Article: Before and after at a church renovation. A return to Catholic tradition

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I much prefer the picture on the right. I feel the focus is much more inclusive and much less dated and narrow than the picture on the left.
 
This is a great change. A few of our local parishes have updated or renovated from ugly 1960s-1970s style to more traditional Churches. Many in the Vatican must be infuriated with this type of return to tradition.
 
I like wood paneling, so there’s a certain charm to the picture on the left that I like from an aesthetic point of view. However, the picture on the right is improved when it comes to imagery, colors, and not feeling like the room is heavy (wood always makes a room feel heavy to me, whatever that feeling means). I can’t say I’d be angry with either version of the church except I’m not partial to risen Christ imagery and I don’t like red walls.

It’ll be interesting to see how my childhood parish fares in the coming years. It was built in the 60s (I think) and a new priest has just been assigned and has started changing the floor from carpet to tile. It’s apparently sent a lot of parishioners into a tizzy because now the floor is noisy when they walk. He apparently has other plans to change the decor, but it’s a small parish so he has to do it in steps due to funding. I think he’s even hinted at wanting to put the choir in the choir loft (it’s just extra seating up there right now) which caused some music ministry mumbling.
 
Okay, I give up. Which is the before and which is the after?
 
They both look nice to be. I guess I could see the wood paneling being somewhat
outdated.
 
The before looks open and spacious. The after looks small and confined. I do not really understand this, it might be an effect of the photos. It just looks like priest and altar servers would run into one another in the newer, while they might be too far apart to hear each other in the older one.

I cannot figure out the tabernacle. Is it on a second altar behind a freestanding altar? It looks like it is on the main altar, but I am guessing that is an illusion? That may be why it looks congested to me.
 
I like having the tabernacle in the center, but in general I think a lot of the attempts to make churches from this era look more “traditional” fail because the church simply wasn’t designed to look that way, and the add-ons are relatively cheap materials.

The church where I was married looked much like the one on the left, except our church did have a big crucifix front and center and had the tabernacle always in the middle not off to the side. It’s since been renovated to look more like the picture on the right. In addition, all the windows, which were clear glass and looked out on a nice garden so you had lots of light coming in, have been covered with some sort of decal meant to look like stained glass and it just looks cheap like I said. It was better before.

I do think there are ways of doing a “facelift” that can help some of these type churches. There is one not far from the parish I mentioned that is completely full of dingy ugly paneling and feels like one is going to church in a government bunker. Even a fresh coat of white paint would help that place.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
in general I think a lot of the attempts to make churches from this era look more “traditional” fail because the church simply wasn’t designed to look that way, and the add-ons are relatively cheap materials.
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Where I am people have taken to using reclaimed materials from shuttered churches in their renovations. This avoids the cheap materials issues, but can still looks really out of place.
 
In my experience, the renovations look best when the church was traditional to begin with and was “wreckovated” in the 70s. Renovating in that case simply means putting things back where they were, and elements from closed churches, such as statues, can be nicely re-used.
 
I’m thankful for the construction of our older church that is designed so that radical redecorating isn’t possible. It’s very traditional in and of itself, very warm, intimate and lovely. I’ve been in some Catholic churches that are built like gymnasiums, inside and out, and their ambiance is cold and stark. They don’t even feel like houses of worship.
 
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