained glass or from flickering candles. There is very much an aura of mystery and a sense that upon entering the church, the character has left the world and entered an in-between that bridges the temporal and a realm of eternity, mystery, and understanding. All of this must be accomplished by the filmmaker in the span of a few seconds through purely visual imagery. It is the collective historical consciousness that allows this imagery to make sense, even to a viewer who is not Catholic and may have no actual knowledge of the Catholic Church. In those few seconds, an entire theology is depicted.

New ecclesial architecture must strike a balance between the requirements of post-Vatican II Novus Ordo liturgy and the necessary adaptation to contemporary, ever-changing, conditions while maintaining a discernable link to the historical and universally recognized language of the Church. The Church is not simply a static deposit of dogma, doctrine, definitions, and rituals, but a living organism, growing in appreciation of the things of God. The Church-eternal is also the Church-today, a growing and evolving organism, the demands of which shift with the daily demands of both the Gospel and the current age. To navigate this tension, it is imperative that there is an understanding of the role that architectural form and function is intended to play.

From the exterior, the church building is a visible expression of the Church — the local parish building is the local expression of the apostolic institution — past, present, future, and transcendent. Yet the building exists at the same time as an expression of the local community it serves within the context of the universal Church. André Biéler, in 1965, defines the local parish as being tasked with offering the community a structure and setting which will ultimately express the conception of the spiritual life of that community and its relationship to wider society.¹² The architecture of a local church building essentially becomes a built theology¹³ for the community, whether Catholic or other. As a functional realization of human needs architecture is part of the communal fabric which comprises the daily reality of the community. Dietrich von Hildebrand will argue that to move beyond mere utilitarian shelter from the elements, this fabric creates a unique experience, which calls into question the raison d’être of the structure.¹⁴

The discovery of the reason the structure exists is found in the practical aspects (why was it built and does it fulfill that purpose?) and its beauty (how well does it realize its practical theme? How this is fulfilled changes according to the practical aspects?).¹⁵ With regard to these two aspects, the second qualification is important as, for instance, the aspects that would render a home, or a high street beautiful, is different than the beauty expected in a landscape, and certainly different than what is expected of a church building. The church building is expected to evoke the sacred. It will only be beautiful to the extent that it accomplishes this evocation. Any artistic endeavor, including architecture, that submits itself as having achieved such greatness and depth while these attributes cannot be discerned, except perhaps by an “expert,” ultimately fails. The demands placed on church architecture assume certain levels of greatness and depth. Architecture that is purely utilitarian or comes across as confused or lacking direction ultimately fails in the aforementioned “demands” and runs the risk of presenting an actual antithesis to what the architect presumably hoped to accomplish. To avoid this risk, the design of the church, in its entirety, needs to evoke a sense of the sacred as well as the holiness of the liturgy for which it is the primary setting.¹⁶

The honor and reverence elicited through knowledge of the purpose of the church building would indicate that the design of parish sanctuaries is not the proper setting for architectural experimentation nor for bizarre “statement” architecture. Primary to all design considerations, a Catholic church ought to look like a Catholic church. Referencing the criteria of discernibility, perceptibility, and not being ugly (failing to interest, or meaning that passes unnoticed or is confused), a Catholic church that does not look like a Catholic church would fail in these three aspects and arguably others. If it is not easily identified as a church building, if it is not perceptible to the community as a Catholic church, and if it is ugly (again, meaning that the architecture fails to interest and any depth of meaning intended by the architect goes unnoticed or is confused), by the criteria set forth it would not be beautiful and would fail to evangelize simply because the community does not even know that it is a Catholic church, or it is so “ugly” that it fades into the background and is unnoticed — worse, it is considered an eyesore in the community.

While it may certainly be argued that a church ought to look like a church, this is in no way intended to stifle the architect and designer. In fact, wide latitude is expected as the local parish refers to the symbolism contained in historical church architecture, the building is also a physical expression of Christ and the universal Church in the local community. The architecture must be designed and built upon the theology of the universal Church as well as reflecting the culture which it serves. When these criteria are conflated, either by accident or deliberate design, the result is architectural confusion which then results in confusion within the parish community as well as the wider secular community. If the church building is to be a physical sign and symbol of transcendent things, consecrated and dedicated exclusively for the heavenly liturgy use, it follows that as Peter Hammond says in Liturgy and Architecture, the entire structure “is an instrument of worship.”¹⁷ The design of the building must take into consideration both the communal and hierarchical components of Catholic worship and the Catholic congregation. To express one to the neglect of the other degrades the architectural challenge set forth: to design a space that speaks of the rootedness of the local parish in the universal and historical Church while also honoring the present local community.

The aesthetic as well as evangelical component of church architecture enters in through the theological position which defines the role of the local church as a symbol of the universal Church (universal in the temporal, historical, and transcendent understanding). Aside from acting as a such a symbol to the community, the church building also acts as a vehicle which aids the worshipping community in their public and private worship.¹⁸ Admittedly, the demands on the church building are complex: it must at once “speak most clearly to our senses, our intellect, emotions, memory and imagination, our aesthetic sensibility, and our desire for transcendence . . . It must speak to us not only as individuals but as social persons, living in a historical community with a common tradition and communal responsibilities, and as participants in the liturgy from which Christian life flows.”¹⁹ The inverse of this is also true: A church building whose architecture and aesthetic does not entertain this role and accept this complex reality will be unable to act as a positive symbol to the wider community nor as an aide in worship for the congregation.

Historically, ecclesial architecture illustrates a theologically grounded architecture that allows for latitude in cultural expression. The basilica-style church that developed during the Constantinian era draws from the aesthetics of the Roman judicial forum which offers the theological symbolism of the Church as the bearer of Christ’s ultimate justice. In a completely different style and aesthetic sensibility, Byzantine architecture took cues from its liturgy and artistic expressions and were designed and constructed in a way that emphasized the theology and spirituality of the patristic era. Further architectural development based in Augustine’s theology of the Church as representative of the City of God and a prefigurement of the Heavenly Jerusalem,²⁰ culminates in the Gothic style. The iconoclasm and austerities of the Reformation era lead to the Counter Reformation emphasis on celebratory displays of beauty in ecclesial fine art, music, and architecture as exemplified in the Baroque. These styles are all aesthetically and architecturally distinct, yet all make recourse to a standard that exhibits great tolerance of deviation from the standard so long as the standard is discernably maintained. The desire to “reclaim” the rightful place of the local church to act as a symbol in the community in the wake of the industrial revolution sparked the Gothic revival, which would become the predominant church design in the West until the 1960s. Whether it is the Constantinian Santa Sabina in Rome (c. 422), the Romanesque Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan (c. 1099), the Gothic Cathedral of Köln (1248–1560, completed in 1880), or the Baroque Santa Maria della Salute in Venice (1631-1687), or the neo-Romanesque Mary Queen in Friendswood, Texas (2010), the common thread is that, in the Western consciousness, these structures are all unmistakably churches. Each example exhibits widely varying cultural and historical differences but contain elements that mark them as ecclesial structures even to the untrained eye.

It would seem that the disconnection between historical and contemporary church architecture is a theological rather than an architectural issue. Modernity has conflated the primary purpose of the church building with the secondary purpose — the primary purpose being the celebration of the liturgy and the secondary purpose the focus on the congregants.²¹ In opposition to Hammond, who described the Gothic revival as a failure to create “living architecture” that took as its focus not the liturgy, but those gathered for the liturgy,²² Schloeder attributes architectural and liturgical confusion of the current era to the blurring of the primary purpose of the church building.²³ Though he does not necessarily share Schloeder’s hierarchical view, Austin Flannery sees this as a false dichotomy: the church building understood as the “House of God” or a “House of God’s People” introduces an unnecessary and false dilemma for the architect.²⁴ Flannery points to Lumen Gentium to assert that the Council shifted the hierarchical focus to the communal focus when it opts for the term “people of God” rather than “Body of Christ” in describing the Church.²⁵ However, it is Sacrosanctum concilium that reaffirms that “the sacred liturgy is principally the worship of divine majesty.”²⁶

The fruit of Schloeder and Flannery’s divergence is in the realization that the twenty-first century American parish must contend with both realities. It is arguably true that the primary purpose of the church building is the celebration of the liturgy, yet the same document calls for the “fully conscious and active participation” of the laity.²⁷ An Aristotelian mean must be met when designing a church building that is capable of fostering prayer, a sense of the sacred, and of the mysteries of the sacraments while also being a space where the laity are afforded the ability to be in fully active and conscious participation. This is the challenge for the contemporary architect and designer of liturgical space and Catholic church architecture. The designer is tasked with navigating the historical consciousness of the community which is comprised not only of the Catholic congregants but also of the wider community who have in mind what Catholic churches “look” like and the needs of a contemporary Catholic church and the population who worship there. Church design should, at a minimum, take as a starting point any of the wide variety of architectural styles that have a demonstrated historical and social significance while considering the symbol-laden nature of the structure and design.

For the congregation, the architecture of the church must be conducive to properly oriented worship. Both the interior and the exterior of the church ought to exude dignity, without resort to the trivial, the kitsch, the cute, and the humorous.²⁸ The church building must be understood as itself a work of art which serves both the congregation and the wider community. The design of the church interior finds its purpose realized when it is able to create this sense of aesthetic dignity as well as community. Again, von Hildebrand says that in a properly designed church interior one should be struck by the “marvelous beauty” upon entering — the “overall view of the interior, of the whole length of the nave and the flanking aisles, of the columns and the altars . . . a lofty nobility, an explicit greatness and solemnity.”²⁹ In essence, the role of the interior is to move a person into a space that is demonstrably different from any other space. The interior architecture should take on the didactic function of education through sense perception, providing for imagery that promotes beauty, piety, and liturgical participation.

Ultimately, when one considers architecture as a conveyor of beauty and as a piece of the evangelization puzzle, the admonition that a church “ought to look like a church” rings true. In terms of its sacred beauty, the church building needs to declare its dependence on theological wisdom³⁰ in such a way that its sacred purpose is obvious in the design intent. The sacred beauty of the church owes to the degree in which it is successful in demonstrating the image of hope the Church places in Christ’s resurrection.³¹ Further, the building must envisage the bridging of the temporal and the transcendent, proving a threshold to the eternal, irradiating an atmosphere of sacredness that repulses any treatment of the space as “ordinary” or banal.³² Finally, it must be decipherable; the church must be perceptible as a church. Only when the building has in some way achieved this can it be called beautiful. And only then will it be a presence in the community that is a recognizable and (hopefully) welcome symbol of both the universal and local Church.